Friday, August 21, 2020
The middle of the semester
The middle of the semester I took too many classes this semester. It was an accident. Usually five classes or four classes plus a UROP is a reasonable workload for me. Typically at that level, there are some stressful weeks, but generally I feel like Iâm on top of my work and can keep everything under control. This semester I loaded up on project classes. All three of my technical classes have semester-long group projects. My French class is also an uncharacteristic amount of work. So what ended up looking like an average semester is turning out to be really hectic. Iâve felt pretty overwhelmed lately. Iâve had several weeks where I have deadline after deadline and itâs hard to keep up. Last week was really busy. It was the week before spring vacation and professors were trying to get to a stopping point before everyone headed out for the break. There were a lot of preliminary project deadlines. I gave a presentation for the Multimodal User Interfaces class where we had to lay out a detailed game plan for our final project. I had a presentation for my French class on an influential author and philosopher of the négritude movement in Africa. I had a preliminary report of 2500 words for our semester-long design project for Computer Systems due on Friday. Iâm continually running experiments for my UROP to prepare for a conference Iâm presenting at in May. I had two other projects that were pushed back because of a snow day we had a couple weeks ago: a French essay and an implementation of a working virtual machine for my dynamic language engineering class, and I would have been a stressed wreck if those deadlines hadnât been postponed. The second part of the semester doesnât look like itâs going to be any easier. In fact, I got some unexpected good news yesterday from my UROP supervisorâ"I get to attend CHI (Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, an important human-computer interaction conference) at the end of April in Montreal! Iâm super excited!!! But Iâll be missing three days of school and Iâll have to pre- and postpone project work to clear the time. In general, my philosophy is not to miss out on once-in-a-lifetime opportunities in order to do more work. So Iâm making time to go, but it means that April will be pretty stressful. Over the course of my time at MIT, my relationship with work has definitely changed. I feel like this semester Iâve hit my limits in a new way. This was the first semester where Iâve felt like a load of mid-semester work impacted my mood. Iâve always been pretty good at balancing work and fun and at compartmentalizing the two. Now I feel like my school work is starting to negatively impact my social life. Even when Iâm supposed to be enjoying myself, frequently I have work in the back of my mind. I feel so task-focused that I canât enjoy the present. Iâve been snappy and impatient with my friends. A couple weeks ago, after making a big deadline, I was feeling pretty burnt out. I was at the same time lonely because I hadnât really hung out with friends in a week and reclusive because I didnât have the stamina to deal with people. Iâm hitting the point where I have so much work Iâm not enjoying myself any more, and thatâs new for me. Iâm sick of it. I donât think this is something thatâs unique to me. The middle of the semester is a perennially bad time for mental health at MIT. Stress starts setting in and people get more isolated as they dedicate more time to studying. I think I just havenât thought about this much before because right when I started at MIT, the novelty and the excitement and the euphoria of being in such an incredible place surrounded by such talented people made me feel invincible and kind of inured me to feeing burnt out. Then I went through a period that was kind of rough but I cut back on classes a little and fortunately my academics didnât suffer. Now I feel like Iâm getting to the point where Iâm finally getting used (after almost three years!) to just being an MIT studentâ"where I feel like Iâm in the groove of things but Iâve passed the high of being a new student, and Iâm starting to learn what I need to do to make this experience work for me. And Iâm realizing that at the equili brium, there is a limit to how much I can handle and still be happy. There is a real and very understandable temptation at MIT to take on more than you can chew. Part of it is that there are so many amazing opportunities present that you try to take advantage of them all. Another part is that there is definitely a culture here of overwork. Not sleeping enough/taking a zillion classes/being a Renaissance person who can handle a superhuman amount of commitments is glorified. And, for some people, itâs possibleâ"there are incredibly talented people here that can handle six classes and a half dozen extracurriculars. But most people canât, and its important to know your limits. I think sometimes the downside of overwork can be downplayed by students here, including me. Ultimately, itâs important to enjoy yourself, in order to stay motivated and to make life worth living. And itâs important to avoid burning out, because that can be really hard to recover from. I have a lot of things to look forward to this semester. Iâm currently on spring break in Canada with my best friend and weâre having a great time (blog and pictures to come!!!). Iâm going to the CHI conference in Montreal next month and the Vision Sciences Society conference in Florida in May to present the findings from my UROP. And Iâm really excited to be spending the summer in Seattle, where I plan on sewing and kayaking every evening and going hiking and camping with friends on weekends. There are so many exciting things in my future that Iâll be able to keep myself motivated through the semester, even if itâs more stressful than it could be. And next semester, Iâm definitely planning on taking it easy. Iâll take a lighter class load with more language classes and really focus on research. Post Tagged #mental health
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