Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Is this all my own fault?

Tonight I had someone whose opinion I greatly value insinuate that my problems acclimating to life at Wayne State are primarily of my own creation. "You're just having a brain fart over there for some reason," was the approximate statement that I recall. Initially I totally discounted this idea, but as I drove home I kept thinking about it and it really started to eat at me. Could this be true? Is he right? If so, what do I do now?? He says I have the intellectual ability to get through a PhD there. I have finally (mostly) come to believe that this is true. Paradoxically, despite my two failed cell biology tests - which are highly uncharacteristic of me - the difficultly of the courses is not the problem. Not at all. I could learn the hell out of the material if I wanted to. That's the key phrase - if I wanted to. The problem is that I don't. I don't have to be the best in my classes; I don't even really have to be good in my classes. All I have to do in order to move on is pass. But why should I want to move on when I hate what I'm doing? My passion for bench work is gone. I'm questioning everything I thought I wanted to do with my life now. I don't have any program cohorts to study with or confide in or complain to. The graduate coordinator is awkward as all get out, so talking to him did not help. I don't belong to a lab either. I'm in a no man's land that is not of my own creation. What do I do? How do you socialize if there is no one to socialize with? How am I supposed to deal with being thrown into a completely different culture with people I only tangentially interact with and have no classes or labs or anything in common with? I deal by going back to what I know and the people who have been my surrogate family for the last several years - at Eastern. But I'm beginning to feel like I don't belong there either. Because really, I don't. I should be bonding with my new peers at Wayne, but I'm not. How can I? Is this all my own fault? Is it simply circumstance? Should I have applied to U of Toledo? Does any of it really matter now?

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