This Semester is Difficult

I feel like everything that came before this semester was simply the warm-ups. I used to have fun with school and I thought being a graduate student was the bee's knees. But, now I feel like things have gotten more serious and the stakes are higher. I'm teaching this semester, writing my comps and dissertation proposal, assisting a faculty member with a research project, and working 16 hours a week as a GA. The GA itself is rather serious, too. This GA could constitute an actual job if they weren't getting a GA to do the work. It reminds me somewhat of my time as project coordinator. I start with a literature review, identify key elements to include in analyses, evaluate the most appropriate statistical procedures to use, and analyze data, among other things. This is a lot of responsibility, coupled with a lot of freedom to choose my own direction.

Plus, teaching is incredibly difficult for me. I am a novice, but I keep forgetting to allow myself the novice status. I think that I should naturally be good at teaching, or that I should be able to figure out this whole teaching thing with aplomb. But, no...I'm just happy I haven't crashed and burned completely yet. I've been reading a book about being a first-year faculty member and have discovered that first-year faculty tend not to understand where students are having difficulty with the material, and tend not to be able to utilize efficient strategies to address student's difficulty with the material. Teaching is a craft; it is a skill. And as such, it can be honed and developed with practice. Therefore, I don't have to be good at it. But, I can become good at it. Gee, I hope this little pep talk is working.

In addition, I have a tendency to put writing on the back burner. If I didn't have such a lack of confidence with writing, I'd probably have about two publications by now. But, no...up till now, I have been unable to teach, take classes, do research, and write all in the same semester. Now I must do all of that and more. I must write both of my comps projects, the first three chapters of my dissertation, and resubmit a grant proposal. But, I happen to also be teaching, researching, and working at the same time! How can I do it? How can I cope? Well, let's see...the coping strategy I usually rely on, denial, is not actually conducive to accomplishing my goals. If I ignore my writing demands and push them to the back burner, I'll never graduate.

No wonder first-year faculty members are so stressed out. I'm still a graduate student. I don't have to worry about tenure, advising loads of students, participating in committees, teaching 2 or 3 classes, applying for grants, publishing articles, and establishing a research program. But, teaching one class, applying for one fellowship, researching, and writing three major papers is plenty enough for me to feel stressed!