Grad Life: Intro

For the past several years, I’ve looked at myself as a recovering grad student. While I am a grad student again, the situation is quite different from my life of 1998-2000, and I don’t think that any further damage is being done by my half-time status.

Somehow, during those years, I lost parts of myself that I really liked and respected. By 2000 I had become more relcusive and shy that I was when I started grad school. I also found that while I was a strong student, in my personal life I became less independent — I no longer enjoyed doing anything outside my apartment by myself. I wouldn’t just go off to a play I wanted to see even if I couldn’t find a friend to go with me. I wouldn’t try a new restaurant if it meant I had to go alone. Pre-1998 I would do that.

Part of my recovery process has been to document both the good and the bad parts, and hopefully in the process I’ll recover part of what I feel I lost during those years. So far I’ve been doing this in a paper journal, but I’ve been lax about writing, so I hope that doing it here will encourage me to write more and more often.