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The Unlikely Benefits of Mindfulness
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information see disclosure at bottom of home page I have been practicing mindfulness and meditation for over a year and a half now. Ever since starting therapy, I have been on a mission to find out the inner works of my mind and develop skills to cope…
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Ways to Reduce Stress In Grad School
I want to touch on some simple ways to reduce stress in grad school. These are just immediate reducers and may not help for long term reduction. Those methods will need to be practiced separately. Stress affects all of us. Work, life, financial situations, friendships, you name it, it can cause stress. If you are…
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Some Days Will Be Hard
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information see disclosure at bottom of home page This blog post will not just be for graduate students, but for everyone. You will have very difficult days and you may struggle to find the strength to continue what you are doing. You may find yourself doing anything…
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Does GPA Matter in Grad School?
If you are just starting off grad school, this might be one of the questions that you may be asking yourself or others. I guarantee that you will either get a yes or no answer and it will be fairly split among your colleges. I have spent a ton of time in grad school and…
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It’s Ok to Take a Break
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information see disclosure at bottom of home page This post is to let you know that it is 100% OK to take a break from life’s responsibilities. Grad school is super demanding, and you will have a never ending list of things to do. Research, classwork, part-time…
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Helping Others Cope with Stress and Anxiety
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information see disclosure at bottom of home page I post a ton of content on how to improve your life, but I rarely post anything about helping others. In therapy, I was told that one method to reducing the anxiety that I was feeling was to help…
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Take Vacation in Grad School
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information see disclosure at bottom of home page I’m writing this because I am in desperate need of a vacation, and you probably are too. I am finishing my qualifying exams next week. The exam consisted of writing a proposal, defending the proposal, and taking 5 written…
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How to Make Your Workday Better
This post about how to make your workday better may contain affiliate links. For more information see disclosure at bottom of home page I spend a great amount of time in my office. This is quite a common thing to do for about 99% of the population, it seems. Office jobs are extremely common, and…
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How to Prepare for Your Qualifying Exam
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information see disclosure at bottom of home page The two words that cause so much anxiety for grad students, “qualifying exam”. This is also known as the entrance exam to candidacy. Basically, it’s an exam, created by a committee of professors, that tests your knowledge and skills.…
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Before Starting Grad School
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information see disclosure at bottom of home page You have probably seen quite a few of these articles where they tell you the # number of things that they wish they knew before (blank). This is going to be one of those posts but with information that…
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Things That make YOU Happy
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information see disclosure at bottom of home page There are many things in my life that make me happy and I want to share them with you. For this blog post, I want some audience participation. One of the best ways to brighten your day is to…
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Zoom to Classroom: The Great Transition During Covid
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information see disclosure at bottom of home page Every single news outlet has something saying how a different variant of Covid is spreading all over the world. You have some news channels saying that it’s “just like the flu” while others say that you are guaranteed to…
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Things Not to Tell an Anxious Person
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information see disclosure at bottom of home page Anxiety comes and goes in waves. Some days you feel amazing, you’re extremely motivated, and nothing seems to bother you at all. Other days, just answering an email causes your hands to get all sweaty, your heart races, and…
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How to Deal With Anxiety Caused by Covid: My Grad School Experience
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information see disclosure at bottom of home page We are in the worst pandemic that probably any of us will see in our lifetime. It has been a year and a half since states started to shut down and that’s so crazy to realize. Honestly, the beginning…
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Habits of a Successful Graduate Student
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information see disclosure at bottom of home page Surviving grad school can be a tricky thing to do. You will be faced with a significant amount of road blocks in the 2-8 years that you are in school for. Some of these roadblocks are easy to traverse…
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Oral Qualifying Presentation: Grad School Stress
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information see disclosure at bottom of home page Today, I had my proposal presentation. Forty minutes of presenting, followed by an hour and a half of questions from my committee members. I am honestly surprised that I even slept last night due to the crippling anxiety from…
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Top 7 Phone Apps That All Grad Students Need Right Now
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information see disclosure at bottom of home page We are a society that is obsessed with our phones. Everyday I walk across campus to my office and every single person I see is on their phone, doing something that seems to be the most important thing in…
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Moving During Grad School
This post about moving during grad school may contain affiliate links. For more information see disclosure at bottom of home page Moving during grad school can be annoying. I have had to move every single year that I have been in grad school. Most of the time it was not my choice but due to…
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Moving While in Grad School: The Art of Not Going Insane
I have had to move every single year that I have been in grad school. Most of the time it was not my choice but due to some outside factor. This year is the exact same thing. Yesterday was my final day at one of the coolest places that I have lived. To say that…
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Am I Doing the Right Thing? Feeling Lost in Grad School
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information see disclosure at bottom of home page Hey everyone! Today’s post is going to be a little shorter than usual, I think. I just wanted to write about something that I have been dealing with a lot and one method to help calm my overactive mind.…
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YouTube Channels You Need to Subscribe to if You are a Grad Student
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information see disclosure at bottom of home page I am quite the visual learner. Reading things and then learning from that is quite difficult for me and sometimes impossible. I need a visual to get me going in the right direction. Grad school has a ton of…
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How to Overcome Loneliness in Grad School
This post about loneliness in grad school may contain affiliate links. For more information see disclosure at bottom of home page I find it funny how loneliness is such a major contributor to my anxiety, yet, I haven’t really made a post about it. I have talked about it a bit, but haven’t given it…
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Loneliness in Grad School: What I Do to Combat it
I find it funny how loneliness is such a major contributor to my anxiety, yet, I haven’t really made a post about it. I have talked about it a bit but haven’t given it its own blog post. So, let’s dive deeper into loneliness while you are in grad school, especially in a doctorate program.…
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Learn to Say “NO” In Grad School
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information see disclosure at bottom of home page You will have so many opportunities in grad school as well as life and you need to pick and choose what you do. One of the biggest lessons that I learned in the five years that I have been…
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Enjoying Family Time
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information see disclosure at bottom of home page I just want to show my appreciation for my family. My family includes my parents, brother, girlfriend as well as my brother’s girlfriend and daughter. As we get older, my brother and I, we have started to go off on our…
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Be Kind, Be Calm
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information see disclosure at bottom of home page Ahhh, The Florida Keys. So amazing, so majestic, so alcoholic, so….sunny. It is quite sunny and hot today but it is amazing. It’s amazing how different it is down here than 400 mile north, where I am located. Anyway, todays fishing…
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Learn to Take Time For Yourself
I am currently undergoing a very busy and stressful time in my life. I have been running around all over the state of Florida, writing and editing, blogging, moving, and getting ready to have my qualifying exams in 3 weeks. I AM TIRED. I don’t want to complain though because I was expecting this. I…
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Congratulations, You Made a Mistake
Do you like making mistakes? I sure don’t, but we all do. We all make mistakes in our lives and that makes us human, that makes us amazing! I wrote about the two bad bricks in the wall. The monk cared so much about the mistakes he made that he forgot all of the good…
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Vacations When Doing A Doctorate
It’s the best time of the year, VACATION!!!! Actually it’s one of the two best times of the years since I take two vacations each year. This year, my family and I will be going to the beautiful Florida Keys. We mostly fish, snorkel, drink heavily, and hang around, spending quality time with each other.…
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A Story to Help: Perfectionism
I wanted to share with everyone a story by the world famous, Ajahn Brahm. It has helped significantly because it changed my perception of many of the thoughts I have on a daily basis. I, like many grad students, suffer from perfectionism. This has caused me to not finish projects on time, get rejected from…
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How Adopting a Pet Has Affected My Mental Health
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information see disclosure at bottom of home page I woke up this morning at 4 am. to the sound of my cat, Sirius, meowing because he was scared and probably pretty hungry. We are currently experiencing a tropical storm and he does not like the noise of the wind.…
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What to Do When Everything Goes Wrong: Grad School
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information see disclosure at bottom of home page You will have some pretty bad days in grad school. Experiments will go wrong, you failed an exam, you forgot to pack a lunch, you get the point. I have had my fair share of extremely bad days, where everything seemed…
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My Favorite Things on Days I Feel Sad
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information see disclosure at bottom of home page Sadness comes and goes throughout life. Somedays you wake up and are just sad for no reason. Other times, something just happens to put you in a bad mood. Lately, I’ve been feeling a little down and I think it is…
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Let’s Talk about Anxiety Triggers
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information see disclosure at bottom of home page Grad school can be one of the best few years of your life. It can also be one of the worst times. For me, I can definitely tell you that I have had a wonderful time because I have learned to…
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Best YouTube Channels for Grad Students
Grad school can feel incredibly isolating, especially in a doctorate program where you spend most of your time working alone on research that few people truly understand. Even when you love what you do, the pressure and loneliness can become overwhelming. In this post I share the resources and YouTube channels that helped me feel…