In some way, I am joking about grad school making me cry, but its also true. It made me cry tonight. I will explain.
This week has been a rough and emotional one. My grandmother’s funeral was on Monday and it was rough. Obviously, I am still grieving and not over it. The past 3 days, I have been up and down dealing with a lot of financial and legal matters that related to my grandmother’s death. Its been a lot of patience and explaining to people. Also, it doesn’t help meeting someone who sends their condolences or having to tell someone she died. I am a very emotional person, doing this at least once a day. On top of that, my dog is sick.
This week was the first official week of grad school. Technically it started last week, but there were only 2 days of class. This week however, was a full one. And I am very behind. I am in the Caribbean right now, so with classes being in person, I am not able to attend. I have let my professors know of my situation since its not something I chose to be in. [no one wants to lose a love one 2 weeks before class]. Not only am I in a whole other country, this isn’t my school productive setting. Its more of a vacation mindset which is soo bad. Plus, the only place I can get something done is in the balcony since its not hot, but its nearly impossible with people passing by, cars passing (yay to living near the road), my family bother me every 5 minutes and my dog barking at others. I am lucky to get through 2 minutes into the material before being distracted. And its on me to play catch up.
Obviously this week’s been rough, but tonight was a bit more because I had something due for one of my classes. First off, I didn’t know what to do because the instructions were not clear and the professor never replied to my email. Understandable people are busy and have lives. Now this class is about analyzing data using R, a programming language. I love being challenged but coding can be very frustrating. Even though the I followed his notes and tried to google my questions, my code did not work the way it was supposed to. And I have no idea how to make it work and its due tonight. Its worth 1% of my grade and I’m not sure if that 1% is for effort or the actual answer. Its not something I left to the last minute since it was assigned yesterday and due a little over 24 hours later.
No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t get it to work. And I have had a really shitty day and week and I miss my grandmother. So I ended up balling my eyes out and feeling very alone because no one really understands what I am going through. Part of it was grad school and other part was missing my grandmother.
I think I am going to turn this into a series, talking about what grad school is like as a form of therapy, after having lost my grandmother and as an econ masters student. Who knows, maybe I am not alone out there.
Arristella 