If you haven’t listen to Episode 4 yet, you can do so here or check out other episodes you may have missed here.
(Special thank you to Doug, Kevin, Jeff, & Candace for sharing their experiences)
Does grad school make us anxious or do anxious people go to grad school?
While the jury may be out on that, it appears that grad school and anxiety go hand in hand. This episode the didactic trio talk about managing anxiety!
How do grad students compare to the general population:
“Some 39 percent of respondents scored in the moderate-to-severe depression range, as compared to 6 percent of the general population measured previously with the same scale.”
Who is anxious??:
- 55% of transtudents
- 43% of female students
- 34% of male students
What they are students anxious about?:
- 1) Work-life balance… Because work-life balance is associated with physical and mental well-being, and little is known about it in the graduate trainee population, the authors asked respondents if they agreed that their work-life balance was “good.” Of the graduate students who experienced moderate to severe anxiety, 56 percent did not agree, versus 24 percent who did. Among graduate students with depression, more than half (55 percent) did not agree with the statement (21 percent agreed).
- The Grad relationship with Advisor and/or PI
Self Care:
For this weeks self-care segment we went to a cat cafe! We all highly recommend going! Even Zach! If you are interested in finding a cafe in your neck of the woods, then check this site for more info! Meow! We all ranked it very high, and would go again. They now have about 20 cats!
Note: The sibling of the cat that I (Kristen) feel in a strong like with’s sibling ‘Tempe’ was the first cat adopted out of the cafe! Hopefully Tofu will find a great home soon!
As always we are interested in hearing from all of you! How do you manage your anxiety!? And until next time…
Keep on survivin’
Kristen
Sources:
Oooo…. That needing a certain level of anxiety really resonated with me.
I’d forgotten about it, but at one time I tried kava kava root. It worked too well for me. I didn’t care about ANYTHING. So, I wasn’t anxious, but I didn’t care about not getting anything done. On one level, I was concerned. Logically, I knew I was on track to fail if I didn’t do anything. But I couldn’t bring myself to care about the work or care about caring.
Thank you for sharing that! It takes so much gusto to start up again and I think it’s important to know that if you have had a break, you can still succeed and finish. You are so inspiring!! Much love!
This episode actually helped me to mentally frame getting counseling to get through grad school is actually a reallly good idea.
Totally!!!! I think we forget that while others have had similar journeys, we are all doing something no one else has done!