I’m still not sure I am equipped to handle the stress that comes with graduate school. When people said it would be hard, I laughed at them. I never had to read assignments in undergrad, and writing papers was easy.

If you are thinking about grad school you should just know that the reading is ridiculous; hundreds of pages per week. The papers are long. I scoff at anything in the single digits now. Stress will eat you for dinner, and it will eat your other grad school friends for dessert. Time management is a must, and the funny thing is that it used to be a skill of mine UNTIL I started grad school. Not to mention I work two jobs so I can stay alive, AND I have a dog. You might think you are immune to grad school, but trust me, you aren’t; at times it is just plain rough.

I know that in the end it will all be worth it and I am already half way through, but some days it just feels like for every bit of progress I make, every time I get to the top of that hill, someone is standing at the stop waiting to shove me back down.

Sometimes you just have to allow yourself to feel like an idiot, to be stressed and bummed, to cry your eyes out over the injustices YOU signed up for, and then give yourself a pep talk and get back to it.

Speaking of pep talks, this always makes me feel better: