3/4

I am ¾ of the way done with my first year in grad school.  I never thought it would have happened so fast.  It doesn’t feel like I graduated from undergrad almost a year ago.  I still remember getting into grad school like it was yesterday when it fact it has been about a year now since I was accepted.  Things have moved so quickly and continue to do so that it really is just hard to believe that the first year is almost over.

Last August, I started off not sure of what I was doing here and whether or not I belonged in grad school.  I doubted my abilities and was very close to quitting once Thanksgiving had rolled around in time.  But as I kept going and had people encouraging me to stay with it, I started to find my stride.  It seemed like I stumbled out of the gates and got tripped up by something in the beginning.  I am not sure what it was but I think it was expecting too much from myself at the very beginning.  If there is one thing I can say about grad school it is too not expect everything to come to you at first and to make sure you are humble about your own abilities.  Grad school is one of those places that definitely lets you know where you stand in the world and sometimes it can be very hard to find out that you aren’t as high up as you thought you were.

Finding my stride wasn’t easy but it was definitely a learning experience.  Sometimes you have to experience hardship and, in a lot of ways, earn the respect you eventually will receive from others at this level.  But as these things started to fall into place, the things I expected grad school to be started to come true.  I even managed to get a professor, who I thought hated me, interested in the things I am researching and wanting to work with me on these things.  Grad school allows you to show what you can do but it seems that those that are already there are waiting to be impressed.  They are not necessarily waiting to be impressed by your abilities either, it seems like they are waiting to be impressed by your perseverance instead.  It seems to me, in grad school, people want to know that you have gone through the motions to get where you are at.  Your intelligence is never in question, you are in grad school, you obviously are intelligent.  Instead, people want to make sure you are in it for the right reasons.  If you are there to just show off how smart you are they have no need to bother with you, however, if you really want to be doing this because you are passionate, you will be willing to put up with the ups and downs of grad school until you get there; it is at this point you earn the respect of your peers and professors as a colleague.  It was an interesting journey to come to the realization that it wasn’t whether or not I was smart that mattered, but whether I was willing to put my intelligence to the test and really try to learn how to use it in a meaningful way.

The first ¾ of my first year have not been easy for me but I feel as though I have learned a lot from my experiences with grad school and the people involved.  Now, I am teaching and working on research with two people I respect highly and vice versa.  It has been an interesting experience to say the least but it is also one that I wouldn’t have traded for the world.  Here’s to the last ¼ of the year.