Into The Black Sea

Grad school is weird.

Since I got here, I've felt like I'm in way over my head. Sometimes, I feel so overwhelmed that I think there is no way I can do this. I wonder whose application they were really looking at when they decided to accept me. I feel out of my league.

At other times, grad school seems like a cake walk. My work didn't get any more difficult between undergrad and grad level courses. I run into all the same problems I did at Western with my schoolwork, and have all the same strengths. I'm actually completely convinced that if I'd turned in any of the papers I've written so far this semester to any of my undergrad professors, I would not be getting As. B-, maybe? I don't feel like I'm delivering at a level "worthy" of graduate work.

Then again, I look at my work load. I've read more books so far this semester than I did in my entire four years at Western. And I still have quite a few books left, plus a lot of research for two big papers coming up. I don't know how I went from barely getting my shit together for my poli sci classes at Western to getting my shit together here at Tech (though sometimes, still barely), especially after a full year of...nothing.

Don't get me wrong, I'm stoked that I'm doing so well. I'm just always afraid that either I am that much of an underachiever, or that my program here is that mediocre. It doesn't seem like it...except for my grades. I hardly feel like I deserve to be in grad school, let alone having solid As across the board (with the notable exception of my Russian class, which is incidentally an undergrad course...I think I'm hovering around an A- there).

Maybe I'm just over-thinking it. A lot will change next semester, with harder professors, more classes (four grad, one undergrad), and starting to put more thought into shaping my major paper. So far, I'm looking to examine nuclear energy in Russia, and likely the program in Iran as well, as it relates to national security. This semester, I've begun working with nuclear energy...a few weeks ago, I did a presentation on US nuclear energy policy. In the next month I'll be working my research for that project into a final paper. At the same time, I will be working on a research essay regarding the theory of security. I need to do a little more research to pin it down a bit more, but I'm hoping that will give me a foundation which I can build my major research paper upon.

This all sounds so...advanced. Again, I feel out of my league.