Graduate School Ain't Easy

Let me tell you...on the one hand, it's nice not having a 9-5 job (or 7-3 in the case of being a teacher), but man....being a grad student is exhausting. OSU works on the quarter system. Instead of 14 or 16 week semesters, we have 10 week quarters. Yeah, we have to cram all of the material into 10 short weeks. So we have about 3 weeks of the quarter left and I have a TON of work to do. I have (basically) 4 20-page papers to write. It's exhausting. Ph.D. work is so much different than work as an undergrad. Instead of just reading what is required on the syllabus, I have to read a whole mess of other stuff too. Don't get me wrong, I love learning and getting smarter. It's just exhausting. It's nice to know, though, that the struggle is not mine alone. Since my move here to Cbus, I have been making a lot of friends also in PhD programs and they face many of the same challenges I do. The only challenge they don't face is a cutie pie baby cockatiel who loves to sit on my laptop keyboard when I type and chase the cursor across the screen.

I am making a ton of new friends, which is really cool. I just wish I had more time to hang out with them. I should probably set up more study dates with people, where we can go to a library, coffee shop or somewhere and hang out and do work.

I am very much looking forward to going home for Thanksgiving. I really miss everyone.....