The Breakdown, or, There Is Crying In Graduate School

Here we are after a few weeks of classes, starting to settle in and get used to the new wake-up time, the new study schedule, the new workload. Every semester is a bit different, and requires some adjustment. I usually spend the first two weeks of fall semester feeling like I’ve been hit by a bus. But by this point, a few weeks in, the interminable meetings are starting to spread out a little, I’m starting to know my students’ names, and they’re starting to figure out what’s expected of them. This time is good, for professors and for undergrads.

This time, for many new graduate students, is when they have their first breakdown. This is when they realize what’s expected of them, and their study schedule is getting really tight, and they’re getting to know their fellow graduate students who seem really smart and prepared. This is when they start writing their first short papers and doing their first discussion-leading, and they know they have to do more than they did as undergrads but they’re not sure what that looks like yet. This is when many of them cry. The goal, as I remember from Auburn, was just to make it to the end of class and all the way out of the room before the first tear slid off your chin.

picture from penusa.org

That’s okay. I want you to know this, that it’s okay, you who are feeling tears at the backs of your eyes in class because you don’t have a clue what anyone is talking about, you who sort of have something to contribute to discussion but can’t find an opening between the students who are writing their theses on the topic, you who suffer that awful stab of panic when a few fellow students and the professor go off for 20 minutes on some part of the book you don’t even remember (“OhMyGod, did I read the wrong book??? No – whew! - my cover looks the same as that guy’s over there, and he’s talking, and the professor is nodding, so it’s the right book, but how do I not remember the part they’re talking about? Did I miss the whole point of it? Am I stupid? Do I even belong here??")

This breakdown, the one hovering in your vicinity just waiting for you to stop breathing deeply so it can wash you away, is all a part of your new life. Welcome to Academia! It’s your first grad school breakdown, and not only is it normal, it’s good. It’s healthy. If you’re on the verge, go ahead. I think every grad student is entitled to about three breakdowns over the course of the program, so you might as well get this one over with.

The first breakdown is usually the adjustment to new expectations, to realizing that you’re in a new league. No longer will you be the most prepared student in the class just for having read everything. No longer will the professor patiently explain anything in the text that you didn’t understand, and no longer will the test or the paper at the end of the course be a place to demonstrate command of the material the class covered. Now, as you have probably noticed, you’re reading things way beyond your skill level, things that look like they’re in English but a lot of the words are new and weird and don’t make sense in that order (That’s right, I’m talking about you, Heidegger and Foucault). Here’s the catch: you’re not supposed to feel like you’re mastering it. You’re supposed to feel disrupted by it. You’re supposed to consider possibilities, not show that you’ve nailed it. Stop trying to have good answers, and instead focus on asking good questions. This is a huge adjustment, from an expectation of mastery to an expectation of exploration, and you should be patient with yourself while you make it. And keep a tissue in the outside pocket of your school bag, because you do not know when the breakdown will strike.

picture from piccollage.com

 I had mine in the Auburn library. There’s this big spiral staircase in the  middle of the library – there are elevators of course, but the staircase is cool, and open, and gives a wonderful view of the levels full of shelves of books. I love libraries – my mother was a reference librarian and I’ve spent wonderfully happy hours of my life wandering libraries – but I have an unfortunate tendency to be really intimidated by them, I guess since they represent KNOWLEDGE for me, and so when I started to come to grips with exactly what I’d gotten myself into in a PhD program at Auburn, I had a full-scale freak out on the central, spiral staircase at Ralph Brown Droughon Library. I had been doing fine, and I was thrilled to be in a great program and was happy with my classes and my professors. I was pretty scared of the reading load, but I figured I could pull it off. I had gone to the library to reserve a study carrel, and while I was there I visited the PRs and PNs, the shelves I know I’ll be using most, and when I walked down the stairs from the 3^rd floor all those shelves of books started swirling around me, at walking pace at first and then faster and faster, and I suddenly couldn’t breathe and couldn’t figure out which way was out, and I sat down on the steps and cried until a library worker came and helped me to the door. (She was concerned, but she didn’t turn a hair. I got the idea I wasn’t the first overwhelmed grad student she’d ever seen).

But not all your meltdowns will happen in academic settings. My bestie from grad school told me she had her first big grad school meltdown in the Kroger parking lot as she was loading her groceries into the car. (I had a doctoral-qualifying-exams-meltdown in the cereal aisle. Perhaps the grocery store surroundings drive home for us the extent to which our schoolwork is forcing a detachment from quotidian things. Or perhaps it’s just that suddenly you cannot make one more decision without exploding.) I had another friend who had her first breakdown when she woke up at 4 in the morning on top of the covers of her bed, surrounded by half-graded freshman essays, two open theory books, and the saltines and Easy Cheese that had been her dinner. A few years ago, one of my grad students came in to talk to me about class a few weeks in and just lost it right there in front of me. She felt helpless and scared. She felt like she was the only one not getting it. But she took some deep breaths and pulled herself together and gave it absolutely everything she had. She went on, by the way, to become a leader in class and write a smashing thesis and is now a poised and professional program director. She did what you’re supposed to do: have the breakdown, and then use it to move on.

picture from moderncountrystyle.com

And so, to new grad students out there: You do belong in that class, in that program, in that discipline. You chose it, and chances are, at some point in your life, perhaps even recently, it chose you. You didn’t apply to grad school because spending 80 hours a week on something felt like a great way to pass the time. You applied to grad school because you want to know this stuff. And you don’t know it yet, which is why you feel lost right now. Be patient with yourself. Be patient with the material. If you continue to seek it, it will start to open itself up for you. And before you know it, you’ll feel like you’re asking good questions.

There is good news and bad news here. The Good News is that what you’re feeling is perfectly normal, and every scholar feels that way. The Bad News is that it never really truly goes away. You are in a new league now; one that is about always reaching for more. That can leave you feeling like you’ve failed to grasp. Not true. Take time, every once in a while, to look back at what you’ve read so far. Look back at what you knew a few weeks ago and what you know now. You’re getting there. Where “there” is will keep moving, it’s true, but you are getting closer all the time.

The Breakdown is good, because it means that you respect the magnitude of the task you have set for yourself. The Breakdown is healthy, because it means you are passionate about succeeding. The Breakdown means you are in very good company, because we all have The Breakdown from time to time, as we struggle and strive to reach for more than we know. The Breakdown doesn’t mean that you aren’t cut out to be a scholar. It means you already are one.