I’m currently working on a professional degree in a social science related field at one of the best universities for what I am studying. We are on a quarter system, which means I am approaching finals week.
My parents live about 35 miles away from me and I have lived in the city where my college is for a few years before I started the program, so most of my friends are from non-academia.
I love my parents and friends, but they need to stop with the guilt trips about how I “never have time for them” anymore. Grad school is a lot of work!!! Yeah I may only have class twice a week, but it’s not like I don’t have a billion research papers to write. I should add I have a part time job too to help build my resume. Oh yeah, I’m married to a lawyer (who works like 50-60 hours a week) - so the few moments my husband has “us” time, I want to take advantage of that and just have a quiet evening at home. All of this cuts down on my free time a lot!
My parents call me once a week and ask if I can come for dinner. I love them but “coming for dinner” translates into at least half a day of me not being about to do homework. They don’t understand this and get really offended when I tell them I am really busy and can’t meet with them this week. My friends do the same thing to me.
So yeah, please be nice to your grad school friends. Grad school is definitely not comparable to undergrad and the free time you have is very very very limited.
Why not set aside dates in advance for them? Then you can pre-plan your homework around it and it gives your parents something to look forward to which in turn gets you off the guilt trip.
I understand and sometimes wish that the day had 50 hours…
However, the best thing you can do is set aside one day a week for YOU. That means, being there for hubby, for family, or just go to a movie or pubs or whatever…one day a week where you intentionally have NO PLANS! No excuses, one full day a week with NO STUDY, no computer, no books!
Trust me - you can find a way to do it, and it will make your life easier!
My bookclub has been meeting for a dozen years - its just one night a month (and you don’t NEED to read the book), and over that dozen years we’ve had two people get their masters (at least) and one will finish a PhD in the next year. (I’m bothering to finish my Bachelors, but that barely counts) Others have had between one and three children. Several of us have married. Some of us have switched careers, some of us have had fairly demanding high profile jobs.
The upshot of this is that we just don’t see people for a few years at a time. Soon to be Dr. Deb disappeared for about three years, showing up maybe twice during that time. Now on the downhill slope of a PhD, we are seeing her again. We hear from them via email, know they are still interested, but busy, and respect that. And that gives us permission for our lives to get busy, for us to become “unavailable” and yet for the friendships to remain intact.
I’m sure (and I know) that it isn’t like the people we miss for a few months or a year are making no time at all for themselves, but I also understand that when you have limited time for yourself and a lot of friends and family, our bookclub may not be where you choose to spend the hours you have. You may want to spend it with your spouse, or your mother, or sitting in a bathtub with a trashy novel. And that is OK. My friends do not need to make me their top priority in life, I’m fine being regulated to “my life is busy, I’ll get back to you when things calm down.” Of course, I’d like to see them, and I’d expect to see them if I needed them (we show up in force for funerals, no matter how busy we all are).
Are your friends andfamily familiar with grad school, ore are you the first to go? In the doctoral program I teach in, we talk about this with the students up front since so many are first-generation college or grad students and their families and friends really don’t know what the work load is like.
When I was getting a masters (2 courses/semester), people seemed to think I could drop everything (as well as do all the shopping, cooking, and cleaning) because I was “only writing.” The interesting part was when I finished my degree and the friend with whom I was living started his degree–now* I *was working and he was in grad school, but he still expected me to do more of the work around the house.
OP, I TOTALLY hear you. My family and friends get all huffy when I don’t contact them regularly (thankfully they live in Korea, so seeing them is out of the quesiton anyway), but I simply do not have the peace of mind nor the extra time to do stuff outside of school. My program was a one year’s MA, so we took 2-3 courses a quarter WHILE writing our theses at the same time. I’m surprised any of us survived.
And don’t forget to add … there is no longer such a thing as “Summer Break” for us grad students. Forget about it. Doesn’t exist. Summer is my busy season, because that’s when I do most of my field work.
I’m tired of friends and relatives asking me what I’ve been up to now that “classes are over” for the summer. :rolleyes: Yeah, because that one three-hour class I was taking was the main burden on my time. :rolleyes:
My parents have taken well to my attempts to educate them on the ins and outs of grad school, so there’s not much pressure there, except for the occasional “Are you finished yet?” kind of question. But the extended family and most of the in-laws … just don’t get it… ::sigh::
(And for the record, I’m the first to go to grad school in my family, and my husband was the first to go to college in his…)
Vice, I’ve been there and I hear you. But the only thing that saved my sanity in grad school was having friends who weren’t enmeshed in academia. Mr Jim’s suggestion of making dates with your friends way in advance is a good one. It gives you something to look forward to and a chance to come up for air. Could you set up a monthly dinner with your parents? Like I said, I understand where you’re coming from, but it also seems harsh to say to your family, “Sorry, I’ll have time for you again in 2-3 years.”
Sunday is the informal “dinner with parents” time but you know… even if you schedule things in advance, shit comes up, papers aren’t done when you think they are, husband’s case ended earlier than he planned, etc.
Yeah I’m getting the “yay I can see you since it’s summertime” comments. Too bad I’m going to Europe for the summer to do research!! blargh.
Well my dad has an MBA, but his program was uh… not that challenging (I think online courses were involved…) so I guess I am the first in my family to go to a rigorous grad program.