Category: 2019 Anecdotes

Many people seem to think that everyone at places like Princeton suffers from impostor syndrome and that feelings of intellectual inadequacy are always the problem. This is not true; some of us have no doubts about whether we belong because we are minorities, and there is no one else like us in eyesight on campus to do what we do and say what we know. The problem is that it can be extremely alienating to be a minority on campus, and even more so in supposedly liberal contexts that advertise inclusiveness but refuse to make any of the changes necessary to make the space truly accessible to different kinds of people. For my own part, it is a big problem that I have had to work so hard to create a space for gender-nonconforming and nonbinary students on campus. I’ve never in my life had a teacher or professor who is nonbinary like me, or any other such role-model. I used to think that was because I was the only one, but now I see that people like me have always existed and have just been driven underground by a widespread and deeply entrenched discomfort with challenges to the gender-binary. I constantly have to explain and re-explain my gender to my own professors, and face the humiliation of being misgendered (often in front of a class) on a regular basis. Perhaps even worse is the conversation I’ve had more times than I can count in which I’m told not to let this distract me from my school work, or that identity isn’t relevant to scholarship and needn’t come up in classes. Others seem to think scholars like me are all naturally gender scholars and that it’s therefore only necessary to talk about identity and politics in a class about gender or race. What would make it easier to thrive on campuses for many minorities is for it to be understood that no material is apolitical, and that every discipline and field must be actively made accessible to all kinds of scholars. I don’t just want to see people like me teaching gender studies, but all fields. It brings great joy and relief from loneliness and depression to do what small things I can to bring these visions into reality; but I can’t deny the pain I feel at every roadblock. It’s been a long haul, and there seems to be little understanding on campuses of just how much long-term, low-grade alienation can degrade a human being and scholar.

Depression crept up slowly during my time in graduate school. I used to think I was, paradoxically, both one of the angriest and one of the happiest people I knew, a sense of purposeful outrage and moral disgruntlement being (I thought) the flipside of the coin of joyful energy and vitality. Over time, and thanks in large part to escalating political events, I began to realize that rage was killing me slowly: poisoning my wellbeing, hindering my relationships, and making me increasingly avoidant of even simple tasks. For a long time this was a bigger problem for my personal wellbeing than for my scholarly work (which often was a joyful respite from terrible dealings), but eventually the latter couldn’t but be affected by my descent into lifelessness and despair. I re-entered therapy in 2017, a first crucial step, and have since invested a great deal of energy and earnestness into my personal recovery. One of the greatest challenges in this has been to tune out, or put in perspective, the Princetontian voices (which are often subliminal but sometimes quite explicit) that tell me that my academic work is the reason to get better, rather than something that will naturally and happily benefit from the work that I do to thrive as a human being. The ideology of this feverish moment in late capitalism makes it all too commonly assumed that the reason to thrive is so you can be productive (i.e. for an employer or institution). That idea itself is a cause of depression, and I’ve been hard-pressed to find this kind of instrumentalizing thinking sufficiently refuted or disrupted at Princeton. What has been of the greatest help to me is to speak honestly about my experiences with depression and alienation with others who understand or at least are willing to listen deeply. A thriving community–both personal communities and collaborative work communities–is what I seek, and the precarity of these (even once carefully and lovingly established) is a great source of loneliness and depression. I have found that many individuals at Princeton are hungry for a little authenticity and honesty and have responded extremely favorably when I have opened up about my experience; and yet the normalization of ongoing, unattended suffering as part of the academic game that’s supposed to be taken as a matter of course and born with a stiff upper lip is widespread at Princeton, including within my own department. In other words, the stigma around mental health continues unabated even as we hear endless talk about the need for a “conversation” about mental health on campuses. I am waiting for the day it becomes actually okay to talk about, not just okay to talk about talking about it. This will not get better until the culture and values of academia improve and we learn to prioritize full human beings, not just functionaries who produce impressive data or research. Bell Hooks says teachers have a responsibility to self-actualize so as to be able to support their students in doing so; it’s not something I’ve ever heard someone say at Princeton, but I believe it from the bottom of my heart and have taken the greatest comfort of all in being a teacher and preceptor so that I can put this belief into practice in my own classroom.

I have OCD. My help and healing are from my religion. I believe God has forgiven all my sins through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. He has given me new life and peace that surpasses understanding. He puts everything in perspective and further heals my mind every day. Without Him (and the loving, steadfast, forgiving community that comes with Him) I’d be utterly lost. Besides turning to God for everlasting peace and joy, here are two practical things that calm the mind: running and breathing meditation (which can be seen as a form of contemplative — as opposed to verbal — prayer). Also, avoiding caffeine has helped.

There are times that I feel such overwhelming stress and fear and obligation and hopelessness pushing down on me that I can’t leave my apartment. There are days that I feel such mounting anxiety with every step towards my office that I feel like I’m choking and have to turn around. There are the panic attacks (a wonderful new development just in time for writing my dissertation), the rumination spirals, the self-recrimination, the isolation, the hopelessness. So what helps? Sharing with others has been surprisingly liberating and supportive. I’ve kept these struggles largely invisible to others (partly from the shame of having these problems – which of course just reinforces the problem), but almost every time I’ve shared my experiences with someone, I find they are not unique. I am not alone, and you are not alone. The commonality of depression and anxiety in grad school speaks to structural problems of graduate education – not a personal or moral failure in me, or you, or any other grad student struggling with mental health. This reflects a failure of institutions (PIs, research groups, departments, universities, funding agencies) to prioritize our well-being in a meaningful way.

Barring the dismantling of toxic academic culture, what else helps? I’ve found medication and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy enormously helpful. Medication gave me the space to start working on myself, while CBT helped with identifying unhealthy thought patterns, developing positive habits, and putting structures in my life that help me stay balanced. I work every day to prioritize myself and my wellbeing and to define success in graduate school on my own terms. I lean on my friends and family. I spend time outdoors. And I remind myself that it gets better. It’s hard and it’s a struggle, but it can and will get better.

I often feel like I don’t belong in Princeton. Everyone in my department seems to be very excited and passionate about their research. They live and breathe the subject and enjoy discussing their work and new papers in the field over dinner and at parties. I find this exhausting. I like to compartmentalize work into its own box. I give it my all when I’m in lab, but I want to spend my time and attention on other things when I’m at home or out with friends. I have many interests outside of my research and feel like there are many career trajectories I could have taken if I had not decided to pursue graduate school. I sometimes feel like I am simply not “nerdy” enough to be taken seriously in my department, and I often have to pretend that I understand (or even care about) what others are discussing in social settings. This often makes me feel like a fraud and an outsider. I don’t see myself pursuing a career in academia, and I think my peers (even more than my advisor) would find this unsettling. As a woman in STEM, I suspect some of my peers would even view me as a “bad example,” since I am contributing to the “leaky pipeline” in pursuing some of my other interests/talents. I am not free to be an individual with my own ambitions without repercussions, because I have the burden of representing an entire group of people. I recently got married, and the truth is that I really do care more about my family than my work, however “traditional” that may be. I want to have kids sooner rather than later, but I have been told again and again that it is difficult to be taken seriously and to be offered post-doc positions as a pregnant woman. Even my parents who used to badger me about grandkids when I wasn’t even in a relationship have now told me that I should put my life on hold until my career is more set. I understand their logic in this advice, but I don’t want something as important as the timing of my own children to be beholden to other peoples’ arbitrary prejudices. What has helped is a close-knit group of supportive friends in whom I can confide as well as my amazing husband. Having a support network makes a huge difference, especially when feeling socially alone in my department. I think it is also super helpful to have close friends outside of Princeton to help keep me grounded.

Although not particularly socially awkward, I often feel very embarrassed after an encounter with acquaintances/friends/professors. I can often identify what I did wrong during the encounter (e.g. talking too much, not being considerate enough, not making a smooth enough conversation transition, messing up details when hosting guests, messing up something on the board during a group meeting, feeling like I have become too comfortable with my prof and forgotten my manners, etc). I can spend hours agonizing over it.

For years my mind would fantasize over cutting myself as a punishment. Fortunately I care a lot about following social norms so I would head to the gym instead to experience pain in a socially acceptable manner (I find treadmill slightly faster than normal to be the most effective). I feel like going to the gym really does help improve my mood. It gets the stress out of my system and it is not dangerous. More importantly, my friends and my advisor have been very supportive to me, despite my many failings. I think the supportive environment has drastically reduced the level of stress and dread I experience when I do something incorrectly, knowing that even if people noticed they would probably forgive me. I have also learned to say “thank you for your advice” to my inner critical voice and take it as a helpful critique of areas I could improve on rather than an evaluation of my self worth. Overall, the situation has improved a lot since I came to Princeton, and I am very grateful for this.

The night before Generals, I was surrounded by all my study materials, and I felt so unprepared.  I just lay on the floor and cried until I fell asleep. I went on to pass by the skin of my teeth. It took me a while to summon up the courage, but I went to Princeton Counseling, and ended up starting to see a psychiatrist. I’m still far from okay, but I’m now able to stay functional, and I think I’m getting a little better every day.

In undergrad, my lab had a fantastic post-doc who made everyone (including the undergrads!) feel like valued members of the group. He not only organized the group to get work done efficiently, but also created a warm and friendly social atmosphere with regular group lunches/dinners and just a general sense of belonging and family. The culture of my lab here at Princeton is vastly different. Grad students often feel a lot of pressure to get work done unreasonably quickly. We set unrealistic goals and then constantly feel like failures when we have to report at group meetings that we didn’t meet our deadlines. Expectations are often unclear and the majority of the burden of the lab’s work usually falls on only a few graduate students. It can be difficult to value one’s own time and to set healthy boundaries when that is not the culture of the group. Individually, the people in the lab are wonderful, lovely people, but together, we have created a somewhat toxic environment. It has taken me quite some time to recognize that I can’t be dependent on my advisor or post docs to guide my education and career trajectory. As grad students, we are not technicians in a boss/employee model. Our purpose is not to churn out work for our advisors (especially not at the expense of our sanity) but to learn and grow so that we can prepare ourselves for our longer-term careers. We are in grad school because we decided to be here to better ourselves. Realizing that has been incredibly empowering and liberating for me. We shouldn’t have to be afraid to tell our advisors that we don’t want a career in academia or that we dislike one aspect of lab work and would prefer to focus our time on a different set of tasks. Something that has helped me feel better is to try to be more like that post-doc I admired so much in my undergrad. I don’t get to work with him anymore, but perhaps I can be some approximation of that person for the younger students in my lab, and that gives me hope.

Towards the end of my first year of graduate school, I tried to commit suicide due to isolation from friends, the loss of a support network, and the pressure of ‘not good enough’. Ultimately, what helped was finally being on the proper medication. Just like any physical illness, being on the correct medication is important. And being on medication doesn’t mean you’re ‘weak’. Being mindful of burnout, of needing space, of disconnecting your worth from grades and numbers, eating and sleeping well — those can help, but just like how drinking orange juice won’t cure cancer, pharmaceutical treatment can be a necessary component of mental health.

In my second and third year of graduate school, my research was under a tight bottleneck. Together with other stress both in academic and in life, it made me lose 10 pounds in 3 months, face interpersonal issues, and led to suicidal thoughts. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough support at that time. Questions from people close to me such as “I don’t understand why [what you are working on] is it so hard” and “I can’t believe a Princeton graduate student has nothing in their mind” were hurtful and made me blame myself for procrastinating and not working hard enough. I was living in perpetual guilt. One day a professor saw me much thinner than before, and asked me to take care of myself. I immediately cried. Someone cared about me! Later on, I got better or worse from time to time. In the Spring of my fourth year, I once again had a lot of trouble concentrating and suicidal thoughts returned.  I decided to go home for 10 days to take care of myself. It turned out to be much needed. After I got back to Princeton, I decided that I didn’t want to buy an expensive plane ticket to go home every time I’m not feeling well, so I finally turned to CPS for help. Since then, I started learning more about myself and methods to help myself. I also became more open with friends and spent more time doing what interests me rather than being the person other people expect me to be. These changes  made me feel more powerful day by day. I’m still on the journey of recovery: I’m worried that the change of season and shortened day time will reignite my depression, and the discouraging voice from the past is still in my head to this day. The good thing is I can finally openly talk about what I’ve experienced.