Apparently the physics department at my school talks to each other and they try and plan it so that there are never too many midterms in a week/day. This may seem small but I've never seen this anywhere else and it greatly reduces some of the stress of graduate school (ignoring that I only have 1 physics course, rest are in other departments). Does anyone else have a department that does little things like this?
I have to admit imposter syndrome is setting in pretty bad here. It doesn't help I joined a group where I'm technically a senior student(phd candidate vs masters candidate) but is in a somewhat different area than I am used to. I am having to play catchup pretty quickly, and this is made worse as our group is large and so tracking down the appropriate resources(or finding out that they even exist) can be a pain. I found out the other new student to the group was assigned a mentor to help him with everything whereas I was not. I'm taking this as a sign of my advisors confidence in me, but it still kind of sucks.
On the plus side my new desktop comes in this week hopefully so no more lugging laptop back and forth constantly and using a small 13" screen. Downside is expectations are increasing quickly( along with my workload) and I'm not sure I can keep up with the increasing amount of work(I'm doing 2 or 3 different projects, one industrial type committee, teaching and grading a graduate course, taking 3 courses, and supervising the installation of some new nasa facilities here). Does this seem like a normal workload for a first semester PhD student or am I just whining?
No comments:
Post a Comment