after taking a class for three days where i was actually learning interesting things, i am reminded why there are days when i ache for being back in college.
i chose to leave stanford because i didn’t feel like i was cut out to be a grad student, and because i thought i needed to get away from school. and that decision has turned out well enough, and i feel privileged to have worked on the things i have in the past 16 months. but in retrospect, that is, if i had it to do again, i don’t think i would have left grad school.
i had to make my to-ph.d.-or-not-to-ph.d. decision in december of my first (and only) year of grad school, at the absolute low point of my time there. it was winter, so i was already marginally seasonally depressed; i also was burned out after the first quarter, had just gotten my worst grade ever in a class, and honestly felt i was too stupid for grad school. i remember sitting by a secluded fountain near the quad after taking my final exam in linear algebra, and calling home in tears because i felt so overwhelmed and so incredibly dumb. (as an aside, this seems to be a theme repeated among many of the grad students i know and have known, particularly the females.) and then i had to make a decision on whether to move to houston. so i decided to do it, and i decided to leave school. i decided that a ph.d. wasn’t that important to me after all.
by april or may, things had calmed down, and i was starting to enjoy grad school, and my new friends there. and if i’d been able to wait until then, i think i would have decided to stay.
the past three days have reminded me that i like learning. it’s not the classes at school that stress me out; it’s the hours. i love to learn new things. i just can’t stay up until all hours of the night to do them without starting to hate it, or without going a little crazy. that’s a really simplified way to characterize college for me, but it’s not that far off.
anyway. all that rambling basically to make the point that i do want to go back to school. sooner rather than later.
last night buzz, jess and i ran for 84 minutes; buzz and me at a slower pace than jess, so she kept looping behind and then catching up. must be nice to be a natural runner! anyway, it was a lot harder run than last week, despite the fact that we didn’t up the pace. i’m not sure what’s to blame for that, other than the facts that i was tired and the weather was warmer and more humid. i think next week we’ll going to stay at 85 minutes before increasing the time again.