I have said it before, and I will say it again. The more that I learn, whether it be in school or in my personal experiences, the more that I learn that I don’t know anything. Well, I guess that’s a bit of an exaggeration. I don’t not know anything, but the more that I learn the more that I learn how much more there is to learn….if you can follow my logic.

This has not been proven more true than this past semester, my first semester in graduate school. This past semester was extremely difficult for me, not only did I learn much about who I am as a person and the things in my personal life that I struggled with, but I had to relearn how to be a student. I had to relearn how to create good study habits, manage my time well, and manage stress well. On top of that, being a graduate teaching assistant, I had to learn how to be both student and teacher at the same time. There were days when I honestly was not sure that  I was going to make it, and I honestly cried myself to sleep. However, I do not regret those blood, sweat, and tears….okay, okay so really only tears, but there were a lot of them.

Continue reading “What I learned in my first semester of graduate school, being a student”

It is apparent that it has been more than a month since my last post, for this I apologize, but also, not to state the obvious (but obviously to state the obvious), graduate school is hard, hence why it has taken me more than a month to write about it.

Graduate school is a culture all its own. I am finding this out the hard way. Upon my first week of classes, I had the idea that graduate school would be a lot like undergraduate, only with more intense studies and slightly more adulting involved. I couldn’t be more wrong.

Continue reading “”Ain’t nobody got time for that”: 7 struggles of graduate school”

Having lived abroad twice now, culture shock is a dear old friend of mine, one with whom I’ve been acquainted with and with whom I’ve spent a decent amount of time. I’ve seen both sides of this friend: the shock of living in a new country and the shock of having that country change you, leaving you not understanding your own country. I understand what to expect: the emotions, the fears, the excitement, the confusion. I know when to expect it. Both times that I lived in France, culture shock started creeping up on me about 2 weeks to a month into my experience. I am familiar with how culture shock affects me: never wanting to leave my room, crying myself to sleep, feeling alone, feeling like my head is going to explode with all the new information, feeling lost, and wanting to go back and forget it immediately, but I also know how to combat culture shock: forcing myself to look at the positives of my situation, writing about my experiences, forcing myself to go out and meet people and to try new things. I feel as though I am well versed in how my dear friend culture shock likes to operate.

However, what I did not expect was to be experiencing it in my own country and own culture.

Continue reading “Learning to swim in a vast ocean: experiencing culture shock in my own country”