Graduate Student Guilt

If you’ve ever attended graduate school, you probably know exactly what this is.

It’s that anxious feeling you get when you try to relax for a while. Pursue a hobby. Watch a football game. Go on a hike. Try to take a nap.

It’s that feeling that, if you’re conscious and able to think, you ought to be working. There’s always something that needs to be done.

Why are you sleeping?? That paper’s not going to read itself. The mass spectrometer won’t run your analyses for you.  Get up. Go! You can rest when you’re dead.

In short bursts, this kind of anxiety can help a person get things done. It’s sort of a rite of passage, really. If you never felt graduate student guilt, you probably aren’t really cut out for graduate school. Or you are an emotionless heap of non-personality. (There are other options, too, I’m sure.)

I had always hoped that the guilt would go away after I graduated. And it did dissipate for a while.

But now it’s manifested itself in new and disturbing ways. And now, just as when I was in graduate school, I feel anxious the moment I sit down to take a break.

The voices are different now. Go exercise. Do something appropriately ‘parental’ with your child. Mow the lawn. Those groceries aren’t going to travel by themselves from the store to your cabinets. Oh yeah. And make sure you can retire eventually.

For the most part, all of those things are things I like to do. They do tend to make for busy days though, and I wonder if I’ve gotten myself too busy. (Our society seems to pride itself on how busy we are. We even brag about it.) Maybe this isn’t healthy. Maybe I should let a few things go.

But those things are all so interesting! Sure, sewing takes up a lot of time. Studying the sword eats up every other Saturday. Writing (fiction) makes my husband a widow during certain times of the year. If I dumped those, yeah, I’d be a lot less busy, but I’d also be bored.

Or worse: boring.

Naw, I’ll keep it up.

My challenge right now is that I’m not feeling well, so I don’t have the energy to do everything I want to do. So I feel anxious – the opposite of being on the road to recovery.

So tonight I’ll let myself watch that one TV show that I like. I’ll blog or something. I might sneak in a little work. Then I’ll sleep.

Because tomorrow promises to be another busy day.