Tag Archives: kindness

Tips on Giving Presentations in Grad School

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Some say that the scariest thing you will do in life is give grad school presentations. Something about standing in front of a ton of people and talking scares the pants off of most people. I remember talking to a few of my classmates and they brought up that Speech class was one of the only classes they needed to do to graduate, and they were putting it off until the last semester because it scared them. I, fortunately, love giving presentations. i love talking about a subject that I am passionate about to a ton of people. Yes, I feel nervous and scared, but the feeling after giving the presentation is totally worth it. You feel a weight lifted off of your shoulders, and you are almost weightless. Such an amazing feeling.

You can do it

I have always been very comfortable standing in front of people and talking to them. Ironically, the most anxiety inducing thing that I refuse to do is talk to someone I don’t know on the phone. This is a common fear that I am slowly working on.

When you are in grad school, you will give a ton of presentations. Some on subjects you like, others on things you are not familiar with or just don’t care about. The biggest presentation and probably the scariest one, other than the qualifying exam presentation, is your thesis defense. This is the culmination of all of your hard work given as a presentation to people that are the best in their fields. It’s tough, but most people pass so your chances of graduating are fairly high.

Here are some ways to get more comfortable giving presentations in grad school

I get it, giving presentations are hard, but they don’t need to be with some tips and tricks. I use these tips every time that I present.

1) Create a PowerPoint presentation and practice it way beforehand.

This means creating it days before, possible weeks before, and just getting so familiar with the slides that you don’t even need to look at them to know what it includes. You are most likely going to be presenting a PowerPoint anyway. Be proactive and make sure the presentation is completed days before and practice, practice, practice!

2) Write notes.

When you aren’t quite in the “groove” while presenting, take a look at your notes. They will help you stay on track and make you very organized and not all over the place. Write key notes about each slide either on the slide (presenter mode) or on a note pad. This will help you stay on track, especially when you lose your train of thought.

3) Make eye contact, if you are comfortable, if not, look at someone’s forehead.

I like making eye contact to make sure my audience did not fall asleep. Other people prefer looking at the back of the room or someone’s forehead. That’s fine too as long as you are scanning the room. Do not just stare at one person the entire time. That’s just weird. This also gives you a sense of what’s working and what’s not. If everyone is asleep, this gives you a great opportunity to talk louder lol. Also, getting used to making eye contact will help you with presentations later on. You’ll get feedback from your audience immediately indicating if something is working or not.

4) Bring humor into the presentation.

Tell a joke or bring up something funny. It will keep the audience engaged and make you more comfortable. No one wants to watch a boring presentation anyway. Have fun with it. Add a few jokes here and there to bring excitement and joy to your presentation. This will help the audience stay awake and give you way more confidence so you can finish the presentation strong.

5) Breathe!

Deep breathes beforehand will calm your nerves and help you not sound nervous. Anxiety can creep up on you very quickly. Try a few breathing exercises such as the ones mentioned (here).

6) Practice in front of friends first.

You will get used to presenting in front of multiple people and you will feel comfortable. Use the feeling of comfort and try and feel that before giving the actual presentation. Get some of your friends to come over before your presentation. Buy some pizza r make them food and give your presentation. Listen to their feedback and see if they liked it or not. Your friends will be honest with you too.

7) Bring water.

When you are talking, you may lose track of where you are, on the PowerPoint as well as your notes. This is a good time to drink water because you can stall for time to get back into your groove. Also, it is good to stay hydrated.

8) Lastly, have fun with it.

It is a scary moment but a vital one. If you don’t have fun, you’ll associate all presentations with bad experiences. You do not want to do this. Have fun, learn a lot, and just be yourself. The presentation will be amazing because you are amazing. Having a fun time giving presentations will train your body to not be afraid of it anymore. You will be conditioned to feel excitement and happiness the next time you give a presentation. This will make your qualifying exam and defense so much better.

Final Thoughts

Giving presentations in grad school does not have to be super hard. In fact, it can be a great and fun time. Because you are in grad school, you will give a ton of presentations. At first, you may feel a bit uncomfortable, but over time, you will definitely be comfortable in front of the class.

I hope this list helps a bit. My qualifying presentation is next week so I will be using my own advice fairly soon. I hope you have an amazing day/week/month and I will see you guys in the next blog.

Am I Doing the Right Thing? Feeling Lost in Grad School

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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. Grad school has me lost. I honestly don’t know what I want to do after graduation, and you know what? I am totally alright with that. I realized that life is constantly changing and it is totally ok not to know what to do next.

One thing that really has me a bit concerned, well not now, but at first, was seeing all of my friends getting jobs, making good money. I make enough to feed my cat, and that’s good enough for me lol. But I did notice that they weren’t that happy. I was quite perplexed until i heard about a little activity you can do to kind of see if maybe you are doing what you love, or close to it. The exercise is imagining you are talking with your 10 year old self. Describe what you do for a living to them. See how your 10 year old self reacts. Are they proud of you? Are they concerned? Do they look angry? Just try and picture this.

I did this exercise and realized that what I do now, I truly believe 10 year old Ben would have thought was the coolest thing ever. I do science, math, workout, all of that. 10 year old Ben loved all of those things. This really helped me realize that I am not lost at all, I am right where I need to be at the this time in my life.

Life is constantly changing and so are you. You will find your place eventually, then one day, what you thought was the right thing for you will change and you’ll find another road to take. I find this to be the most exciting part of life, the change. I wonder what 40 year old Ben will be like!

**If you or someone you know is suffering from mental health issues, I highly recommend that they seek help. Online-Therapy.com or TalkSpace.com are great ways to reach out to a licensed therapist and get the help needed. Therapy has 100% helped me and I know it can help you.

YouTube Channels You Need to Subscribe to if You are a Grad Student

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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 very difficult concepts to learn that some find difficult to grasp just from reading it. Math, Chemistry, Physics, you name it, it’s just downright difficult o read about it and then go off and do it. YouTube has been my best friend when trying to learn these concepts. I use it daily to figure out problems as well as just entertainment, of course. It is also very useful to give you motivation during the grad school journey as well as teach you mindfulness (I have to bring this in since my site is about mindfulness ;)). Here are a few channels that I subscribed too that are extremely helpful when going through grad school.

1.R3ciprocity

So R3ciprocity was created by Dr. Dave Maslach to help students with peer review and grammar. It is an awesome website and I will definitely use it for my dissertation. His channel is so uplifting and he really cares about grad students and getting them through the academic process. Go check out his website and YouTube channel.

2. Andy Stapleton’s Channel

He has amazing advice for grad students and people pursuing a PhD. He has a ton of extremely helpful videos that tackle literally every aspect of grad school that you can think of. He also tells it how it is and does not sugarcoat anything. He’s also quite funny.

3. Therapy in a Nutshell

Emma McAdam is a licensed marriage and family therapist that really knows her stuff. If you are suffereing from anxiety, depression, just sadness, or if you are even happy and ready to take on the day, she has helpful advice for you. I tend to listen to her talk on my long drives to Miami from Gainesville. She gives great advice to cope with your feelings and quite a few tips that I have blogged about come from her videos.

4. Thoughty2

This channel is awesome and super entertaining. Thoughty2 talks about weird and quirky things that have happened throughout history and goes into quite a lot of detail. He is super funny and the videos are great to watch on your lunch break. There’s a ton of information that he brings up so it is a good learning experience as well.

5. Simon Clark’s Channel

Simon was a PhD student when he started vlogging. He has since graduated and is off teaching the world about his expertise in climate science. I found his videos extremely helpful when starting my PhD. He had very similar problems that I had/have and went about explaining how he overcame those obstacles. He’s a great individual and his videos are super high quality.

These are some channels that I truly believe will help you a bit more during grad school. They have helped me all the way until now and I know I will continue watching them even after my doctorate is over. Let me know in the comments some channels that you are subscribed to that are worth checking out.

Loneliness in Grad School: What I Do to Combat it

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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.

Loneliness, to me, is one of the worst feelings that I get. When I feel lonely, things just appear off to me. Colors seem to change and get duller, happiness tends to go away, and an overall sense of sadness kicks in. It is very close to what my depression felt like but not nearly as bad. It is still extremely uncomforting. I used to talk to my therapist all of the time about how lonely I felt, even when I was around a ton of friends. I felt isolated from the world and there wasn’t much I could do to prevent this feeling. My therapist would always reassure me and tell me that this is a common occurrence among grad students. I wanted to know why and I eventually found out.

One obvious reason you will feel lonely is because you will be by yourself quite often. You will be in the lab by yourself, writing by yourself, and possibly even going home to be by yourself. I know many grad students that live alone so they often really feel lonely. Another reason you will experience loneliness is because the project that you are working on is not well known. Maybe it is, but more than likely people will not know what you are doing or why you are doing this. It is hard to talk about it with people because they just won’t understand what you are doing and don’t really relate to the very different struggles that grad students face. I find it extremely isolating to bring up grad school with my family because they just don’t know what questions to ask or give advice, since they have not been in my position before.

There is hope! You don’t have to feel lonely if you learn to love the time you spend by yourself. I tell myself all of the time that i might be alone, but I am not lonely. I have to truly believe it though and I have gotten to the point where I definitely am believing it. Being alone can be extremely comforting if you look at it as a positive experience. Next time you are alone, doing experiments or just in your office, say out loud (yes out loud), “Sweet, I am alone. That means I won’t have distractions and will get my work done” or “Being alone is awesome because I don’t have to deal with nasty people”. Of course you can come up with whatever you want but make sure it is positive. I often say “Great, I am alone. Now I can watch a movie without being interrupted”. I watch movies every other Tuesday, while in the lab. If someone else was here, I couldn’t enjoy that time.

Make friends with other grad students. I know this is a bit of a difficult one but you just need to do it. other grad students will know exactly what you are going through. They often feel the same way and a friend will help you feel less lonely. It will also help them feel less lonely. I have made several grad school friends and they all have moments of loneliness. I get texts from them all of the time when they are alone, just reaching out to feel less lonely. It is comforting to know you have someone to talk to.

Use the time that you have by yourself to mediate and find inner peace. Being alone is a great time to just “be”. Be in the moment, be in solitude, and really dig deep into who you are. You can find out a ton about yourself that you didn’t even know. This advice is scary because often people what to distract themselves from themselves. This will lead to problems later on. Meditation can be a great experience to reduce loneliness because you won’t be alone, you’ll be with the best person in your life, yourself. I have used meditation to figure out underlying issues in my life and am a better person for it.

I hope you don’t experience loneliness while you’re in grad school, but if you do, I hope you find this helpful. Grad school is long but it can be fun. You just need to put in some work and you can create an awesome experience for yourself.

How to Overcome Loneliness in Grad School

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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. Loneliness in grad school affects everyone. You will definitely feel it the longer you are in the program mostly because of the time you spend by yourself. Just know that it won’t last and things will get better. So, let’s dive deeper into loneliness while you are in grad school, especially in a doctorate program.

How Loneliness Affects Me

Loneliness, to me, is one of the worst feelings that I get. When I feel lonely, things just appear off to me. Colors seem to change and get duller, happiness tends to go away, and an overall sense of sadness kicks in. It is very close to what my depression felt like but not nearly as bad. It is still extremely uncomforting. I used to talk to my therapist all of the time about how lonely I felt, even when I was around a ton of friends. I felt isolated from the world and there wasn’t much I could do to prevent this feeling. My therapist would always reassure me and tell me that this is a common occurrence among grad students. I wanted to know why and I eventually found out.

loneliness in grad school

Why You May Feel Loneliness in Grad School

One obvious reason you will feel lonely is because you will be by yourself quite often. You will be in the lab by yourself, writing by yourself, and possibly even going home to be by yourself. I know many grad students that live alone so they often really feel lonely. Another reason you will experience loneliness is because the project that you are working on is not well known. Maybe it is, but more than likely people will not know what you are doing or why you are doing this. It is hard to talk about it with people because they just won’t understand what you are doing and don’t really relate to the very different struggles that grad students face. I find it extremely isolating to bring up grad school with my family because they just don’t know what questions to ask or give advice, since they have not been in my position before.

Do Not Fret, There is Hope

There is hope! You don’t have to feel lonely if you learn to love the time you spend by yourself. I tell myself all of the time that I might be alone, but I am not lonely. I have to truly believe it though and I have gotten to the point where I definitely am believing it. Being alone can be extremely comforting if you look at it as a positive experience. Next time you are alone, doing experiments or just in your office, say out loud (yes out loud), “Sweet, I am alone. That means I won’t have distractions and will get my work done” or “Being alone is awesome because I don’t have to deal with nasty people”. Of course you can come up with whatever you want but make sure it is positive. I often say “Great, I am alone. Now I can watch a movie without being interrupted”. I watch movies every other Tuesday, while in the lab. If someone else was here, I couldn’t enjoy that time.

loneliness in grad school

Make friends

Make friends with other grad students. I know this is a bit of a difficult one but you just need to do it. Other grad students will know exactly what you are going through. They often feel the same way and a friend will help you feel less lonely. It will also help them feel less lonely. I have made several grad school friends and they all have moments of loneliness. I get texts from them all of the time when they are alone, just reaching out to feel less lonely. It is comforting to know you have someone to talk to.

loneliness in grad school

Get Yourself a Pet

My cat, Sirius, is one of the best decision I ever made. I felt extremely lonely the first 2 years of grad school and fostering him made those feelings really go away. The weekends that we had to take him to the fostering event were some of the loneliest days that I have had. After adopting him, I was never fully alone. Sirius loves to come annoy me whenever he has the chance, and I am 100% Ok with that. I think getting a pet in grad school was one of the best decisions that I ever made. If you want to read more about it, check out my blogs about pets in grad school. Both of the links are here and here.

loneliness in grad school

Find Inner Peace

Use the time that you have by yourself to mediate and find inner peace. Being alone is a great time to just “be”. Be in the moment, be in solitude, and really dig deep into who you are. You can find out a ton about yourself that you didn’t even know. This advice is scary because often people what to distract themselves from themselves. This will lead to problems later on. Meditation can be a great experience to reduce loneliness because you won’t be alone, you’ll be with the best person in your life, yourself. I have used meditation to figure out underlying issues in my life and am a better person for it.

loneliness in grad school

Lastly, Know That “This Too Shall Pass”

The feeling of loneliness will not last forever. For the first year of grad school, you may feel very lonely and isolated but that feeling will subside. I promise you this. After a while, you may even come to love being alone. Just understand that your feelings will pass. It is not forever. Just make sure that you learn something from it. Learn what makes you feel lonely and what causes these feelings to pop up. Just always know that the feelings are not permanent.

Final Thought

I hope you don’t experience loneliness while you’re in grad school, but if you do, I hope you find this helpful. Grad school is long but it can be fun. You just need to put in some work and you can create an awesome experience for yourself.

Best Purchases for Your Cat

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Making decisions in the moment can be super stressful and down right anxiety inducing. One of the “spur-of-the-moment” things that I did 2 years ago was adopt my cat, Sirius. It amazes me how, at the time, well a little bit after the moment I adopted him, I thought it was a bad idea. I let fear and anxiety take over and really cause me to rethink my choice. If I could, I’d go back in time and slap my past self and tell him that getting a pet was the best thing you’ve done in grad school. Getting a cat is a big responsibility, but ultimately, an amazing choice. I would do anything for my little guy. Anyway, if you just so happened to get yourself a kitty in college, here are some cat toys and things that I bought him that make him happy, my furniture happy (no claw marks), as well as me happy, along with my budget. Here are the best toys for your cat.

Cat Toys! and other things

1. A SmartCat Pioneer Pet Scratch Post

Best investment ever! It will set you back about $50 but it’s worth 1000x’s that amount. Sirius’s claw’s are sharp and my arms, legs, chest, and face can tell you that lol. This scratch post keeps him from clawing at furniture in my house, which is a major plus since the furniture belongs to my roommates. I put this first because this is most important.

2. A cat shelf

I specifically got Sirius this one. He absolutely loves climbing onto these and hiding behind the plants. It also acts as a scratch board so he doesn’t scratch anything else. You can see that scratch boards are very important.\

3. Plush Flopping Fish

Oh man, this is a good one. It is rechargeable and he goes crazy for this toy, mostly because there is catnip in it. Sirius will spend most of the day cuddling it on his hammock too. I have some great pictures. Here’s one.

Image

4. Cat Hammock

I purrrrsonally got Sirius this one, though I believe any hammock would be just fine. He only sleeps in the hammock. I put a blanket on it to keep him warm and that’s all he needs. The window hammocks are the best because he gets to look out and see the birds and people outside from the comfort of a bed. A win-win.

5. Bird feeder

I got him a suction cup bird feeder that keeps him entertained for hours. I am usually at the office for a good amount of time so I want him entertained until I can come home and play with him. This is the perfect thing to get and you also attract a ton of cool birds as well as squirrels.

6. Cat Spiral Springs

I buy Sirius super fancy toys like feather toys, roller coaster circuit toys, as well as a cat tunnel, but his favorite toy is just a simple spring that he can hit around. Honestly, just get your cat a wire tie and they are good to go for the day. Super simple and effective.

These are things that I feel cat owners should buy. They have worked pretty well for me and my cat loves them. If you are a grad student and work long hours, I would strongly suggest getting something like what I have shown above to keep your furry friend happy until you get home. Let me know what you buy your cat to keep them entertained and happy.

Learn to Say “NO” In Grad School

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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 a graduate student is when to say “no”.

As I said, you will have soooooo many opportunities in graduate school. These will be going to conferences, writing papers, doing extra experiments, taking up part time jobs, and maybe even teaching a class. There are probably way more opportunities for you as well. These are just a few that I was offered.

The main reason you are in grad school is to learn, to become a scholar and researcher. This needs to be your main focus. I have a hard time saying no to many things that cross my path. I have a part-time job even though it may cause me to get behind on many projects. I blog, though blogging is actually extremely helpful and allows me to express myself as well as gain valuable writing experience. So blogging is a good thing that I took up. I have said yes to doing extra papers, more experiments, and even peer reviewing a whole dissertation because I could not say “no”.

Picking the right things to say yes to is almost a skill in itself. We often say yes to too much because we fear missing out on opportunities. This will cause us to take on way too many responsibilities all at once and will eventually lead to burn out. Now if you have not experienced burnout then I envy you. I experienced it pretty badly in undergrad and, for a few months, just getting out of bed was difficult. My grades suffered, my mental health and physical health suffered, and I was tired all of the time. Luckily, I was able to get back into things and continue on, but I can definitely see how people leave college after burn out.

Grad school has too many added stresses which makes this way more common. By taking on too much, you risk burn out a lot sooner.

Saying no to some things will cause your mental health to strengthen, you’ll have more energy, and you will finish on time. I wish I could go back and say “no” more often to my younger self, but if I said no, I probably wouldn’t be here, writing about it, helping others learn what I have learned. I suppose it wasn’t so bad after all, for you, the reader, not me lol. I will definitely learn when to say “yes” and when to say “no”. I am quite certain that my overall health will improve and I believe that I will finish my doctorate on time.

There is always one thing to say yes to, in my opinion, and that is anything that will help you strengthen your mental state. Say yes to therapy. Say yes to exercise. Say yes to eating right. At the same time, say no to those things that will stress you out so much that you burn out. Life is too short to be so stressed out.

I hope you guys have a great night. I will see you in the next blog.

How I Prevent Panic Attacks

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One thing that I, unfortunately, deal with are panic attacks. I can remember my very first one which caused a whole progression of events that led to about 6 months of depression. That panic attack was brought on by pre-workout and way too much stress.

I get panic attacks every so often but they are no where close to the first one I had or the other few that I had prior to therapy. Let me describe to you what it felt like. People often say that it is like having a heart attack. This is 100% true. My heart was racing, I was sweating, my thoughts were going all over the place, and I had the worst anxiety of my life. I honestly thought I was dying, but at the time, I was actually learning a valuable less, how to get help and get healthy. Of course I did was not thinking about that at the moment I was having the attack. In fact, I was having thoughts that were creating more anxiety such as “Will this continue throughout my life? Will I ever recover? Why is this happening to me? What did I do to deserve this?” All thoughts that really didn’t help.

I eventually learned that I needed help and that was one of the best things that I ever for my mental health. If you are like me, you do not want to have panic attacks. This is why I want to share a few ways that I reduce the attacks so I don’t have them nearly as bad.

  1. See a therapist

I want to start off with this because taking advice from a stranger online is not the best way to help with the anxiety you are feeling in life. See someone that is a professional and really dive deeper into why this is happening and what can be done to stop it.

2. Give your panic attack a name

Name your panic attack. Tell it that you don’t want it around and that it is not welcomed. This helps for me, though not as much as other methods that I will discuss.

3. Go outside and just breathe.

This is mindfulness and it will help. What I do is put my phone and electronics as far away from me and I go outside and just take a ton of slow, deep breathes. I will immediately feel a reduction in panic.

4. Do Not Try And Control It

By trying to control the panic attack, you can actually make it worse. I did not know this until my therapist as well as many other therapists from books and videos told me this as well. They say that your body will adjust to what is going on and make it seem less bad the next time you have a panic attack. By trying to control it, you can make the next panic attack stronger and you do not want that,

5. If you can, just go on a jog

A quick run or jog usually tires me out. The racing thoughts do go away when you are running so it helps for the moment. It will also tire yourself out so the panic attack may go away quickly. If you have trouble breathing though, do not do this. Some panic attacks will make you hyperventilate so this method of reduction is not advised

6. Go on YouTube and play lofi music. Then think of a place that you feel secure and comfortable.

Picture your “happy place” and stay there for a bit in your mind. Take a moment to really calm down in your happy place. Mine is in a boat, in the Keys. I go there often.

7. Tell yourself “This, too, shall pass”

It is a good mantra to tell yourself. This moment will pass and you will get through it. You will be a stronger person because of it and you will be ready when or if it happens again.

I use these methods when I have panic attacks. Honestly, they aren’t even panic attacks anymore, more like a bit of heightened anxiety that I have learned to cope with. I promise you that you can get through whatever you re going through, but you need a bit of time. Nothing is wrong with you, we all experience this, but sometimes people experience worse panic attacks than others. You can get through this and anything else that is thrown your way. I hope these methods reduce your panic attacks and I hope you get the help you deserve. Have an amazing day.

**If you or someone you know is suffering from mental health issues, I highly recommend that they seek help. Online-Therapy.com or TalkSpace.com are great ways to reach out to a licensed therapist and get the help needed. Therapy has 100% helped me and I know it can help you.

Massage Gun Helped My Mental State

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Ok, I want to dedicate this blog post to the massage gun that I recently bought from amazon. Now, I am not one to just write a post for one particular product unless it has significantly helped me in some way.

I bought a massage gun about 2 months ago that I keep in my office. This is the one I bought and it has helped with my mental state.

So at first I bought it because I am terrible when it comes to stretching. I am constantly sore from workouts and needed a drastic change. There was also a discount, which I wish I had for you guys, because these can be awfully expensive :(. I think the discount was like 80% off too so I had to take full advantage of it. Anyway, I received the massage gun and immediately tried it out. It worked like a charm. I am not here to just tell you that a massage gun works on loosening muscle fibers. No, I want to tell you how the massage gun has helped with my mental state.

Let’s Get Into It

I want to start off by saying that I don’t know what is happening that is making me feel better, but it is working. So apparently I keep my stress in my shoulders. You can tell by the knots that are there. I was about to do a back workout one day when I decided to try the massage gun out and see if I could release those knots and activate my muscles. It did alot more than that. I worked my shoulders and lower back which caused me to relax more than I have in a very long time. In fact, I was so relaxed that I put off the gym until that night.

Before meditation

I tried the same thing the next day, this time before I did some meditation. Holy Cow! I immediately went into a pretty deep meditation and almost didn’t come out of it (lol). The massage gun is definitely causing an increase in serotonin or something but it has allowed me to relax, especially now when I am pretty stressed out. I will have to read some peer reviewed journal articles on massages and reduction in anxiety. I am sure that there is a reason that this is occuring.

For those that want to try something new for your anxiety, I would suggest investing in one of these massage guns. Even if it doesn’t get rid of your anxiety, at least your muscles will be relaxed and I am sure no one will complain about a nice massage.

If you happen to know why my anxiety goes away, let me know in the comments. I would prefer to know the actual mechanisms that come into play and how that affects the body. Thanks guys!

How a Massage Gun Helps With My Mental State

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Ok, I want to dedicate this blog post to the massage gun that I recently bought from amazon. Now, I am not one to just write a post for one particular product unless it has significantly helped me in some way.

I bought a massage gun about 2 months ago that I keep in my office. This is the one I bought.

So at first I bought it because I am terrible when it comes to stretching. I am constantly sore from workouts and needed a drastic change. I also had a discount, which I wish I had for you guys, because these can be awfully expensive :(. I think the discount was like 80% off too so I had to take full advantage of it. Anyway, I received the massage gun and immediately tried it out. It worked like a charm. I am not here to just tell you that a massage gun works on loosening muscle fibers. No, I want to tell you how it has helped with my mental state.

I want to start off by saying that I don’t know what is happening that is making me feel better, but it is working. So apparently I keep my stress in my shoulders. You can tell by the knots that are there. I was about to do a back workout one day when I decided to try the massage gun out and see if I could release those knots and activate my muscles. It did alot more than that. I worked my shoulders and lower back which caused me to relax more than I have in a very long time. In fact, I was so relaxed that I put off the gym until that night.

I tried the same thing the next day, this time before I did some meditation. Holy Cow! I immediately went into a pretty deep meditation and almost didn’t come out of it (lol). The massage gun is definitely causing an increase in serotonin or something but it has allowed me to relax, especially now when I am pretty stressed out. I will have to read some peer reviewed journal articles on massages and reduction in anxiety. I am sure that there is a reason that this is occuring.

For those that want to try something new for your anxiety, I would suggest investing in one of these massage guns. Even if it doesn’t get rid of your anxiety, at least your muscles will be relaxed and I am sure no one will complain about a nice massage.

If you happen to know why my anxiety goes away, let me know in the comments. I would prefer to know the actual mechanisms that come into play and how that affects the body. Thanks guys!

Relaxation: The First Step to a Reduction of Anxiety

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One of the most important things that I learned while getting therapy was to take time to relax. This can be 10 minutes a day or a whole week, like what I am doing now. Take moments tp just be in the moment and not think about everything else that is going on in your life. By doing this, I can guarantee that a great amount of anxiety will just disappear.

Relaxation is essential for our bodies to recover. You can only drink so much coffee before you have to stop what you are doing and rest. It’s such a shame that society makes us believe that we need to be doing something every second of each day. It lies to us, tells us to work, work, work and relax later. I have quite a few friends that are almost addicted to working. I ask them, “Why don’t you take time for yourself and just relax?” Every single one of them replies with the same or similar answer. They always say that they want to work hard now so they can have a relaxing future. Now, I understand where they are coming from and had a similar mindset when I was younger, and also pre-therapy. I figured that I have a ton of energy and i should invest that energy into work so I can get a good job and relax later. One thing that I know for certain is there are no certainties in this life.

Working hard is good but it does not need to be your life, especially when you are young. You do not know if you will have money in the future. Heck, you may be poor, tired, old, and unhappy (I hope you are not). But you need to realize that the future is not certain and right now is what you need to focus on.

Life is a journey. It is long but you need to enjoy it along the way. My anxiety comes from living in the future, always thinking about the “what ifs” and never taking time to relax because “what if I don’t have money in 1 year? What if I can’t find a job? I need to start looking even though I graduate in 10 months.” I spend all of my time worrying about the “what ifs” that I don’t relax and enjoy the ride.

Relaxation is essential because it causes your body to cool down. Take time off of work. Use those vacation days and go somewhere you’ve never been. Do it while you can, while you’re young because we have “potentially” only one chance to do this thing called “life” right and I don’t want to be working all of the time, that’s for sure. Relax wherever you go and make sure to really appreciate what is going on at that moment.

Relaxation also means to get off of your phones and social media. We are addicted to distractions and this might just be the biggest distraction we have in the present moment. My therapist said that her clients were stressed out due to social media. They were constantly being bombarded with bad news as well as feelings of inadequacy. Get rid of it, get off it, and go relax! I am doing just that and you should be too.

I want to eave you guys with my current situation. This vacation is something anyone can do and all you need to do is take time off and go and do it. Here is a picture taken yesterday. I hope you enjoy.

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You Are Good Enough

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Often, in grad school, you will feel inadequate. You will feel like a failure, like someone that doesn’t deserve the degree you’re going to get. This is normal. We all feel this way and that is the wonderful part of growing as an individual and becoming a researcher. You will learn that there is so much more to life than we know and it will make us feel a bit weird inside.

Feeling like you are not good enough is something that you will have to fight. I just want to let you know that you are not just good enough, but wayyyyy better than “enough”. You will face some very difficult uncertainties in the years that follow which will cause self doubt but know that no matter what anyone says, you are enough!!!

People will tell you “no”, Experiments will tell you “no”. Advisers will tell you “no”. Things in life will not go the way you wanted but that does not mean you are less than perfect. You are perfect and beautiful and smart and you will overcome whatever you face in graduate school. You make so many people proud and that is good enough to keep you going.

I often feel that I am not good enough but then realize that I am in a difficult major, with the brightest people around me, learning stuff that people spend their whole lives studying. This is so cool and of course I may feel lost but that moment is when the adventure starts getting good.

I often just pretend that I am in the Lord of the Rings. They had is quite difficult and often felt like they were not good enough for the job of taking the ring to Mordor, but they did. Grad school is that journey for you. Sure, you will face a ton of monsters along the way. Sure, you may get chewed up and spit out, but you will prevail and the end will be so amazing.

You can do it. You are good enough. And you will PREVAIL.

**If you or someone you know is suffering from mental health issues, I highly recommend that they seek help. Online-Therapy.com or TalkSpace.com are great ways to reach out to a licensed therapist and get the help needed. Therapy has 100% helped me and I know it can help you.

Enjoying Family Time

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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 own. I can see how it affects my mom as well as my dad knowing that their sons are both starting the wonderful journey that is life. But for one week out of the year, we take time away from our busy lives to spend it all together. This vacation has been a great one so far. Having the time to see and be with my family has made me understand that life is not about work, life is about the relationships you have with others, the journeys you take, the risks you make, and the love you show, wherever you end up.

We all come from different backgrounds and situations. Family may mean a lot different than a blood relative to you. It may be close friends, a neighbor, your pet, a significant other, or the guy down the street that waves to you each morning. No matter what “family” is, appreciate it. Spend time with them because you will remember these moments way more than what happened at work. Life is so much more and we are just scratching the surface.

I hope everyone is having a great week with whatever you might be doing. Today, we decided to go to Key West and go to the butterfly museum as well as take a walk through the cemetery. I was able to spend some quality time with my family as really appreciate the day. I wanted to share with you all because I know you guys really understand the importance of having quality relationships with others. It is truly one of the best things in life.

Be Kind, Be Calm

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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 trip may me realize that sometimes things can get really frustrating, but you need to let those feelings go and show others kindness as well as yourself.

Vacations tend to be super stressful for some people, especially if there is travelling or confined quarters. We have a bit of both down here but my family is fairly good dealing with the stresses that come with vacations. The traveling that we do is in our boat. We love to fish and the keys trip is for just that, fishing. We also have a very small boat and that can cause issues. I was getting really frustrated on the boat and it didn’t help that it was 100 degrees out and we weren’t catching fish. Those are the moments where therapy really kicks in. I took a few deep breathes and calmed down. Without lashing out, I calmed down and showed kindness to the other occupants of the boat.

Stress can definitely cause some issues but you need to show kindness, to others and yourself. Realize that you will be frustrated but keeping your cool will make those moments pass.

I hope everyone is having a great day. I will try and post another blog post soon with the pictures of the key deer and maybe a couple of fish.

**If you or someone you know is suffering from mental health issues, I highly recommend that they seek help. Online-Therapy.com or TalkSpace.com are great ways to reach out to a licensed therapist and get the help needed. Therapy has 100% helped me and I know it can help you.

Learn to Take Time For Yourself

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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 knew that this would happen and I was (somewhat) ready for it. So many people in this world have way busier schedules than me and they don’t complain about it, so neither will I. I do, however, want to share some advice with you guys and gals in grad school, or working full time, or just living life. The advice is to take a moment to be “in the moment”. Shut off your phone, tune out music and noise, try not to think of what needs to get done, and just BE.

This morning, I did just that. I took time for myself and focused on being in the present moment. Does this sound like something that is familiar? This is the main concept of mindfulness. Be in the present and tune out all distractions. Holy cow!!!!! By doing just that, I was able to find happiness and serenity in that moment. I listened to the birds chirping, the wind rustling through the trees, and noticed the true beauty in this life. I also had this view.

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For about an hour, my worries disappeared. I felt love, kindness, and most importantly, peace. No wonder people have been telling me to practice mindfulness. You really can notice a difference.

I want you, the reader and of course, my friend, to take a few minutes out of the day to just be in the moment. Turn off all distractions and just notice everything around you. I guarantee that you will feel emotions that you probably hadn’t felt in a long time.

Life is long and short at the same time. You’re 10 years old one moment, then 28 years old the next, about to finish your doctorate. The past 4 years have gone by so quickly because I was not in the present moment, I lived in the future, at least in my head (just kidding, I am a time traveler ;P). I was so caught up in work that I forgot that life was happening around me. This definitely did not help my mental state. For many of you, especially those in graduate school, you will face mental issue and uncertainties. Trust me when I say this, TRY MINDFULNESS. It may not make all of the anxiety go away but it probably will help. I believe in this method and I believe in you! Stay kind my friends. I will try and get a blog post out this weekend with more fun pictures. Until then, stay beautiful.

Graduate School Hacks

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I am going to just have fun with this blog and see where it goes. These are a few ” grad school hacks” that I do which has made my PhD much more fun.

grad school hacks

Grad School Hacks

  1. Interreact with as many professors as possible. Get to know them on a personal level. Professors are great resources to have and it’s so nice to be able to talk with them like they are friends. Plus, some professors have really expensive lab equipment that you can use!!
  2. Drink coffee. Do not drink energy drinks because it is extremely hard to do work when you are bouncing off of the walls. Coffee will give you a great boost in the morning and help you focus. Just be careful not to overdo it or you will be jittery all day. Check out my favorite coffee here.
  3. Drink water, and drink it often. This “hack” is to keep you hydrated and healthy. Frankly, this is not a hack at all but a recommendation. Drinking water is essential to your health and a healthy student is more productive than a sickly one.
  4. Meal plan and cook at home. We do not make that much money and going out to eat is expensive. You will have time to cook food. I promise that you won’t be busy 20 hours a day. If you are, then you need to learn to say no or get out of school completely lol. That’s ridiculous. Meal planning will help you stay within a budget as well as keep you health, that’s assuming you don’t bring pizza everyday for lunch.
  5. Focus on learning the material rather than a grade. Grades do not matter in grad school as long as you receive a B and that is fairly easy to do. Focus more of understanding the material rather than getting an A on the exam. There have been several times where I have received an A but could not recall the information from the class. That information was essential to my research, also :(. That class was statistics, by the way.
  6. Get a planner and actually use it. Stay on schedule! You will forget to do stuff. It happens…we are only human. I have a to do list that I use each day. There have been so many times where I forgot what I had to do that day because I did not write it down. Seriously, this hack is important. This is my favorite planner.
  7. Workout. Studies have shown that exercise increases brain function and you just feel great. Type in to Google Scholars “Effects of exercise on the brain”. Just do it.
  8. Write. Each. Day. This is not a hack, but for some reason, people tend to want to think it is. I created this blog to help hone my writing skills as well as share information that I have learned over the years in school. I write each and every day. It honestly sucks at first. I won’t lie. After about a month of writing, you will see that 500 words is a piece of cake (Publix Ice Cream cake to be exact. YUM). Aim to write 500 words each day and see how easy it becomes. Also, if you write a bit of your thesis each day, you’ll have it mostly finished way before you defend. It’s a win-win.
  9. Take advantage of discounts and free things that are given to students. This includes food, clothes, trips to places, fitness classes, anything really. Take advantage of it now while you are a student.
  10. Lastly, find happiness in what you do. You will have days where nothing goes right. Experiments fail, your adviser yelled at you (if this happens then you may want to get a new one), maybe you left your lunch at home and have to live off of Panda Express from the student union. Bad days will happen but DO NOT let one bad incident turn a good day into a bad one. You will make mistakes. You will “fail”…I hate that word and you can read why, here, but you know what? You will thrive! You just need to find something good each day. It can be a small thing like getting pizza or seeing a friend. If you can find a bit of happiness each day, it will make grad school so much fun.

Final Thoughts

I hope you made it to the end without falling asleep. I actually fell asleep around #6 so… Anyway, I hope this list helps you on your journey through grad school. These are things that have really helped me all throughout the 5 long years I have been here. If you have questions, do not hesitate to reach out to me. I know many people are thinking about going back to school but may be a bit uncertain of what to expect. I am here to help any way I can. Let me know if you have any more “grad school hacks” that I did not touch upon. Also, I hope you have a wonderful day doing whatever you do!

Congratulations, You Made a Mistake

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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 that he did. I made a mistake tonight that honestly had about 10 people calling me names and telling me how terrible I was. I was an umpire at a kickball game. I made a terrible call against the team that won and was called multiple names, cussed at, and I honestly thought one kid was going to hit me. That last one might have been a stretch, but maybe lol. You don’t understand that when you call someone names, especially those that you don’t even know, that hurts them… sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, but it hurts.

What would you have done in my situation? Would you yell back at them and tell them and told that they are terrible? Would you tear up and just take it? Or would you laugh about it, because you made a mistake and that means you are human? I chose to laugh about it.

When you make mistakes, they can always be looked at as learning experiences. My experience tonight was child’s play compared to literally any other mistake, but it hurt to be called names. I learned and laughed and tried to have a decent time after that experience, though I paid closer attention :p.

The way you handle these situations is everything. If you let it get to you emotionally then it will drag you down and keep you in a low area. My advice is to be kind to yourself, admit it was a mistake, laugh about it, and learn. Also, in probably a few days, you will forget it even happened. Please do not let a small, insignificant occurrence cause your suffering. When you have anxiety, any little thing can turn into a completely blown out of proportion event. But by changing the way you perceive it and have a little fun, you can make any mistake into a funny story or learning experience.

I admitted that I made a mistake to the team that won. I apologized and they weren’t even mad afterwards, in fact, they were so happy about going to the championship game that they didn’t even care about the call. It was insignificant and I have moved on.

Also, be kind to people, because they will make mistakes. You never know what that individual battles with each day. They may have lost a loved one, haven’t slept in days, battling a mental illness, or literally anything else. Everyone is dealing with someone and by being mean to that person because of a mistake just makes you a pretty bad individual. No one is perfect, and actually perfection is straight garbage. I want to see people make mistakes because that gives them character. Flaws are not flaws at all, they are FEATURES!. Same with mistakes.

Be kind, because this is a wild journey called life, and no one really knows what they’re doing. Have a good night everyone. I love you all.

Grad School Stress: How to Relieve it?

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I wouldn’t write this blog unless I was in a stressful situation. I have quite a few things going on in my life so I thought I would share what I do to reduce the stress and become way more productive. Stress can cause all forms of problems, so reducing it is key to a happier and healthier life.

In grad school, you are going to experience moments of extremes stress. The end of the year, for example, is always a very stressful time. Creating good habits to manage that stress can allow you to be able to combat the stressful situation when the time comes. Today, I want to bring up the 16 different methods that I use to relieve stress during grad school.

If you are in grad school, lease take the time to invest in a great stress reliever. It will save you so much frustration and keep you going for the long haul. Trust me when I say, having one of these or all of these in your stress reduction tool belt is essential to survive nd thrive in academia. So, let us get into the list of stress relievers for grad school.

grad school stress

Here’s a list of things you can do to relieve grad school stress

exercise to relieve grad school stress

1. Exercise at the gym.

This is my go to when it comes to relieving stress. Honestly, just working out with some loud music and heavy weights is the perfect way to put yourself in a great mood. It pumps up your endorphins and puts you in a fantastic mood. Get moving guys! I know you might not have time but you can always make time!

meditation to reduce grad school stress

2.Meditate

Meditation doesn’t have to be an hour long event. When you start feeling a bit overwhelmed and stressed in grad school, take a 5 to 10 minute break and just breath. Stay off your phone unless you using a mediation app or YouTube meditation sessions. 10 minutes is all it takes and you will immediately see a difference. I do this quite often and it has helped manage the stress and my blood pressure lol.

3.Put on classical music or Lo-fi music

When you have a deadline to hit, you need to focus. Nothing beats the power of classical or Lo-fi music to help you out. I love Heavy Rain Lofi. Here is a link to YouTube where you can explore those channels. For some odd reason (probably backed by science), this music just keeps you calm and reduces stress a ton. Try it out and see if it works for you.

less caffeine

4.Drink less caffeine.

Here me out on this one. Yes, caffeine is amazing but it will drive up your anxiety like no other. The amount fo stress you will feel when caffeinated is way more than you would feel with little caffeine. I am not saying to completely cut it out of your diet. Well, if you can, that’s great. I am saying that in high stress times, try and limit the amount or be mindful of the amount that you are drinking. If you normally drink a cup or two of coffee, limit yourself to only that. Any more might cause your stress to sky rocket.

5. Read an article with something happy in it.

Sometimes when I am stressed, I get cranky. I look at life in a negative manner and don’t really see any joy. One weirrd way of reducing stress for me at least is to read an article with something joyful and happy. News articles are always so negative and being stressed at the same time can lead to a badddddd day/week. Try and read an article from a website like HappyNews.com.

6. Follow my breathe.

If you really don’t have enough time to meditate, just try following the breathe for a bit. It is a similar practice to meditation and will definitely calm you down. Take a deep breath in, hold it for 4 seconds, then slowly breath out. Do this a few time and you’ll be slightly less stressed than before. This works well with anxiety as well.

7. Remind yourself that “This too will pass”

Stressful times come and go. It is often very hard to know when the stress in grad school will pass. Just know that it will and remind yourself that it will pass. Stress is a temporary condition that will inevitably pass on it’s own or when something is complete. Remind yourself to hold off until then and this bad time will subside.

8. Watch the scene in Good Will Hunting where Robin Williams and Matt Damon are at the park.

Kind of a weird thing but when I am stressed, I like to watch comforting scenes from movies. I like to completely remove myself from whatever situation I am in and feel comforted in something that is not grad school. I love the movie Good Will Hunting, so I watch scenes from the movie. This often really helps to ground me and not get overwhelmed with stressful thoughts.

9. Watch Good Will Hunting if I have the time lol

I know people that watch whole movies to reduce stress. They are so overwhelmed with things that it makes them freeze almost and they can’t do anything. If you can afford to, and not on a strict deadline, watch a movie. Stay off your phone and just immerse yourself in whatever movie it is. Of course, my go to is Good Will Hunting. Man, it’s just so good.

10. Remind yourself to look for the learning experience or the good that comes from the stressful situation.

Every stressful situation is a way to learn. Make the stressful situation a positive learning experience and you will see that the stress tends to be reduced. Look at all experiences that are difficult a way to learn a new skill or just learn how to manage stress or what methods work.

11.Call up someone to just talk to.

I find that friends and family are great stress outlets. Don’t do this all of the time though. It will help when you are not constantly going to them for stress relief. Call up a friend or relative and just explain to them that you’re stress and need either advice or just someone to talk to. For a brief moment in your life, focus on talking to them and removing yourself from the stress. If you are stuck on something, maybe they will have answers. If nothing else, at least you got to build a good relationship with them by staying in contact!

12. Go on frequent, short, walks

This is my all-time favorite thing to do when I am stressed. I walk so much that I found walking challenges to do just to encourage me to walk even more lol. I also like medals. If you want to know more about the walking challenges, here’s a link to that page. Anyway, going on walks is a magnificent way to reduce grad school stress. It is similar to exercising but you don’t have to push yourself too hard. You can even meditate while walking or focus on your breathe. Both of those things I do. Plus, you get your steps in lol.

13. Pushups

Don’t have time to go on walks, meditate, breath, or anything else? Just do 10 pushups. Go ahead, do them in the office or lab. They are easy to do, you get more exercise, and you will notice that you won’t have time to be stressed while trying to focus on not dying lol. Push ups are a quick and easy way to just reduce a bit of stress that you might feel during the day. Try it out and see if it helps.

14. Get plenty of sleep

I think that most of the stress we feel comes from being overworked and overwhelmed with the ideas of work. This can often be amplified by sleep deprivation. Yes, you want to relax at night and watch TV. Next thing you know, it’s 12 am and you have to get to class in 8 hours. That leaves you with probably less than 8 hours of sleep. Get to bed earlier. Just try it for a few days and you will see that your stress gets reduced and you will work more efficiently. Instead of being at the lab until 9, you’ll get to leave at 6. There will be much less stress.

15. Cook Something or bake something

This one can be helpful and a bit dangerous. If you are so stressed, take the time to bake some comfort food. Make cookies, a cake, anything. Bring some for your lab mates too. They are stressed and need some love as well. Try and not do this all of the time. Many stressed people often resort to stress cooking and then stress eating. It is a vicious cycle that you don’t want to get stuck in. I added this because it is a great way to remove yourself from a stressful situation and relieve that grad school stress.

16. Stop Thinking, Start Doing

The hardest and most stressful part about anything is thinking about it and all of the work that needs to be done to get it finished. This can make things so stressful and even more so when you find out that you have less time to accomplish it because you spent all that time thinking about it. To tackle the stress, you must tackle the stressor. If you have a presentation to make, do it! Focus on getting it done and stop thinking about it. The quicker you finsih it, the less stressed you will be.

Final Thoughts

This was a pretty long list of things to relieve stress in grad school, but I know you can find something in there that will help you. Let me know what you do to reduce stress. I would love to add more to this list. As always, I hope you guys have an amazing and stress free day. I will see you all in the next one. Peace.

**If you or someone you know is suffering from mental health issues, I highly recommend that they seek help. Online-Therapy.com or TalkSpace.com are great ways to reach out to a licensed therapist and get the help needed. Therapy has 100% helped me and I know it can help you.

What I Do When I am STRESSED

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I wouldn’t write this blog unless I was in a stressful situation. I have quite a few things going on in my life so I thought I would share what I do to reduce the stress and become way more productive. Stress can cause all forms of problems, so reducing it is key to a happier and healthier life. Here’s a list of things I do

  1. Exercise.
  2. Meditate
  3. Put on classical music or Lofi music
  4. Drink less caffeine.
  5. Read an article with something happy in it. I know this one is weird but changing my mood definitely helps
  6. Follow my breathe. This is more mindfulness than anything
  7. Remind myself that “This too will pass”
  8. Watch the scene in Good Will Hunting where Robin Williams and Matt Damon are at the park.
  9. Watch Good Will Hunting if I have the time lol
  10. Remind myself to look for the learning experience or the good that comes from the stressful situation. This is usually if I can’t control the stress.
  11. Call up someone to just talk to. Sometimes by Talking to someone, your stress will significantly be reduced.
  12. Go on frequent, short, walks
  13. Pushups
  14. Get plenty of sleep
  15. Cook Something or bake something
  16. Lastly, I stop thinking about the work that needs to be done, and I just do what can be done at the moment. Thinking about the work is wayyyyyyyy harder than actually doing it.

This was a pretty long list of things but I know you can find something in there that will help you. Let me know what you do to reduce stress. I would love to add more to this list.

Vacations When Doing A Doctorate

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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. We leave Saturday, which is making this week extra long.

Vacations are so important for you and you may not even know it. First off, it takes you away from work that is potentially killing you O.o. Also, it gives you time to relax and get back to a state of equilibrium. Vacations allow you to visit places, get away from stress, enjoy the simple or extravagant things in life, and most importantly, it brings joy into your life.

Grad school is tough. People assume that it’s just classes and studying all of the time, but it’s actually much more than that. It’s living on a very small stipend, doing experiments at extremely odd hours, running around the lab, trying to find the pipette that an undergrad was using and didn’t put away, as well as try and function as a human being. Social lives usually suffer, overall health suffers (especially mental health), and things become overwhelming. It’s tough to see people you graduated undergrad with go off and start their careers, making a ton of money, and you are left here, doing mentally taxing things, not believing that you will be successful too. It’s hard and that’s why vacations are so important.

Getting away from the hustle and bustle of lab work and school allows your brain to take a break. You will come back with more motivation, clarity, as well as possibly a tan. From my experience and about 99.99% of people I know, taking time off has given them the motivation and strive to accomplish tasks that take them weeks usually, in maybe a few days. You just feel overall better about life.

Also, your adviser will probably push for you to take a break to prevent “burn out”. Every grad student will get burnt out at one point. This is a great opportunity to just leave for a week and come back refreshed. In a doctoral program, burn out is a real thing that can lead to mental illness. No wonder 50% of PhD students do not finish, it’s insane.

Please, Please, Please just go on vacation or even just take time off for yourself. Go to a movie each day for a week, go see a friend that lives in a different town/state/country, or just chill in bed, playing video games for a week. There is more to life than work. Vacations show you just that.

Let me know where you are going for your vacation and what you are doing? That may help me choose my next trip :p. Thanks for reading my blog. I love all of you.

Financial Stress in Grad School

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This post about financial stress in grad school may contain affiliate links. For more information see disclosure at bottom of home page

So you want to go to grad school or you are already there. That’s amazing and I hope that you have an amazing journey! If you are in grad school currently, you know what being poor and overworked is like. If you are preparing for grad school, be prepared. Financial stress is a major part of grad school and can be slightly overwhelming at times. Don’t get me wrong, you’ll have enough to eat and drink, but not really enough for other things.

Money is quite tight for me currently, mostly because I was forced to move into a new place that is way more expensive than what I currently am in. Since everyone is coming back in person to school, they are filling up all of the cheaper places that allow pets, so I was stuck with the more expensive option.

I have always been fairly good with money. I have enough saved up to be able to afford my new place with some modifications of course. I’ll share a list of things I am doing to save money as well as not have the financial stress and anxiety that comes with grad school finances. Below are a list of things that help me save some money while in grad school and I truly think thy can help you too.

You will experience financial stress in grad school. It will happen but you don’t have to experience the negative impacts quite as severe. With a bit of practice, you can thrive in this money deprived life and even be able to save up some money to do fun things. Follow the 8 tips below and you’ll be on your way.

Things I do to combat financial stress in grad school

1) I am shopping at Walmart now.

I used to shop at Publix but they are quite expensive. You can get the same food at a cheaper price from Walmart, so I shop there now.

2) I do not go to Starbucks or buy coffee from anywhere.

I make my own coffee, see my coffee blog. People spend as much on a cup of coffee as I do on a whole bag of coffee grounds. They do have good coffee though.

3) I gave up spending money on vending machine food.

This is self explanatory.

4) I walk to my office, or take a bus.

You will most likely be paying for a form of transportation to and from school. Take full advantage of that because gas is getting expensive.

5) I DON’T BUY THINGS ON AMAZON THAT I DON’T NEED.

This has taken so much strength to do but I think I am finally free from the Amazon addiction. I was buying everything on there and would have a package almost every other day. This led to more anxiety surprisingly. I quit buying things and I have saved a ton of money and my anxiety is not as bad.

6) Cook your own food.

I think cooking is one of the coolest things you can learn. Creating dishes that are healthy, delicious, and good looking is quite a talent. In fact, I was on a competition team that won third place in 2011. I love to cook and I have saved so much money by cooking at home. You may spend like $8 at chipotle when you can literally make the same meal for like $3 at home.

7) I don’t drink alcohol as much.

I still go to bars with friends but I order soda or iced tea. This reduces my spending significantly and doesn’t make me want to go out and get pizza afterwards and spend even more money lol. Plus, alcohol is one of my anxiety triggers, so staying clear of it is beneficial for me.

8) I build my own stuff.

This one is a hit or miss because prices for wood and other materials are going to outer space. I also found out that something I made was about half the price online than I spend on supplies. But, I am sure there’s stuff around the house you can use to build something you need. I use old rugs to make scratching posts for my cat. I also wood carve and make figurines that are cool so I don’t jump online to buy things to make my room look fancier.

Final Thoughts

These are the things I do on a regular basis to reduce my spending because grad school is expensive. Life is expensive. I hope you consider trying some of this stuff out as well as adding some trick of your own in the comment section. I love learning clever ways of saving money. Thank you for reading my blog!

**If you or someone you know is suffering from mental health issues, I highly recommend that they seek help. Online-Therapy.com or TalkSpace.com are great ways to reach out to a licensed therapist and get the help needed. Therapy has 100% helped me and I know it can help you.

How I Deal With Financial Stress in Grad School

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So you want to go to grad school or you are already there. That’s amazing and I hope that you have an amazing journey! If you are in grad school currently, you know what being poor and overworked is like. If you are preparing for grad school, be prepared.

Money is quite tight for me currently, mostly because I was forced to move into a new place that is way more expensive than what I currently am in. Since everyone is coming back in person to school, they are filling up all of the cheaper places that allow pets, so I was stuck with the more expensive option.

I have always been fairly good with money. I have enough saved up to be able to afford my new place with some modifications of course. I’ll share a list of things I am doing to save money as well as not have the financial stress and anxiety that comes with grad school finances.

  1. I am shopping at Walmart now. I used to shop at Publix but they are quite expensive. You can get the same food at a cheaper price from Walmart, so I shop there now.
  2. I do not go to Starbucks or buy coffee from anywhere. I make my own coffee, see my coffee blog. People spend as much on a cup of coffee as I do on a whole bag of coffee grounds. They do have good coffee though.
  3. I gave up spending money on vending machine food. This is self explanatory.
  4. I walk to my office, or take a bus. You will most likely be paying for a form of transportation to and from school. Take full advantage of that because gas is getting expensive.
  5. I DON’T BUY THINGS ON AMAZON THAT I DON’T NEED. This has taken so much strength to do but I think I am finally free from the Amazon addiction. I was buying everything on there and would have a package almost every other day. This led to more anxiety surprisingly. I quit buying things and I have saved a ton of money and my anxiety is not as bad.
  6. Cook your own food. I think cooking is one of the coolest things you can learn. Creating dishes that are healthy, delicious, and good looking is quite a talent. In fact, I was on a competition team that won third place in 2011. I love to cook and I have saved so much money by cooking at home. You may spend like $8 at chipotle when you can literally make the same meal for like $3 at home.
  7. I don’t drink alcohol as much. I still go to bars with friends but I order soda or iced tea. This reduces my spending significantly and doesn’t make me want to go out and get pizza afterwards and spend even more money lol. Plus, alcohol is one of my anxiety triggers, so staying clear of it is beneficial for me.
  8. I build my own stuff. This one is a hit or miss because prices for wood and other materials are going to outer space. I also found out that something I made was about half the price online than I spend on supplies. But, I am sure there’s stuff around the house you can use to build something you need. I use old rugs to make scratching posts for my cat. I also wood carve and make figurines that are cool so I don’t jump online to buy things to make my room look fancier.

These are the things I do on a regular basis to reduce my spending because grad school is expensive. Life is expensive. I hope you consider trying some of this stuff out as well as adding some trick of your own in the comment section. I love learning clever ways of saving money. Thank you for reading my blog!

How to Make Friends in Grad School

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“How the heck does everyone around me have a million friends?” I see it all of the time in school. Literally pods of students all together, seemingly having a great time with their friends. In undergrad, I wanted that so much. In grad school, I just want to be able to talk with a few people, not a whole group. But how are these people making so many friends? That, I cannot answer, but I can give tips on how to make really great friends, something I will cherish way more than having a bunch of people that you aren’t that close with.

It has taken me about three years to establish a really good friends group. It mostly consists of max five people, but they are all people that I genuinely like and know on a deeper level. Grad school can be extremely tough to make friends. If you are a PhD candidate, like me, it can me almost impossible since you will spend a great amount of time alone. But with a little persistence and some courage, I guarantee that you will find friends.

Ways on how to make friends in grad school

1. Join a sports league

Sports clubs are super easy to join and frankly you don’t have to put that much effort into it. Sports leagues/intermural leagues are a great way to make friends. There are millions of sports leagues at school. You can find everything from kickball to baseball, to even Quidditch. I am currently on a kickball team with people that are my age, drinking, and having fun. We go to get drinks after games each week and they have even invited me to parties.

2. Get a part-time job

This is a bit tricky in grad school because your adviser may say it breaches contract or you may not graduate on time. Luckily for me, my adviser doesn’t care unless it’s between the hours of 8 am and 5 pm. As I have stated, I am a personal trainer so my hours of work are later. Jobs are great because you will spend a ton of time with people, mostly students in a college town, but also some older people too. Some of my closest friends that I have are from a job I had in undergrad.

3. Meetup.com

I don’t have a lot of experience using this but I know people that swear by it. This one takes a bit of courage because you may be meeting a ton of people for the first time and that can cause a great amount of anxiety. Heck, my anxiety is the reason I don’t use this. Meetup does a great job of bringing people with similar interests together, and honestly, that’s what you want in friends.

4. Blog

Blogging can introduce you to so many people in the world. I have just started but I can definitely see how I can make a ton of friends with what I am doing. The interactions that I have with people are just truly amazing and I think this is a fantastic way to make friends. You will be surprised how easy it is to meet people while blogging. Most of the time it will be over the internet. But internet buddies are cool too.

5. Having a roommate

This one may require some luck if you have roommate matching. If not, and you can pick your roommate, then this is way easier to make a friend. I have friends all over the world that used to live with me that I call friends. By being forced to live with someone, you see how they actually are, all the time. You develop a deeper relationship with the person and that can be a good or bad thing lol. I have had some amazing roommates that are close friends. But be warned…friends might not always make good roommates!!!

6. Make Friends with your office mates

You will most likely spend a ton of time with people that share your office. This is a great opportunity to make really good friends. You will most likely be able to bond over how bad and hard rad school is. You will also get to know them much better because they are around you all of the time. I have made some great friendships with people that have shared my office with me.

7. Get involved in clubs.

Clubs are a great way to meet like minded individuals that want to do something fun. In college, you will literally have 300+ clubs on campus. There is a club for any interest that you have. Grad students also have their own clubs too. This makes it pretty easy to meet other grad students and make lasting friendships with them. I highly recommend joining clubs or just attending at least one or two of their meetings.

8. Go to events held at your apartments

If you live in an apartment, you probably have noticed a ton of fliers around to do activities in your complex. Go to these events! At my apartment, we have events every week. This is a great opportunity to make friends and possibly win some prizes as well. I go to bingo night and they give gift cards, so it’s definitely a good time lol.

Final Thoughts

Anyway, this was a short list of ways on how to make friends in grad school. It’s hard, but with a bit of work and luck, you can have amazing relationships with people. Let me know how you make friends or if you want to be my friend! Making friends while in grad school is a great opportunity to reduce stress, have fun, and make the whole experience a bit better. Grad school is hard, having friends to cope with the struggles makes it way better. I hope you all have a wonderful day and I will see you in the next blog.

How the Heck Do You Make Friends in Grad School, or, Well, in General?

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“How the heck does everyone around me have a million friends?” I see it all of the time in school. Literally pods of students all together, seemingly having a great time with their friends. In undergrad, I wanted that so much. In grad school, I just want to be able to talk with a few people, not a whole group. But how are these people making so many friends? That I cannot answer, but I can give tips on how to make really great friends, something I will cherish way more than having a bunch of people that you aren’t that close with.

It has taken me about three years to establish a really good friends group. It mostly consists of max five people, but they are all people that I genuinely like and know on a deeper level. Grad school can be extremely tough to make friends. If you are a PhD candidate, like me, it can me almost impossible since you will spend a great amount of time alone. But with a little persistence and some courage, I guarantee that you will find friends.

  1. Join a club or sports league

Clubs are super easy to join and frankly you don’t have to put that much effort into it. If you join a club that really falls in line with your interest, you will find friends. People just like you, with similar interests will be there and you’ll get to know each one of them pretty well. sports leagues/intermural leagues are also a great way to make friends. I am currently on a kickball team with people that are my age, drinking, and having fun. We go to get drinks after games each week and they have even invited me to parties.

2. Get a part-time job

This is a bit tricky in grad school because your adviser may say it breaches contract or you may not graduate on time. Luckily for me, my adviser doesn’t care unless it’s between the hours of 8 am and 5 pm. As I have stated, I am a personal trainer so my hours of work are later. Jobs are great because you will spend a ton of time with people, mostly students in a college town, but also some older people too. Some of my closest friends that I have are from a job I had in undergrad.

3. Meetup.com

I don’t have a lot of experience using this but I know people that swear by it. This one takes a bit of courage because you may be meeting a ton of people for the first time and that can cause a great amount of anxiety. Heck, my anxiety is the reason I don’t use this. Meetup does a great job of bringing people with similar interests together, and honestly, that’s what you want in friends.

4. Blog

Blogging can introduce you to so many people in the world. I have just started but I can definitely see how I can make a ton of friends with what I am doing. The interactions that I have with people are just truly amazing and I think this is a fantastic way to make friends.

5. Having a roommate

This one may require some luck if you have roommate matching. If not, and you can pick your roommate, then this is way easier to make a friend. I have friends all over the world that used to live with me that I call friends. By being forced to live with someone, you see how they actually are, all the time. You develop a deeper relationship with the person and that can be a good or bad thing lol. I have had some amazing roommates that are close friends. But be warned…friends might not always make good roommates!!!

Anyway, this was a short list of ways that I have been successful at making friends. It’s hard, but with a bit of work and luck, you can have amazing relationships with people. Let me know how you make friends or if you want too be my friend!

How to Deal With Failure in Grad School

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I want to start off this blog telling you that I do not believe that there is such thing as failure when you have tried to do something. True failure in grad school comes from not even trying in the first place due to fear of not getting the result you want. People that tell you that they failed an exam, failed a marriage, failed really anything are not actually failing. Ok sorry to be redundant with all of the “failures” lol.

So why did I name this blog “How to Deal With Failure in Grad School”? It’s because most people would rather see that than something like “How I deal With Finding Out a Different Way of Doing Something Because the Results Did Not Turn Out the Way I Planned”. It’s a mouth full isn’t it?

dealing with failure in grad school

You Have to Learn from Failure in Grad School

So let me tell you how I go about dealing with a situation that I was not expecting, or one that I did not like. I simply learn something from it. I have gone through a ton of therapy and have listened to a ridiculous amount of Buddhist talks to change my way of looking at “failures”. They are all learning experiences which means that they aren’t failures at all. Sure, you may have failed an exam, but you learned that the method of studying that you did wasn’t right. Sure, your marriage didn’t go as planned, but you learned that you were not in the right relationship.

Sure, I failed an experiment and managed to spill leaded water all over the place, probably causing me to ingest the same concentrations of lead that were found in Flint, Michigan’s water, but I learned that I need to be more careful when it comes to things like that.

The fact of the matter is you need to learn something from each “failure” that you have. If you haven’t at least learned one thing, than that could be called a failure as well. Listen, grad school will make you feel like everything that you do is a failure. Sure, your experiments didn’t go as planned, but if you pay attention, you would have learned how the experiment didn’t go as planned. You learned what not to do and you won’t make that mistake again. See how you can use each failure in grad school as a learning experience?

failure in grad school

You Have to Try

The only true failure in grad school is when you just don’t try. I tell people all of the time to just try and do something even though they “know for a fact that it will go bad”. The future is completely uncertain and you never know what will happen. I see how my thoughts stop me from even trying something, but I will force myself to do it, and then it turns out it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be.

Many people are just too afraid of the failure process so they don’t even attempt to do what they are so worried they will fail at it. You know what every expert ever did? They failed more than they succeeded. They failed so much until they eventually got it right. They might have been afraid to fail but they went about trying anyway.

One thing that I hear all of the time is “what if I get it wrong?” This is especially true when dealing with grad courses. People are afraid to try new things because they might not get it right the first time. That is true failure. Just not trying because you “know you will fail.” This mindset causes all sorts of problems later and it creates a ton of anxiety, trust me.

As I have touch upon in my blog about doing things that scare you (link here), just trying something, even if its scary, will help you succeed. You will get to a point where failing doesn’t affect you. You’ll be numb to that awkward feeling after failing. But, you have to try it, even if it’s scary.

Overall

By changing your mindset, and I believe this is a major part of cognitive behavioral therapy, you will see that failures do not exist. You you happen to screw up pretty badly, learn at least one thing from it. If you embarrass yourself and call that a failure, laugh about it and make it into a funny memory. Life is way too short to not take risks and worry about failure. Luckily, I am learning a great deal about not being afraid to fail in grad school. I have been told “no” so many times and I have messed up more times than not, and you know what? I learn something each time and I continue on. It is an experience to grow from these experiences. It’s a long process, but my God, it is life changing.

Final Thoughts

Dealing with failure in grad school is hard, I get it. It is, however, essential. The things you are working on and will be working on might be brand new in this world. You might be working on some novel idea that may change history. You think you’ll get everything perfect? Probably not lol. See, the mistakes are where you learn the most and those mistakes might not even be mistakes. I find that when I mess up, something cool comes from it. Changing your mindset about what a failure is is a great way to overcome the fear of it.

I hope you guys understand what I am trying to get across. Don’t be afraid to fail in grad school. Embrace the suck and realize that each “failure” is a great opportunity to learn a valuable lesson. I promise you that changing your mindset about failure in grad school will drastically improve the way you go about experiments and research. Don’t be afraid to fail. I hope you all have a wonderful day and week. Let me know how failure has helped you out and made you a better person. Peace!

How I Deal With FAILURE!!!

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I want to start off this blog telling you that I do not believe that there is such thing as failure when you have tried to do something. True failure comes from not even trying in the first place due to fear of not getting the result you want. People that tell you that they failed an exam, failed a marriage, failed really anything are not actually failing. Ok sorry to be redundant with all of the “failures” lol.

So why did I name this blog “How I Deal With Failure”? It’s because most people would rather see that than something like “How I deal With Finding Out a Different Way of Doing Something Because the Results Did Not Turn Out the Way I Planned”. It’s a mouth full isn’t it?

So let me tell you how I go about dealing with a situation that I was not expecting, or one that I did not like. I simply learn something from it. I have gone through a ton of therapy and have listened to a ridiculous amount of Buddhist talks to change my way of looking at “failures”. They are all learning experiences which means that they aren’t failures at all. Sure, you may have failed an exam, but you learned that the method of studying that you did wasn’t right. Sure, your marriage didn’t go as planned, but you learned that you were not in the right relationship. Sure, I failed an experiment and managed to spill leaded water all over the place, probably causing me to ingest the same concentrations of lead that were found in Flint, Michigan’s water, but I learned that I need to be more careful when it comes to things like that.

The only true failure is when you just don’t try. I tell people all of the time to just try and do something even though they “know for a fact that it will go bad”. The future is completely uncertain and you never know what will happen. I see how my thoughts stop me from even trying something, but I will force myself to do it, and then it turns out it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be.

By changing your mindset, and I believe this is a major part of cognitive behavioral therapy, you will see that failures do not exist. You you happen to screw up pretty badly, learn at least one thing from it. If you embarrass yourself and call that a failure, laugh about it and make it into a funny memory. Life is way too short to not take risks and worry about failure. I am learning a great deal about not being afraid to fail in grad school. I have been told “no” so many times and I have messed up more times than not, and you know what? I learn something each time and I continue on. I grow from these experiences and you will too. It’s a long process, but my God, it is life changing.

A Story to Help: Perfectionism

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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 things, and has caused more anxiety in my life than pretty much anything else. I do still strive for the best quality but sometimes I just say it’s good and move on.

So monks tend to build their own monasteries because it is super expensive to get a contractor, and monks don’t have money. Anyway, a Buddhist monk was laying brick to build a wall. He had to learn how to lay brick since it’s really not as easy as the YouTube videos make it seem. After a very long time, the monk was finished. He stepped back to admire his work when he noticed two bricks that were a little out of place. He was furious, enough to go to the abbot and ask for him to knock down the wall so he could rebuild it. That was not going to happen, he had to live with the bricks. Every day the monk walked by that wall, and every day he suffered from having to look at those bricks. The monk didn’t even want people to look at it since he was so ashamed. Until one day, a man was visiting the monastery and was looking at the wall. The monk approached the man who was just entranced by the wall. The man told the monk how beautiful the wall was and how much he admired it. The monk was confused and told the man it wasn’t perfect and there were two very bad bricks. The man looked back at the monk as said “Yes, there are two bad bricks, but I see the 998 good bricks too”.

Sometimes we get so caught up in seeing the “imperfections” in life that we forget that there is so much perfection around as well. This story really made me think about how I get so much anxiety from things I don’t think are perfect that I forget that I do so many good things alongside those not-so-perfect tasks or items. Making mistakes is life and you are human. Plus, those imperfections are not imperfections at all. They are “features” and those features are what make us individuals and beautiful. The next time you doubt yourself or put yourself down for not being “good enough”, look for the 998 good features that you have. I guarantee that you will have a less anxious time and definitely more happiness in your life.

Grad School: Hurricanes and Deadlines

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Ah, Florida summers! They are filled with pool parties, late summer outings, fun with friends, and lots and lots of time to relax…unless you are in grad school. I am not saying we don’t have fun. Heck, I have a ton of fun until I am given a task that involves me shifting into overdrive to get it finished. This is the case right now. On top of the crazy deadline that I am creating for myself, we have a category 1 hurricane that is about to hit us in the next 12 hours!!! Tonight is going to be fun.

In a previous post, I talked about what to do when everything seems to just go down the drain. This is one of those cases for me and I know everyone has experienced some form of this. I am in a pickle because I need to finish a proposal prior to vacation, pack up all of my stuff because I am moving to a new apartment, and do my qualifying exam all really, really soon. Oh yeah and there’s a hurricane lol This is causing a ton of anxiety but, like the man in my story that I shared, I am looking for the “honey”.

I am not looking for any form of pity though. I want you guys to know that everyone experiences really tough situations and it is ok to vent every once in a while. We all fight battles and take stressful situations differently. This is why it is so important to be kind to one another. I have really been practicing showing kindness towards those that I come in contact with. I listen to what they have to say, because sometimes that is what they need to overcome their struggles. My struggles are very much different than yours, but it does not mean that my life is harder than yours. You may be dealing with some really tough, mental problems, or physical ones that are weighing you down. I want you to know that there are people that will help you and show you kindness. I am trying to become one of those people.

Hopefully the hurricane isn’t too crazy so I can do work on my proposal. I will be stuck inside most of the day so I can hang with my cat, Sirius. I tend to think of him as the “honey” that I am looking out for in my tough situations. For those that are experiencing this storm too, stay safe! For those reading this blog in a different state/country, stay kind! I love you all and know that you are amazing. Good Night!

Audible Books You Must Listen To

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This post may contain affiliate links. For more information see disclosure at bottom of home page

I am not the biggest fan of reading. In fact, I can probably count on one hand the amount of books I have read in the past 10 years. I know, I know, it is quite sad but I lack the ability to sit still for more than five minutes, so reading is difficult. I do, however, listen to Audible books.

As a grad student, my schedule is often quite all-over-the-place. I try and keep a consistent schedule but that never works out since my life often revolves around timed experiments, meeting, running to and from labs, as well as trying to find time for food. I do have a good chunk of free time most days where I am waiting on something so I tend to either try and read journal articles, or listen to books. I frequently walk pretty long distances, so to pass the time, I listen to books as well. Sometimes I go on extra long walks just to finish a chapter or find out what happens next.

Here’s a list of my favorite books that I have listened to.

They aren’t in any specific order but I will tell you my favorite afterwards.

  1. All of the Harry Potter novels
  2. The Shining
  3. Red Rising
  4. The Martian
  5. Ready Player One
  6. Ready Player Two
  7. 11-22-63

So my all time favorite book to have listened to is a tie between Ready Player One and Ready Player Two. Will Wheaton narrates both book and HOLY COW it is amazing. The story is just so fun and it really makes you wonder if something similar to what is going on will happen in the future. I highly recommend listening to these rather than reading them. It is a whole different experience.

The Harry Potter books are also amazing to listen to. They are narrated by Jim Dale, who does a fantastic job at it. For days where you are driving long distances, I suggest Harry Potter to keep you company lol.

Let me know in the comments what books you have listened to and what your favorites are. I am always looking for more to get. Peace!!

Coffee for College

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This post about Coffee for College may contain affiliate links. For more information see disclosure at bottom of home page

You must be here because you have an addiction to coffee. College and coffee just totally go together, right? I, too, have an addiction and man is it bad. It’s not quite to the point of an intervention, but I would say it’s close. See coffee is what makes us “normal”. The caffeine is what allows me to write these posts each morning and still be in a good mood to tell everyone “Good morning” as they pass by my office. Unfortunately, coffee can be expensive if you buy it. We have maybe 10 Starbucks on campus and a handful of other coffee shops around campus. You can find it everywhere, but at $4 for an iced coffee, I need to look elsewhere.

Today’s blog will be a bit short but I just wanted to share a few of my favorite coffee items for college students and grad students. I do not drink hot coffee. Frankly, I hate warm or hot beverages (I know, I’m weird). I also just drink black coffee so I can reduce calories as well as I like bitter drinks. I even drink iced tea without sugar. Anyway, here are a few of my favorite coffees that I think you need to have in grad school, especially if you are on a budget.

Best Coffee Items For College Students

I want to start this list of best coffee and coffee items for college students with one of my favorites. You have to start your journey with a coffee maker and the one I talk about it the exact one in my office. I haven’t had any trouble with it and it has been amazing. Coffee for the broke college kid doesn’t have to mean expensive either.

So I have to start with the coffee maker I have. This coffee make brews single cups, up to 14 oz and takes both k-cups as well as ground coffee. I highly recommend getting one, but if not, a French press like this is absolutely perfect. This initial cost is a bit much but you get your money’s worth in no time, I promise. Ok let’s get to coffee.

French vanilla coffee is the superior coffee. OMG!! It’s amazing iced, hot (my girlfriend likes hot coffee so she told me it’s good), with creamer, with sugar, literally any way you want. I highly recommend this one.

My mother buys this brand and I think it is just so darn good. They are K-cups, but compostable one’s so they are better than the plastic ones. The flavor is really good as well and they are fairly cheap. Definitely a good choice if you have a Keurig or Sboly coffee maker.

So sometimes you have to really get up and going. This is the coffee for you. I promise that you will not need more than half a cup of this stuff to get yourself ready for the day (and even to the gym). This stuff is potent and the flavor is really good. It’s is a bit expensive for the package but well worth it. If you find coffee a bit weak, try this. The caffeine is extremely high and will do a great job of waking you up. Beware of the crash in the afternoon though lol.

I put this one as last because I wanted to end with a fun one. This is a variety pack of coffees that includes pretty much every flavor of coffee that you can imagine. It’s about 60 cents per pod, so a bit expensive, but you can try different flavors then buy the flavor you like the most directly. This variety pack can only be used with a Keurig type coffee maker so you need one of those. I believe some of the flavors included also come in ground form so you can get them for your coffee maker or French press too. I bought this for my mom for mother’s day and she loved it. She was able to determine her favorite flavors and I believe bought a few more of those flavors. It was definitely a good gift (lol).

6) Coffee Du Monde – 15 oz. cans (Link Here)

Do you dream of New Orleans as much as I do? No? Yes? Maybe? lol. If you have ever been there, you have probably stopped by Café Du Monde to pick up a bag of beignets and to also have some coffee. I was given one of these coffee cans as a present and I think I used it up in about a week. That was the most caffeinated I think I have even been. The coffee is just so good. I made beignets too and pretended that I was back in New Orleans.

This is a great coffee to have at college because you can share with those that might want to feel like they are in New Orleans. You can be a nice person in this case lol. Plus, coffee is a great way to bond with people over. Getting this and making some coffee in your dorms might entice people to come over and talk to you. Such a great way to make friends.

Final Thoughts

I hope this has helped a little. As I said grad school and coffee just go together. It’s a fact! Hopefully you had some coffee prior to reading this so it didn’t put you to sleep. I am heading off to get some coffee right now and start my day in the lab. Thank you for reading and I will catch you in the next blog. Peace!

Also, If you would like to subscribe to my email list, I would greatly appreciate that. Once I start getting a decent amount of peopl, I’ll start offering some sweet services to you guys.

Writing Your Literature Review

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I think one of the most stressful portions of grad school is writing academic papers. You want perfection when all you hear from everyone is “just get it done, it doesn’t have to be perfect.” I hated hearing this because I wanted all of my papers to be perfect., but what even is perfection? That may be another blog post to be honest. This post is about writing a literature review and going in for publication.

I submitted my manuscript to a journal in May, I believe (this year has been weird and my days and months are out of whack). We received comments in June and resubmitted three weeks later. I am waiting to hear back from the editor to see if I will be a published author or not. Hopefully I am.

This blog is about the process of writing such a monster of a paper. I believe I had 65-70 pages at the very end. Probably 30 of those pages were references though. I counted over 200 references when I was finished. Yes, it was a beast and very scary, but you can totally do it and have fun while skimming through articles for hours. Here’s a list of how I went about writing my lit review.

Blank paper with pen and coffee cup on wood table

Ways to make the best Literature Review

1. Create a skeleton

You need a basic outline of what you want to include and where sections will go. Remember, literature reviews are trying to bring as much knowledge about a subject into one paper. It needs to have flow and tell a scientific story. What I mean by this is you want to tell the reader why your future research will be important due to a lack of knowledge in the field you are working on. Also, you want the reader engaged since this is a very long chapter of your dissertation. Having an outline will keep the paper organized, it will help you find specific papers to use, and it will make it engaging to the reader.

2. Just write and don’t go for perfection at first

It is much easier to just write than to think about writing. Writing a literature review is just about getting the words on paper. I often put off writing because I think that I can just do it later when I have motivation. I then spend hours or days thinking about the writing I have to do and it’s torture. Don’t do this, just write. This paper is long and you will need to put in time. It’s way easier to write a little everyday than to cram it in last minute and hope that it makes sense. Plus, your first draft will most likely suck. You will re-write sections multiple times and never be satisfied, but at least you wrote something. My first draft was absolute garbage, not going to lie. My adviser worked with me and we managed to turn something that belonged in a landfill into something that (hopefully) belongs in a journal.

3. Read, read, read

When you have all of your sections outlined, you need to start reading a ton of articles. I mean….A TON! I read about everything from lead poising in children, to quantum entanglement. My research deals with lead so how I ended up reading about quantum physics, I don’t know. But seriously, read as much as you can, and if you can, write a summary of the paper. That will help later on when you are looking for stuff to place in your lit review.

Opened Book on Tree Root

4. Be kind to yourself

Some days I would write1500 words in the span of a few hours. Other days, I would only write 200. This is normal!!! Push yourself to do the best you can but be kind to yourself when you don’t hit the crazy goals that you set for yourself. I promise you that you will finish.

5. Have your adviser review prior to submitting

My adviser had to review my paper since this was my very first manuscript to go in for publication. He added sections, subtracted sections, and rewrote quite a bit. After his revisions, it was time to go in for initial publication.

When submitting to a journal, it is extremely wise to determine if the journal you want to submit to will actually take you paper. I did a ton of research and found a decent one to send my review paper to. I went online and they have a few websites where you can upload your paper and it will give you recommendations on what journals to submit to. This is what I did and it worked fairly well. Once you find the journal, go on their web page and read everything about that journal. Make sure it has a good impact factor since you want more people to see your manuscript as well as cite it in their papers. These factors will help you get noticed and are great CV boosters. Once you submit, sit back and wait. Usually for literature reviews, you’ll get comments back a bit later. The reviewers usually go through the whole paper and read almost every citation you put in. Mine did at least.

Photo Of Person Using Black Laptop

6. Read the comments and reply

My comments were not terrible. The worst part was writing the literature review to be honest. I have heard of people reading the comments from their paper and immediately crying because the reviewers just ripped them apart. This probably won’t happen to you, though. So, read the comments, let them sort of digest and then tackle them head first. I would say a vast majority of the comments were dealing with grammatical errors and addition of some more references. If you do get crazy comments, talk with your adviser about how to address those specifically. Sometimes you may have to just fight the reviewer to keep what you have in the paper.

7. Send the comments back and wait.

This is where I am at in the process. I constantly check the journal website for any hope, but I know I need to be patient. I will update all of you when I find out the outcome. It should be any day.

Final Thoughts

Writing a literature review can be a daunting task but it doen’t have to be. Just follow the above steps and you will be fine. I promise you that. Good luck with your lit review and I hope this somewhat helped. Peace for now

What to Do When Everything Goes Wrong: Grad School

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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 to just go wrong, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Lately, I have experienced quite a few failed experiments (I blame the ghost), pretty bad anxiety, and having my cat go in for an emergency vet visit. There’s a long list of things that go bad in my life but I am not here to rant. I am here to help you overcome these hurdles and thrive!!! I will not lie, this post is quite a difficult one but I will try my best. Just know that everyone deals with things a little bit differently, so what works for me, may not work for you. This is the beauty of trial and error. Also, this is why I love to know how people deal with these problems so I can add to the list of coping methods. Anyway, let us get started. dealing with what to do when things go wrong.

1. Acknowledge that you are having moments of hardship and tell yourself “This too shall pass.”

I love the phrase “This too shall pass” because it not only tells you that the hardship will end but that good times will end as well. I know that sounds bad but you can turn it into something good. In the tough times, it will give you hope. You have survived every hardship in your life and you will get through this. When you have good times, let yourself know that it will pass as well. You will learn to cherish the good times way more and prepare yourself for bad times. Soon you will notice that the good times last a whole lot longer and the bad moments tend to subside much quicker.

2. Remind yourself that this is part of life and you can learn something from it.

“Smooth seas don’t make skilled sailors”. You will have tough moments but look for the learning experience, look for the good in every situation. Every moment is a learning experience and will help you grow. You are a student, remember. Learning is practically your job and this is no different. Find something that you can learn about in your situation and grow from it. This lesson has helped me to reduce my mistakes significantly. When things go wrong, you will always be able to learn something from it.

3. “Look for the Honey”

Tiger Beside Green Plants Standing on Brown Land during Daytime

There is a Buddhist story about a man being chased by a tiger and falls off a cliff. https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/the-tiger-and-the-strawberry-b73de1dccf19. I have a different version that was shared with me and I will share with you now. A man was walking through the forest, when all of a sudden, a tiger jumps out and starts chasing the man. The man (obviously and Olympic runner lol) starts running as fast as he can through the forest until he gets to a cliff. The man sees a vine of the side of the cliff and grabs hold of it, hanging off. He looks down and sees a huge King Cobra below him, and above him, he sees the very hungry tiger. The man, knowing he’s going to die, starts looking for a possible way out, but can’t seem to find one.

White Snake on Brown Soil

It gets worse

Closeup Photo of Tan Rat

All of a sudden, he sees two mice come out from a hole in the side of the cliff and start to eat away at the vine. OH NO!!!!!! The man is in a really bad situation. He looks up at the tiger and then notices that the tiger is scraping a tree, which the vine is connected to. In that tree, there was a beehive right above the man with honey flowing out every time the tiger scraped the tree. The man, not knowing what else to do, put out his tongue and caught a bit of honey that fell and it was the best tasting honey that he ever had. The end.

“But Ben, what happens next? Did the man survive? I have so many questions!!!!” I will answer all of those questions in a bit but I want to share something first. The man was in such a tough spot but he looked for something good, even when he was close to death. In situations where you are (figuratively) the man, look for the honey. Find good in everything. You are in grad school and things will get tough but know that there is always something good in every situation.

Ok, so the tiger was reaching over really far and lost his grip, falling down right on the king cobra, killing them both. On the way down, the tiger hit the vine, causing the mice to fall as well but they survived because I want some happy ending for the little woodland creatures. The man climbed up and went home to his family. He survived.

Final Thought

This brings up my last point I want to make in this blog. The future is uncertain. Sometimes we get caught up thinking that the bad times will continue. When really, we have no clue what will happen next. Bad situations can lead to surprising outcomes that you would not have thought were possible. When things go wrong, especially in grad school, reassure yourself that this may lead to something you weren’t expecting. It can lead to something possibly life changing, and man that’s exciting. To quote the greatest character, “You will have bad time, but these will always wake you up to the stuff you weren’t paying attention to”.

Have a great day.

**If you or someone you know is suffering from mental health issues, I highly recommend that they seek help. Online-Therapy.com or TalkSpace.com are great ways to reach out to a licensed therapist and get the help needed. Therapy has 100% helped me and I know it can help you.

My Favorite Things on Days I Feel Sad

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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 because of how rainy it has been in Florida. I love the rain but honestly haven’t seen the sun in about 2 weeks. I am going to keep this blog post a bit shorter today and just list off about 11 things I do to get over the “slumps”. So here is a list of things I do when I feel sad. Here we go!

  1. Sit Outside with a cup of coffee and read about coffee. I like to sip on French Vanilla or Hazelnut
  2. Go on a walk
  3. Just run around
  4. Watch Harry Potter (for the 10000000000th time)
  5. Next, Watch a Disney movie……after Harry Potter of course
  6. Bake a dessert
  7. Call up a relative or friend to talk
  8. Go on the internet and blog for people
  9. Read all of the amazing comments that people have for said blogs
  10. Count all of my blessing and really be grateful for what I have
  11. Talk to my Therapist.
  12. Find ways to motivate myself. I have been trying Ineedmotivation.com

Bonus: Play with 2 very cute puppies that refuse to fall asleep (What I am currently doing)

There are probably a million other things that help to bring me out of a sad mood but these puppies are just so darn cute and I can’t think of anything else. What do you guys do when you are sad? Let me know in the comments.

**If you or someone you know is suffering from mental health issues, I highly recommend that they seek help. Online-Therapy.com or TalkSpace.com are great ways to reach out to a licensed therapist and get the help needed. Therapy has 100% helped me and I know it can help you.

Let’s Talk about Anxiety Triggers

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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 accept the good and bad moments. It took me a great while to be OK with hearing the word “no” all of the time, or having terrible days in the lab (I blame those days on the ghost that haunts it). Before therapy, I would have panic attacks almost weekly. They weren’t as severe as the very first one that I had but very close. My heart races, I get sweaty and shaky, and my thoughts get out of control. I brought this up to my therapist and she assured me that I am not alone and that I did a great job at describing what a panic attack actually was. Learning this made me think that something was wrong with me but she also let me know that there are millions of people who have this and are coping with it just fine. That was slightly comforting but alarming as well since I wouldn’t wish this upon anyone.

The next plan of action was to determine what set these states of panic off and if there was an underlying cause for my anxiety. Turns out, I had many. First of all, I am a worrier. I have been told my whole life that I worry too much and think of all of the bad things that can happen in my life. That was trigger #1. Whenever something happened, I would think of the worst possible outcome and that would lead to sooooooo much anxiety. It was something I needed to work on. My therapist suggested that I use my hand to help out. If you are unfamiliar with this practice, it entails you holding up your hand and assign different scenarios to each finger. For me, I think of the best possible outcome in a situation and assign it to my pinky. The worst outcome that I can think of goes to my thumb, and combinations of good and bad outcomes go to my middle three fingers. The middle three fingers are the more likely outcomes that will occur in any given situation. Having a visual helped significantly since, well, I am a visual person. Who knew? ;P

Trigger #2 was my sense of perfectionism. There’s one thing about grad school that everyone should be taught at the beginning and that is, if it’s good enough, it’s finished. Chasing after a perfect paper, a perfect poster, or anything perfect is completely unattainable. Grad school is a training experience and perfection just takes way too much time. I was chasing that dream of having a Nobel Prize winning research proposal/manuscript. My god that does not exist. Once I learned that good enough, was good enough, I was able to relax. I still struggle with this since I do want to give my best work, but I am in the last year of my doctorate so I can’t spend too much time perfecting everything.

Trigger #3 was being alone with my thoughts. This one is by far the scariest one. The pandemic definitely did not help because I was alone even more. Grad school is extremely isolating and lonely, so there’s plenty of time to be alone in your head. This is why half of PhD students won’t graduate. The best thing I ever did was take up meditation. This has helped to calm my mind and actually train it to not pester me with obnoxious and flat out wrong ideas. When I am not able to control the thoughts and I start to have anxiety, I’ll go on a walk or go to the gym. You can’t really think of anything when you’re gasping for air from running or doing squats lol.

Let me know the things that cause you anxiety and how you cope. I am interested in how people live with anxiety. Hopefully you found this to be enlightening or just somewhat entertaining. I’ll see you all in the next blog

Peace

**If you or someone you know is suffering from mental health issues, I highly recommend that they seek help. Online-Therapy.com or TalkSpace.com are great ways to reach out to a licensed therapist and get the help needed. Therapy has 100% helped me and I know it can help you.

How To Handle Anxiety in Grad School

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I used to have to see a therapist because my anxiety was getting way too bad. Fortunately, my health insurance covered the use of Talkspace for no additional cost, and I took full advantage of that. Another great site to use in Online-Therapy. I highly recommend either Talkspace or Online-Therapy. My therapist was so helpful and really changed the way that I look at anxiety. She told me that there are a few things that you should always do when having a panic attack, and I would like to share these with you guys. These are 5 methods that have helped me deal with anxiety.

5 Ways to Handle Your Anxiety in Grad School

I am not a therapist but I did go to therapy for a year because my anxiety was too much to bare in grad school. I would have trouble concentrating,. Also, I would essentially worry about everything and it was affecting my work in a negative way. Talkin g with many of my grad school friends, I found that anxiety pretty much affects everyone in grad school. This and imposter syndrome are two really negative things that you’ll probably face while trying to complete your master’s or PhD. Today, I want to go over some helpful ways in which I was able to handle my anxiety and move passed it. In fact, my anxiety decreased so much that I don’t need therapy anymore. These methods do work, and, if you are up for the challenge, you should try them out.

1. Give your anxiety a name

My anxiety was called Ang. She told me to do this because it convinces your brain that anxiety is a thing and not just a state of mind. Then you can “stand up” to it like you would a bully. I have used this method a few times, mostly to acknowledge that my anxiety is there. It may seem like a silly exercise, but it truly works.

Giving your anxiety a name almost makes it a tangible thing. You can call it names, put it down, and make it feel less powerful over you. I find this method is a good thing to do if you just feel a tiny bit of anxiety coming on. Sometimes while I am walking to class, I’ll feel a bit of anxiety. I go “Hey Ang, thanks for showing up but I don’t really want to hang out right now.” I would say that about 60% of the time, it goes away. It is a cool method and I am glad my therapist taught me it.

2. Keep exercising no matter what

I walk a ton throughout the day and do my virtual races (see my previous posts). I also go to the gym almost every day. Staying active decreases muscle tension and diverts you from what you are so anxious about. I mean, you can’t really be worrying about something if your doing stadiums lol.

Exercise is a great way to relieve stress and stay energetic. It is also a great way to combat anxiety. Sometimes you are just absolutely drained. Exercise is hard but to do when you are tired but it is essential to combat anxiety. Exercise has been shown to ease depression and anxiety. So keep on exercising people!

3. Meditate and practice mindfulness

This was a major point that my therapist brought up. Train your mind to be able to cope with things and to be able to calm down in situations where you are anxious. This is a daily activity but so beneficial. I try and meditate right after lunch each day, using my Headspace app. I have seen such a reduction in the severity of my panic attacks and anxious moments. Even last week I prevented a huge panic attack because of meditation. I will have another blog post going over methods to do this so hold on a bit 🙂

Here’s a great book if you are interested https:/amzn.to/3vSo8HR

4. Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Anxiety in Grad School.

Look this bad boy up on the computer RIGHT NOW! This has saved my life multiple times and I am such a genuine person now because of it. This method focuses on changing cognitive distortions and behaviors by challenging your thoughts. There are so many YouTube videos on this so I won’t get into too much detail, but just know that it works but it takes time. Remember that this is a marathon, not a race.

According to the Clinical Guideline for treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, cognitive behavioral therapy is “is a form of psychological treatment that has been demonstrated to be effective for a range of problems including depression, anxiety disorders, alcohol and drug use problems, marital problems, eating disorders, and severe mental illness. Numerous research studies suggest that CBT leads to significant improvement in functioning and quality of life. In many studies, CBT has been demonstrated to be as effective as, or more effective than, other forms of psychological therapy or psychiatric medications.” They also emphasize that the science is there and this method works.

5. Be kind to yourself

I think this may be the most important thing that you could ever possibly do. We have some really unrealistic expectations of ourselves and beat ourselves up if we don’t meet those expectations. My grad school marathon has been just that and I was miserable. I found that being kind to myself, laughing when I mess up, and being kind to others has helped me become less anxious and happier.

Final Thoughts

These are just a few of the many methods you can try. I hope that at least one works out for you. Remember, if you have questions about this, message me. I would absolutely love to talk about it. Don’t just deal with anxiety, learn to live harmoniously with it.

**If you or someone you know is suffering from mental health issues, I highly recommend that they seek help. Online-Therapy.com or TalkSpace.com are great ways to reach out to a licensed therapist and get the help needed. Therapy has 100% helped me and I know it can help you.

WHERE TO START?????

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So grad school is God awful!!! when it comes to mental health. I actually had to see a therapist for about a year, but Ill go into that later. Let’s start off with how I ended up going about this mental health journey. So, about 5 years ago, I had a major panic attack that was brought on by pre-workout. Now if you have had preworkout before, you know how strong that stuff is. I was taking it to boost my performance in the gym. I absolutely love working out and being fit, well… this was what I thought would help me achieve those goals. WRONG!!!! I had a huge panic attack and suffered from depression for like 6 months after, all trying to finish my undergrad degree in environmental engineering. It was tough and I really had no clue what to do, but I kept going. Fast forward to 2019. I started my doctoral program and was suffering from anxiety. I am a worrier. My mom constantly tells me this and it is true. Well, in grad school, mental health is a major concern and I didn’t really heed all of the warnings. I got to a point where what occurred in 2016, started to happen in 2016. I became super depressed and anxious. That is where a wonderful journey started, one where I would find out who I was, what I wanted from life, and how to find happiness, even in the darkest of times.