First, sorry to hear about all this.
Second, are you seeing a therapist? I think it's really important in grad school and hopefully your health care provides it. It is totally possible that some (all?) of this may be depression related and it's going to be hard for you to tackle that on your own. Even if it's not depression related, you may still well benefit from a professional outlet.
Third, when students disappoint, that doesn't always mean that they are not being productive at all. As I tried to point out in my last post, it's often about really trivial things like a prompt email reply (that doesn't require any reporting on anything deep, I'm seriously talking trivialities like when are you free next week?). So don't take the comments in that post too seriously upon yourself.
Fourth, when people start encouraging you to think about alternatives, they may be doing so because they truly believe from everything YOU have told them that grad school may not be the thing for you and they want to be supportive of that. So don't see it as a hint, necessarily.
So what to do? Think about whether you enjoy this life. If it's only what may be ahead that is keeping you going, that may not be enough. Do you look forward to coming up with research questions? Do you enjoy designing projects? Do you like the data collection/analysis/write-up (or insert appropriate types of work in your field)? Do you enjoy teaching and interacting with students? Do you enjoy aspects of academia? If the answers are mostly no then perhaps this isn't for you. But if the answers are yes then it may be too early to change track.
You haven't given us enough information about your situation to know the extent to which you may have already disappointed people. For example, if you're in your fifth year and still barely starting your dissertation, that may be a concern. But even then it's hard to know in the abstract without the types of specifics that a.secret doesn't really allow.
If you're really ready to make some changes, you may consider talking to your advisor about all that. However, I'd first start by making some actual changes. IF you have a history of promising things in the past and not following up on them ( and by "history" I mean at least 3-4 times) then simply having a meeting about your desire to make things better may not be convincing. However, if you really do start to make some changes and then ask to talk to your advisor to see what suggestions s/he has for you to continue improving the situation, that could be helpful.
Again, we don't know enough details about your situation here to consider all the factors involved so be sure not to take some of these comments too seriously. They may not really apply.
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Posted by Orange Ina to academicsecret at 10/08/2006 05:58:27 AM
