Afraid graduate school not working out.

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I’m having a horrible time now. I became depressed last winter and had to receive two incompletes because I was too depressed to do any homework during spring quarter. This summer I was supposed to make up the incompletes and concentrate on starting research. I found that I can’t concentrate on research and work on the incompletes at the same time. I can’t just switch gears and go from one to the other. As a result I got less accomplished on both fronts than I would have if I had been allowed to concentrate on one without worrying about the other. The incompletes hung over me like deadweight all summer. Now it’s been so long since I took the classes that it’s extremely hard to get into it again.

The worst part of it is I’m not sure what my advisor wants. I have my own ideas but I can’t share them with my advisor because he’s difficult to communicate with. He doesn’t seem to have much enthusiasm and I don’t feel like I can have dialog with him. He can be very quiet and terse and doesn’t really let me know what he’s thinking. This is so awkward for me that I just shut down completely when I try to talk with him. It isn’t like he is purposely trying to be difficult either. It’s just the way he is. He doesn’t want me to leave and want’s to help me but his personality just doesn’t work with me. I don’t see that there’s any way he can change his personality. I’m so worried right now that the chair wont’ let me change advisors or will kick me out if I give up on my current advisor. It made me sick all week. I wasn’t able to do the presentation for my first year report because I’m so emotionally weak right now.

In the spring I signed permission form for my parents, counselor, disability support, and advisor to be able to speak with each other. Only problem is my advisor now talks to my parents more than me. I was afraid they were going to give up on me when I couldn’t do my presentation, but my advisor is still begging me to stay. I was about to resign myself when he talked to my father and told him he didn’t want me to leave.

Now I’m a couple weeks behind on the class I’m currently taking because I had to put all my energy into my first year report that I didn’t even finish. I’m totally sunk if I can’t get caught up on this class. I’m just so unhappy and disillusioned right now. I don’t have anyone I can easily talk to and so I don’t have any intellectual stimulation. I feel like I’ve just lost the heart. I’m extremely bored with my work already. I’d rather just learn on my own than have to go through a degree program that will destroy me.

I hope to god there's someone here who has been in this situation. I'm just so wrecked right now.

Try just walking into another advisor for your program to discuss the situation. In grad school i've had no problems with my advisor, but in undergrad my advisor was never available at a convenient time, so I just went to a professor i liked when I needed to speak to an advisor - I was never turned away.

I too had some problems this summer that greatly interfered with my ability to do schoolwork. Though i was lucky in that my program allows delays and extensions for most of the work, and most of us are expected to take said delays/extensions so it didn't affect me enough for the professor to be concerned.

The problem isn't not having extensions. The problem is that I can't just have time to complete the incomplete classes without having to worry about new work and other deadlines. It would be nice just to have time for finishing incomplete work with no worry about research and new classes. The program seems to force you to take at least one class each quarter though. I get less accomplished when I'm under pressure because I don't feel the excitement about my work. I need to be relaxed to enjoy learning. When it's all about finishing assignments I don't feel like I have time to enough time to just read and think about the material.

It's a hard program. I have the intellectual ability to do everything but I don't have the psychological strength for it. They make you take on so much at once that you don't have the time to learn anything in depth. I need that depth of understanding to feel enjoyment.

I hope this explains it. I'm just so depressed about it all.

Thanks for the reply.

Hey Marshall,

Been there, am still there actually. Started my master's program on a good note, did well with light coursework and plenty of free time on my hands. Somehow in the way I pulled a 'star turn', attracted the attention of some influential faculty members, and received access to the top tier opportunities in my department. This, however, brought significantly more work, as well as greatly increased requirements of dealing with bosses and colleagues. Over the course of one semester, my mind and body broke down from the stress, had to be hospitalized over a freak infection stemming from a depressed immune system, and spent my final semester missing deadlines and botching assignements. I still have one incomplete, and it's been a year and a half.

Well, there's the part where I give my story so you know it's not just you and it happened to at least one other person. The part missing from my account is where I figure out what went wrong and make a comeback - because I still haven't managed to do that. For that reason, I'm eager to see if anyone here has any real solutions for digging oneself out of the hole. However, I do have some excellent advice I'd give you as a starting point, that I wish was offered to me a year ago: Do not blame yourself.

Graduate school is fuelled by the cycle of praise and disappointment from professors, whom out of either tough love or intellectual arrogance, give you mixed signals at every turn to motivate you to improve the quality of your work. The catch for us is that we aren't lazy (even though we're made to feel that way), but it's just overwhelming and we're running into a brick wall of neurological impairment. I believed the fiction for a year, pushed myself past the brink of exhaustion trying to overcome my "laziness", and all it got me was a trip to the hospital and creation of a dozen mental blocks that were not there before.

That's really the first step, bud, and it sounds like your condition is known and understood by involved parties, and they're being surprisingly sympathetic, albeit still insufficiently helpful. From there, I suggest trying to remember what brought you to graduate school in the first place:

What kind of work did you want to engage in? Is the work suitable for you mentally/as a person?
What kind of work will you do upon completion of your degree? Is it suitable for you mentally/as a person?
What's the light at the end of the tunnel that keeps you going, and is it it consistent with your own values and abilities?

If you can figure those out, I think it will clarify much, but if you're like me you must be having a hard time disaggregating your true abilities from your poor performance under durress. But I've pretty much brought you up to speed to what I've figured out as of this writing, and from here I'm looking forward to seeing what anyone else can contribute.

Also Marshall, feel free to message me personally if you've got anything else you want to ask, but don't be surprised if I only check once every few days or so - I will write back,

Ben

Thanks for your thoughtful response. At least it’s good to know I’m not alone (not good that you’re in this predicament though). I think my biggest problem is that I don’t know how to be assertive when I feel intimidated. I find it impossible to initiate a dialog when I’m feeling this way. Without any dialog I can’t receive the sense of intellectual stimulation and well being that would allow me to do good work. The odd part is that I don’t even know what I’m intimidated by. The subject I’m working on is something that’s almost as new to my advisor as it is to me. This seems to be a big part of the problem as I feel uncomfortable about asking something he might not know very well. He seems to have a strange kind of stubbornness. If I bring some idea up he has this thing where he automatically acts dismissive like he needs people to argue to him. He gets really silent and wants me to perform the talking.