What I learned during my first semester of grad school

Dear Self,

It’s been a rough couple of months, but you’re almost there! Just one more exam and you’ll be good to go, free to enjoy a whole month of family, friends, wholesome food, and just-for-fun reading.

I know you’re worried about your grades, but they’re probably going to be fine. Realistic worst-case scenario, maybe you’ll get a warning to do better next semester, and you’re already going to do that, right? (Less realistic worst-case scenario: You might get kicked out! Wouldn’t that be kind of AWESOME?! Then you could forget all about grad school and do something else like you’ve been fantasizing about all through finals!)

Whatever happens, you’ve learned some pretty important lessons this semester. These are things you won’t want to forget next time around. So here it is, advice from 2011-me to 2012-you, and here’s hoping it helps you become a slightly less anxious student and a much happier person.

1. Work during the day, chill out in the evening, sleep at night. Dad always said you had to treat grad school like having a job, and what do you know, he was right! (Like he usually is… damn it…) If you just get on a schedule and stick to it (no cheating and watching TV during the day!) you’ll find it a lot easier to stay on top of everything without all that last-minute panic and stress.

2. Write a little bit every day. Just like #1, writing those research papers is all about pacing yourself and sticking to a schedule. (Speaking of which, see corollary 2b: Add a rough draft step two weeks before your deadline; and 2c: Leave a full day at the end to fix citations.) Remember what you felt like after writing 70 pages in five days? It wasn’t pretty. There were panic attacks, and possibly borderline moments of actual insanity. Let’s not do that again, Self.

3. Exercise. You won’t even believe how much better you’ll feel next semester if you carve out one hour for the gym every night instead of watching TV or messing around on Facebook. There were a couple of weeks you were pretty good at that this semester, and it was by far the best you ever felt. (Anxiety? What anxiety? Trouble concentrating? What’s that? Seriously, get your ass to the gym — it’s the one-stop solution to all of your problems.)

4. Eat real food. Man cannot live on coffee and take-out alone. Neither can woman.

5. Go check out that church. Yeah, yeah, you never thought you were the church-going type, but this one looks really great, and let’s face it –– you could really use some personal guidance (not to mention a community!) right about now. With every passing year, you recognize more and more ways that pride and laziness have gotten in the way of good things in your life. So get over both of them and go.

6. Don’t let yourself think about the future after 8 p.m. Seriously, you will only freak yourself out. You know you’re not really going to drop the program, so why get yourself all worked up about it? You will graduate, you will get a job, you will pay off those loans, you will be fine, and what’s more, you know all of this whenever you think about it during the day! Stop thinking about it at night.

7. Go to things. Meet people. Talk to them. You’ll always be tired and you’ll always be busy. And if you keep making those excuses, you will also always be alone. Even Amazon Prime can’t deliver a social life to your front door in two days, you know.

8. Remember that you’re an optimist. Sometimes when things get really hard, you forget this for a few minutes. Stop doing that! You’ve made it through far worse situations than anything grad school can throw at you and still managed to hang on to your positive attitude and sense of humor. In fact, when you’re in your right mind, that’s one of your favorite things about yourself. Don’t let school change that.

9. Seek out inspiration. This field is so much bigger than that one thing you’re studying right now that you really hate. Don’t let school-related stress taint your love for the whole field. Go out and do something fun once in awhile and remember why you wanted to do this in the first place!

10. Give that $5 in your wallet to the homeless guy who asks. Because why not? (And let’s face it, if you don’t, you’ll spend the rest of the day wishing you had.)

Best wishes in 2012,
Chrissy 

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Grad student fantasies

acheiropoietos:

can this be the start of a love story in which i really need the books this library has on early church architecture in constantinople but it seems someone has checked all of them out and somehow i track them down and we arrange to meet somewhere and fall in love immediately and grow up and get married and visit ancient churches together

(via caravaggista)

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ornamentedbeing: One of my all time favorite Victorian Fancy Dress images.   Mrs Arthur Paget, later Lady Paget(d 1919)née Mary (Minnie) Stevens as Cleopatra   For the Ball, Mrs Paget - as one of the three Cleopatras present - commissioned one of the most spectacular and certainly the most expensive costumes from Worth of Paris at a reputed cost of over $6,000. The train is of black crêpe de chine, embroidered with gold scarabs. The bodice, encrusted with gold and diamonds, is held up on the shoulders with straps of large emeralds and diamonds. The square headdress is made of cloth of gold with striped black and gold sphinx-like side pieces studded with diamonds, and encrusted with diamonds. Crowning her is an ibis headdress, with outstretched wings of diamonds and sapphires. The remainder of the headdress is of uncut rubies and emeralds, all real stones from her own immense collection, surmounted by the jewelled crown of Egypt. She wears round her neck row upon row of necklaces of various gems, reaching to the waist, and a jewelled hem-length girdle. A small diamond asp nestling on her right shoulder give a hint of Cleopatra’s doom. The small Ottoman wedding coins attached to her wrist- and arm-bands are an anachronism. With such riches, her closeness to the Prince of Wales and her extravagant literary salons, Mrs Paget had aroused the resentment of some other society ladies. However when she entered the Ball followed by a “negro servant” holding a fan of ostrich feathers over her head, other guests “gasped with wonder and astonishment.” This image was made at the Ball, but not used in the Album which includes a portrait in costume by the photographer J Thomson of Grosvenor Street which captures Mrs Paget’s delicate waist more clearly as well showing to better effect the gold scarab motif on her train. This is so stunning! And timely — we were discussing the late nineteenth-century tradition of costumed portraiture in my Orientalism seminar just yesterday. :)

ornamentedbeing:

One of my all time favorite Victorian Fancy Dress images.

 

Mrs Arthur Paget, 
later Lady Paget
(d 1919)
née Mary (Minnie) Stevens

as Cleopatra

 

For the Ball, Mrs Paget - as one of the three Cleopatras present - commissioned one of the most spectacular and certainly the most expensive costumes from Worth of Paris at a reputed cost of over $6,000. The train is of black crêpe de chine, embroidered with gold scarabs. The bodice, encrusted with gold and diamonds, is held up on the shoulders with straps of large emeralds and diamonds. The square headdress is made of cloth of gold with striped black and gold sphinx-like side pieces studded with diamonds, and encrusted with diamonds.

Crowning her is an ibis headdress, with outstretched wings of diamonds and sapphires. The remainder of the headdress is of uncut rubies and emeralds, all real stones from her own immense collection, surmounted by the jewelled crown of Egypt. She wears round her neck row upon row of necklaces of various gems, reaching to the waist, and a jewelled hem-length girdle. A small diamond asp nestling on her right shoulder give a hint of Cleopatra’s doom. The small Ottoman wedding coins attached to her wrist- and arm-bands are an anachronism.

With such riches, her closeness to the Prince of Wales and her extravagant literary salons, Mrs Paget had aroused the resentment of some other society ladies. However when she entered the Ball followed by a “negro servant” holding a fan of ostrich feathers over her head, other guests “gasped with wonder and astonishment.”

This image was made at the Ball, but not used in the Album which includes a portrait in costume by the photographer J Thomson of Grosvenor Street which captures Mrs Paget’s delicate waist more clearly as well showing to better effect the gold scarab motif on her train.

This is so stunning! And timely — we were discussing the late nineteenth-century tradition of costumed portraiture in my Orientalism seminar just yesterday. :)

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“You know what’s sad about reading books? It’s that you fall in love with the characters. They grow on you. And as you read, you start to feel what they feel - all of them - you become them. And when you’re done, you’re never the same. Sure you’re still you, you look the same, talk in the same manner, but something in you has changed. Something in the way you think, the way you choose, sometimes, even the things you say may differ. But it all comes down to the state you go to after a nice novel. The after-feeling. It’s amazing, but somehow, you feel left alone by that world you were once in. It’s overwhelming. But it makes you sad. Cause for once you were this, this otherworldly being in… Neverwhere, and then you suddenly have to say goodbye after a few weeks from when you read the last page. When you’ve recovered from that state. It’s just… quite sad.”

Hunger Games (via katyjean)

This is the way I feel about all great stories, whether they’re told in novels, movies, history books, or on television. Sometimes I almost feel like an addict — I just can’t let the really engrossing ones go!

(via dreamwithinanightmare)

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