Reflections on Quarter 2 of Grad School
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Photos in this post are mostly from my winter break in Hawai’i
So technically I’m already well into my third quarter (literally finals are next week), but I somehow let the elusive months of January to March slip by without pausing to reflect here on what exactly went down. It was a weird time, with Omicron throwing a wrench in the campus’s “in-person” class plans for the first month of the quarter.
What that meant for me was that I started my Chemical Oceanography, Coastal Governance, and Marine Ecology classes remotely from Maui for the first three weeks of the quarter. I was already there visiting Chris over the holidays, so I changed my flights fairly easily, adjusted my schedule to account for the time change, and zoomed in with roosters as my background noise and a bunch of cute cats as my study buddies.
While I can appreciate that from the outside, it might seem that zooming in to classes from Maui was a dream come true, I was struggling. The first quarter had shown me how much adjustment I had yet to do to becoming a student again and figuring out how to go about being in a relatively unstructured program. I was looking forward to the second quarter bringing me closer to classmates, labmates, and the general campus community. When the remote announcement was made to allow Omicron to “settle down” before resuming in-person activities, my introvert self was relieved, but the part of me that craved connection, understanding, and a semblance of normalcy was left wailing in the corner.
Nonetheless, the first few weeks of classes went by without much of a hitch. I was able to join my parents on the Big Island for a week, zooming into classes from the hotel while my dad attended a conference and mom lounged by the pool. After that, it was back to Santa Cruz…and I dragged Mom along with me, because it was time to move into my new studio!
Moving is not fun for me. It’s not my forté. And yet I’ve done it about a million times. This time, however, it was nice to have my mom with me. I commissioned her as my live-in thrift shopper who was able to scour the local Goodwills and Thrift Centers to search for furniture and kitchen items while I continued to zoom into class from the center of my chaotic little studio. Why buy new when second-hand is cheaper and already in existence?
The following week, Mom left and we resumed in-person classes. I was a bit of an anxious mess, not because of Covid, but socially. All of this back and forth was doing funny things to my mental state, and it was hard to digest everything that was going on. Resilience took on a new meaning for me.
It seemed like the second quarter was challenging for many in my cohort. I may have mentioned this before, but there are seven of us starting in the Ocean Sciences department this year. I think we were all getting a little fatigued, many of us juggling overflowing schedules, and me struggling with new lows in my mental health. What helped was knowing that we were all going through this together.
So, long story short, the quarter finished. I still feel so unprepared for what I need to do for my own research. The questions I’m asking, the experimental design, data collection methods, confidence…I imagine it will come together with time, and I fondly remember what my friend Oliver told me once about being in research/grad school: “None of us know what’s going on, we’re all just making it up as we go.” I guess, in a way, that’s sort of what science is. I’m not out here trying to be the best at what I do. I’m out here trying to be the best version of myself, and learn some things along the way while hopefully advancing our knowledge of the planet and our relationship with it.
As a late May update, I am feeling a lot better mentally. I plan to write a more in-depth post about mental health in grad school, resources that students can utilize, and other things to reflect on. Just stay tuned :)
