What I struggle with the most in grad school

I am someone who needs a very rigid schedule. Anytime I have too much unstructured time, I don’t do well. Unfortunately, that is pretty much what my grad school program is like.

I am completely in charge of my schedule: how many classes I take each semester, how much time I spend in lab, how much time I spend on school work, how much reading I do each day. It is all up for me to decide. I know some people would love the lack of structure, but for me, I find it really difficult.

I hate not knowing what my weeks are going to look like, I am uneasy that I don’t know when I am going to reach major milestones in my program, and everything just seems super unclear. I often wish there was someone to tell me exactly what to do everyday. But since a PhD is a demonstration on your ability to conduct independent research, that is just not the case.

I haven’t completely figured out how to deal with this, but I have some tools that have been helping me. I try to plan everything out as much as I can, I get advice from other grad students, and outline all of my responsibilities so I can check back on it whenever I feel lost. But most importantly, I need to learn how to be proud of my current progress and realize that I am actually making progress!

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