Hasn't Been That Long

My graduate experience thus far has been difficult. Only not in the way I imagined it would be, at all.

Sure, my classes are challenging. I've done a remarkable amount of work this semester, eclipsing much of my undergraduate work--combined (as far as volume, at the very least). Sometimes I feel overwhelmed, but I never feel like my workload is too difficult for me to handle.

My difficulties lie in my feeling of isolation. On a campus of almost 30,000 students, I feel completely alone. My social encounters are limited to classroom discussion, and office small-talk. While these have their place, I'm increasingly starved for real social interaction.

I even have conversations with my fish. Maybe I'm just going crazy.

On top of this, I've been trying to understand what it is I'm doing here. I don't want to be here. I had zero intention of actually going to grad school...Virginia Tech was (and is) my Plan C. Plan A seems to be forever "in process". Plan B almost worked...but I didn't make the cut. I still don't really want to be here though.

My family wants me to be. They love the fact that I'm furthering my education. Expanding my opportunities. Of course, in their eyes, a master's degree inevitably leads to a fulfilling and lucrative career. I know better. There goes one potential motivation for actually caring about being here. Not that I care as much as they do about making money...they value money and the luxuries that come with it far more than I do. Sure, those things can be nice, but it's not my end goal in life.

Now, I'm sitting in a limbo, waiting on the career I really want, though each passing day makes it seem less and less likely that that will ever work out. In the mean time, any other job that has ever really interested me, or that I've enjoyed in the past, is no longer an option. I love doing physical work. I absolutely despise anything that requires me to sit behind a desk for 8 hours a day. Only now I'm "too educated" to go back to unskilled labor (though I still don't actually have any skills...). So I continue to study. Each day resenting my decision a little more to further mire myself in unimaginable debt, with seemingly little prospect of my education later paying off.

Between the crushing loneliness and my very rational fear of being forever trapped behind a desk (or worse, unemployable), graduate school is indeed very difficult.