Category: 2020 Anecdotes

”I’ve developed insomnia since the start of the pandemic. I used to be able to fall asleep almost immediately, but now I lay awake in bed for hours. It’s so frustrating. There’s not even anything in particular I am stressing about late at night. I just can’t seem to quiet my mind enough to sleep. I usually get up after a while to get some additional work done so that I can at least use the time productively. But then I am groggy the next morning and find it difficult to get going. This only compounds the problem, because then I start to rely on late-night hours to get work done, and the cycle continues. When I do eventually get to sleep, I keep having vivid, stressful dreams and waking up in a panic. For example, I had a dream recently that my parents’ cat was sick, but everyone in my family kept telling me she was fine and there was nothing to worry about. I tried calling the vet myself since no one else was doing so, but no one answered the phone. The dream devolved into an infinite loop of calling the vet over and over again without reaching anyone who could help. I think this dream and others I’m having speak to a sense of powerlessness in the face of so much global chaos. I haven’t found a good solution yet.  I’ve been trying to reduce my caffeine intake and to drink a glass of warm milk at night before going to bed. But even then, my insomnia persists.”

”Wow, what a dumpster fire of a year. As if finishing a Ph.D. weren’t hard enough?! Even before the pandemic, I struggled a lot with depression and anxiety. My experience with both feel intensely physical: I feel immense pressure in my chest, like a giant claw is squeezing my heart, or my hands go numb, like they aren’t part of my body, or I feel a deep, gasping emptiness in my gut. Sometimes, I feel all three at the same time.

The anxiety part really made getting help a struggle for me. Even though I KNEW that mental illness isn’t a personal failing, even though I KNEW my friends and colleagues would be immensely supportive, even though I KNEW therapy and medication works because it’s worked FOR ME in the past, I really struggled with shame and embarrassment that I was dealing with this again. And that shame transmuted into paralyzing social anxiety. At one point, I was afraid to even write down my own thoughts in my personal journal because what if in some distant future, my journal is subpoenaed and people discover all my embarrassing feelings, and then it goes viral as some Buzzfeed article about the ‘13 most embarrassing revelations in former Princeton graduate student’s journal’ and then it gets published on the front page of the New York Times, and then I get fired in public disgrace, and then all my friends and family leave me, and then I get sued for misrepresentation and lose my house, and then I’m a failure for the rest of my life? I mean, putting it down like that sounds crazy absurd, but my thinking was sufficiently disordered that I was seriously worried about this actually happening.

So what happened? Well eventually I summed up the courage to call a therapist and schedule an appointment. I got a referral for a psychiatrist and went back on antidepressants. I’ve been seeing both my therapist and psychiatrist for about a year, and it’s made a profound difference in my life. I’ve also started running recently to burn off anxiety energy. It’s not perfect, and things have definitely been exacerbated by the pandemic/forest fires/protests/murder hornets/etc, but I’m doing so much better. This time a year ago, I was ready to leave grad school to hide in a cave somewhere. This time a year ago, I was afraid to say anything. This time a year ago, I was desperate. It gets better. It’s not easy, but it gets better.”

”I think society strongly overvalues academic intelligence. You can see this in the insane culture of parents trying to get their kids into the best pre-school and obsessing over their children’s IQs. It’s unhealthy and frankly absurd. At least in my experience, I have significant doubts that my ability to succeed academically has really improved my life in any measurable way. I’m stressed out most of the time, depressed, and filled with continuous existential dread. My feelings of anxiety and depression have only increased in response to the pandemic. Graduate school is stressful on good days, toxic on bad days. Despite all the blood, sweat and tears that have gone into gaining a Ph.D., I am faced with grim academic job prospects, and I’m not sure anymore if an academic career is even the path I want. I’m living in my tiny apartment working all hours of the night in my lab and spending half of my paycheck on rent. I’ve honestly lost interest in my research. I fear my fancy academic career is not really impacting the world in a positive way, whereas other careers that might have required less training and sacrifice would have allowed me to have a more substantial positive impact in the world and perhaps would be more fulfilling.”