Months after the fact, I'm still amazed that I was able to do it. And not just do it, but do it without realizing I'd even done it.
"It" started shortly after spring quarter began. Several days into classes and my final lab rotation, I spent the entire day in lab, learning the ins and outs of working with a mammalian cell line (a first for me). I naïvely made my way home, thinking I'd have a relaxing dinner with Zach, casually do some homework for class, and get to bed around 10:00PM. Upon going home and browsing the syllabus for a single class, however, I quickly realized that I wasn't going to sleep that night. Well, that's not entirely true. I could sleep a little, if I radically shifted a few patterns in my pattern-loving existence.
The next night unfolded in a similar fashion. And the night after that. My somewhat cavalier and arrogant entrance into the quarter ("Hey, this is already my third quarter of graduate school... I know the drill by now!") gave way to a rather pathetic ejaculation of "get-this-done-by-the-seat-of-my-pants." Rock Bottom (or at least the first glimpses of it) came about two weeks into the quarter, when I gave quite possibly the worst presentation of my adult life to a room of twenty brainiacs. Figuratively decapitated both during the presentation and afterwards by a few peers, I spent some time mulling over my sobering future: the powers-that-be unanimously and persistently state that "this is the easy part." If I'm barely hanging on at this point, how can I hope to take the next step, the step after that, and so forth?
Of course, I wasn't able to mull quite as much as I would've liked. My 24-hour cycles were crammed with a new pattern: lots of reading and writing, a handful of sleep, and up at 5:45AM to get to lab. Zach and I would casually pass in the wind: I'd wake him when I left for the day (as he would still be asleep), and wake him again when I'd get home (he would've fallen asleep already). At school and in lab, I scheduled meetings with other graduate students and faculty I'd come to trust and admire, and solicited advice: "Can I do this?" I was usually surprised by the consistently contradictory answer: "Yes, you idiot." Apparently, they said, I overreact easily and need to CALM DOWN. By then, though, I'd done what I, above, expressed surprise at: in the interests of a few hours of sleep each night, I cut myself off from the outside world. No phone calls, no e-mail, no posting. I would occasionally listen to news on the radio, and Zach would occasionally ring me during the day to make sure I hadn't fled to Switzerland and changed my identity.
I should stop at this point and state clearly that I do not in any way mean that you, the reader, should be impressed that I've apparently made it through a most challenging and soul-twisting period in my education. For one thing, as the powers-that-be keep telling me, this isn't the "hard" part - that's the rest of graduate school. For another, I'm not some genius worthy of worship: just some guy who fooled some school into taking him on. And finally, most of my complaints of suffering and isolation were probably brought on by my own frustrating ability to overreact and generally blow things out of proportion. As Zach can testify, for example, I once sought to portray a hangnail as a natural disaster on par with Exxon Valdez. My cat's first asthma attack, for reference, was somewhere in the neighborhood of the Good Friday Earthquake.
I was humbled by graduate school in the spring quarter. Humbled to the extent that I ate and slept little, worked probably more than I needed to, and doubted myself and my abilities to such an extent as to cast myself as an antithesis to Job's faith in God. But, suddenly, as the quarter began to draw to a close, Things began to calm down. My work load in classes shifted to something more managable, my final rotation project began to take shape, and I was left with teh decision of joining a thesis lab. Still a bit shaken up (and sleep-deprived), I explored my options and, to my complete surprise, found two faculty members who actually wanted me to join their labs. I had a Sally Field moment: "You mean you like me?! Even after my seat-of-the-pants performance over the past ten weeks?! Didn't you hear about my horrible presentation in Immunity?!"
Apparently, I fretted over nothing. Time and again, I was lectured: "Yes, the things you worried about were important, to an extent. But, from this point on, it's what you learn that matters: what you put into it, and what you get out of it. It's all your own choice."
So, I've chosen: I'll study this-and-that, but also go home and night to spend time with Zach. I'll teach next year, but also take vacations. I'll write grants, but also read books. I'll attend seminars, but also re-establish contact with the outside world.
I'll live, but not at the expense of my life.
Posted by James at July 11, 2006 05:51 PM