You may call me a 'Master', but of what?

arianacahn
Dec 8, 2021
5 min read

Updated: Dec 28, 2021

DISCLAIMER

This post is meant to be a deeply personal recounting of my experience as a graduate student. It is not meant to demonize any persons, organizations, or universities mentioned. It is my experience from my point of view alone; my views and opinions are not representative of anyone or anything else, and I do not wish to sully the positive relationships I have built during this time. For this reason, I have kept things intentionally vague as I do not wish to blame anyone for what occurred. Trigger warning: mental health, depression. If you are feeling symptoms of depression, please talk to a professional.

Have you ever had a dream where you need to walk somewhere, but no matter how much you focus on moving forward, it feels like you're just moving through molasses and just never getting anywhere?

That's what grad school felt like for me. Actually, how I described it to my therapists was more like:

"I feel like I'm running around a track, and there are hurdles every 5 feet and I fall over every. single. one. And when I finally make it over all the hurdles and around a complete loop, someone put those hurdles back up, and I need to keep going and it's never ending."

Needless to say, this wasn't the best time of my life.

*record scratch* Let's back it up a bit.

I finished my undergrad, worked an awesome RA job during my year off, and applied to medical school. It's what I'd been working towards so hard for four years and I .... didn't get in. I felt lost. I didn't know what the realistic next step was. However, I knew I really enjoyed the research I was doing. I worked in a collaborative setting, conducting cutting-edge MRI research, and I knew I wanted more.

I applied to my grad program with my PI because he was working at the intersection of three things I found really interesting: imaging, mental health, and psychopharmaceuticals.

I applied and got in! I packed up all my stuff into my old car, said goodbye to the comforts of living with my parents, and hit the road, heading west until I hit the ocean.

Me with one of the PET scanners I worked with during my MSc.

When I finally got settled in and started school, it felt like something wasn't quite right. The course requirements for my program felt oppressive - I spent the first year of my program studying 24/7 for a course that was needlessly hard for someone who already had a BSc in the subject material! I felt disrespected by many of my professors. I wasn't finding fulfillment in my lab work. What was going on?

Truthfully, I didn't, and still don't, feel like I was put in a situation that was built for me to succeed. There was such an air of "Well, I had to suffer through this back in my day, so you have to as well." But that doesn't really help anyone, does it? It doesn't help shape future critical thinkers. It doesn't set up future scientists to succeed. And I know as a fact that many of my peers felt/are feeling the same way.

It just made me feel like I had to get out.

I started feeling depressed. I'd had anxiety for a long time, but this was new, and awful. I went to therapy, but it didn't really help at first. I was still in a terrible situation.

Maybe a new challenge would help get back on track?

I applied for a big conference in Australia. I busted my butt for a month getting together the perfect abstract because I knew, I knew, that this would be the one high point of my degree. This month was one of the hardest so far - I had two classes to write exams for/submit assignments to and basically do an entire study and write it up for the abstract. It was getting hard to motivate myself to keep on this path, but I knew the reward would be so worth it,

I got accepted! I was so excited. This was going to be a huge turning point for me. This acceptance told me that hard work pays off in the end and that I was in the right field for me. My travel expenses were covered by my scholarship; it was going to be my first solo trip and my 4th continent visited (at 24!).

And then.... Covid hit. I cannot even begin to describe the loss I felt at this trip being ripped out of my hands.

Now, I know we've all been suffering during this pandemic, and truth be told I was probably in a much better situation than most of my peers, since all of my work was already on a computer. I was now working from home in my PJs instead of at my cubicle. But I really missed my office mates - they were what got me through the day before this. My not-so-great experience was getting exponentially worse. And the online conference? Not great. 0/10, actually. (Living in one of the earliest time zones on the planet sucks.)

I don't really need to get into the minutiae of my life for the next year and a half before I defended, but I spent A LOT of time in therapy, and running useless stats. Reading emails in August of 2020 sent me into uncontrollable fits of crying, and I was put on a stress leave (which I think I still worked through - silly me). It probably helped a bit though - I was able to write two papers and get them published after that.

(This is when I started realizing I had a talent for scientific writing and that a career in science communications would be the best avenue for me,... and here we are!)

After cutting what I felt like was many corners, I finally got the Ok to write my thesis. This was actually the best time of my degree, because it was just me and the words I typed. I know a lot of people prefer the science and find the writing terrible, but I'm the opposite. I like to write. I took myself on a little retreat to a remote area, hunkered down, and blasted my thesis out. It was actually really pleasant.

In summer of 2021, it was finally time to defend my thesis. I set up my office with nice ambient lighting and a candle to keep me calm through the affair. I invited my mom, my partner, and my close friends to attend. The defense actually went very well, for someone who felt like they had very little connection to their work.

And then it was done. I closed my laptop, and that was it.

I felt relief for the next few months. I was out; I earned my title of "Master". But like I said, I felt like I had very little connection to my work and, truthfully, what hurts now more than anything is that I don't feel like I got the experience that I came here for, at all. I left my friends and family behind, and moved to a new province for this. I'm not getting to see my nieces grow up anymore. It feels like a really unfair situation, but in the grand scheme of things, I know I'm really lucky.

Anyway, you may now call me "Master", but of what?

I feel very lucky that I got to attend an in-person graduation event. I think I got the closure I needed to put all of this behind me.

I would like to acknowledge all of the friends and family, and other support systems, who got me through these three turbulent years. You have been instrumental in my success, and so I thank you dearly. You know who you are.