More Grad School Angst

It's been a year, a whole year. I would freak out at the thought, if I weren't so mentally exhausted. Who knew school could take this much out of you? I certainly didn't. I figured that I had worked so much (and I did - 15+ hours per day during my last term of undergrad) previously, that the constant academic work wouldn't be that bad. I was wrong. There's a HUGE difference between working for 15 hours a day on non-academic and academic stuff, and on academic stuff. The latter is much more exhausting, much more trying, and much more damaging to your body.

Case in point: me.

I've lost weight. I'm not complaining about it, but I've lost more in the past few months than ever before, and people are surprised when they see me. My father, ever conscious of how I dress, is infamous for having once told me I need to wear loose-fitting clothing. He was here, as you may recall from a previous post, a couple weeks ago, and told me I looked good in skinny jeans. Ya.

My eyes have gotten worse. I think it's because of the constant reading and typing. I've tried keeping my eyes relaxed, taking breaks etc, but sometimes I feel as if they just want to pop out and hide underneath my bed.

My back is messed up - to the point that I can no longer sit in the wooden chairs at the library. I've been studying at another place, or coming home so I can sit in my good chair. Oh. And the back problems also make it hard to sleep properly.

My sleep schedule. Maybe we shouldn't talk about that. Here's what it looks like. I go to bed at 1am. Am up by 3:45am. Get out of bed. Wander around and force myself to go back to sleep. I wake up at 6am, utterly exhausted, and tell myself to doze for another 30 minutes - at 6:30, I fall asleep and cannot get out of bed - physically and mentally - until 8am. At which point I freak out, jump out of bed, and turn on the stove to make my pot of chai.

My diet. Let's not even go there.

General health overall. I've been sick for the past few weeks and it shows no sign of disappearing. Wonderful. Just Wonderful

Oh and did I mention that I have Gujaratis coming out of my ears? That's the thing. As an undergrad, when you can't find the stats, you don't write the paper. When you're a graduate student, you write the paper because you don't have the stats - and formulate the stats for the paper.

Ok. Enough complaining. Back to work. Gotta take these contact lenses out though before my eyes die on me.

Sigh...J-B was right.