“In times of stress, the best thing we can do for each other is to listen with our ears and our hearts and to be assured that our questions are just as important as our answers.”
― Fred Rogers, The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember

As I write this, it is near the end of March 2020. What an incredibly stressful time we have entered! For college and university students around the world, the Covid-19 pandemic has led to abrupt campus closures (see Karin Fisher’s March story, When Coranavirus Closes Colleges, Some Students Lose Hot Meals, Health Care, and a Place to Sleep).

Graduate students have particularly experienced challenges to their progress for a number of reasons. Consider this March 26 article by Megan Zahneis from the Chronicle of Higher Education: 

• For Many Graduate Students, Covid-19 Pandemic Highlights Inequities

Two recent stories from InsideHigherEd further underscore the impact of campus closures on graduate students:

• Graduate Studies and Campus Closures, by Katy Krieger
• Virtual Thesis Defense: PhD Students Defending their Dissertations Must do so Remotely right now. Could Videoconference Defenses Become the New Normal?, by Colleen Flaherty

In the face of great change and disruption of our everyday activities and lifestyles, it is easy to become emotionally overwhelmed. Our mental health can suffer. Now more than ever, it is essential to focus on managing your response to stress. 

These tips provided by Adam Sicinski offer great wisdom at times when it all feels just too much:

* Recognize Overwhelm

The first step for when you’re feeling overwhelmed with life is to actually recognize and acknowledge the moment when you start feeling overwhelmed. Overwhelm is however something that kind of creeps up on us very slowly, then suddenly hits us like a firecracker. It often begins in a very subtle way by making us feel a little rushed. This pushes us out of our comfort zone and we progressively start losing control. What’s more is that we now no longer have the clarity we need to get stuff done, and as a result we become very negative and self-critical.

* Take Yourself from the Situation

Having recognized that you’re feeling overwhelmed with life, it’s now time to take one long deep breath… then get-on-out-of-there and completely remove yourself from the situation. Yes, I actually mean walk away from the situation in the opposite direction. You cannot continue what you’re doing feeling this way. Remove yourself, and do it fast! The sooner the better. At least now you have the space to think things through more clearly. And your first thoughts must be directed at what exactly triggered your feelings of overwhelm. Identifying this trigger is the first step toward taking back control.

* Detach Yourself Emotionally

Feeling overwhelmed with life is very much like a problem. You have this experience that you just can’t seem to handle, however you are only feeling this way because of how you’re viewing this situation. You will never find a solution to your problem if you’re emotionally invested within that problem. You must therefore separate your emotions from this experience and then challenge yourself to think things through a little differently. Specifically, you must decide to either shift your perspective of the situation, to change the situation, to remove yourself from the situation, or to figure out how to best cope with it.

* Take a Personal Inventory

Let’s say that you decided to challenge yourself to try and work through this situation. Well in that case, it’s now time to take a personal inventory. A personal inventory is an acknowledgement of your personal strengths, knowledge, skills, tools and the support you have on hand to help you cope with this situation far more effectively. With all these things at your disposal you no longer need to succumb to feeling overwhelmed with life or with any particular situation. You just need to figure out how to make use of these resources to help you work through your predicament in an optimal way.

* Think Things Through

Having taken a personal inventory, you should now understand where your strengths lie, and therefore you probably feel more capable of working through your feelings of overwhelm in this particular situation. Consider for a moment how you could utilize your time, skills, tools and the resources you have on hand to try and make things a little less overwhelming. Ask yourself how you could potentially work through your task more effectively and rationally. Possibly the solution lies in tackling your task in small pieces. Or just maybe there is a better way to do things that you hadn’t considered before.

* Take Charge of the Situation

No matter what solutions you come up with to your dilemma, it’s now time to take full responsibility and start moving forward. In other words, commit yourself to taking charge of the situation. Yes, there will be things and aspects that you still won’t be able to control. However, don’t allow these things to distract you from everything else that you can do right now. With this in mind, focus on what can be controlled and work through these tasks one small step at a time. Even if you can’t do it all, you can at the very least begin somewhere. Start small and slowly build momentum one mini-task at a time.

In the years since I began my successful journey toward the PhD I’ve learned so much about the importance of maintaining good health in graduate school. As my visitors get to know me better you will discover that I am a deep advocate for self-care during the graduate years.

We enter graduate school to learn about academics and about ourselves. But there’s another whole element of our graduate education that often challenges us to the core: Our life-management skills.

I see graduate study as a form of mountain-climbing. Being prepared for the journey includes caring for your mental and physical health.

My doctoral journey was ultimately successful, but I’m not afraid to admit that it pushed my mental health to a breaking point, taking me a full year longer (3 years rather than my intended 2) to finish my dissertation.

I have a huge compassion for helping graduate students sort out the issues and challenges, and I do hope it shows in every page of this site.

Continue reading “Essential Advice for Graduate Students: Caring for Your Mental Health”

Every graduate student that ventures along the road to success is tested by various challenges along the way. One of them is loneliness.

Compared with the large classes and intense study sessions in undergraduate courses, graduate programs often focus on small-group learning and solitude. At first, this can be difficult to get used to.

It’s not uncommon to experience unique challenges when transitioning to graduate school. Finding your own personal style of learning and building momentum takes time and patience.

Building momentum takes various steps:

Set achievable goals. Rather than promising yourself that you’re going to spend 5 full hours in one sitting to work on a paper, approach time management realistically. Try writing in 30 minute chunks.

Set boundaries. Set healthy boundaries on campus, at work, and at home–and if you haven’t done so, now is a good time as any to practice. Boundary setting helps you realize that you do have control over your schedule.

Meet with your support system. Have you checked in with people who’ve got your back? This may include faculty, graduate program advisors, loved ones, student peers, or work colleagues. More than one person in your support system is better.

Keep yourself nourished. What keeps you going and energized? Do you need a glass of water? How about a snack or meal? A short nap or a good night’s sleep? Is there a song, movie, hobby, or activity that restores your motivation?

Guard against feeling isolated or alone. No matter how much you feel like you’re carrying the full weight of success or failure on your shoulders, don’t let it keep you from having a life outside of graduate school.

Continue reading “Enjoy the Journey Ahead. You’re not Alone!”