Breathe In, Breathe Out

Well hello everyone and welcome back to the podcast Resilience in STEM. I hope you all have had a wonderful month of February and enjoying the beginning of March. At the moment, it’s the middle of spring break for me so I am enjoying this. It’s nice not having to balance classes, my extracurriculars, and graduate school stuff. So it’s been nice to take a deep breath, relax, see how things are going, and not worry about impending deadlines. Of course, I do have classes going on, but it’s not that bad. 

 

I thought I would jump into a life update since this episode has to do with mental health and how to destress. Graduate school interviews have been a lot. The past month has been very hectic for me. I applied to 18 programs and I never recommend doing that. I mentioned this in the last episode, but I talked about how I didn’t take my advice of applying to 8-10 schools because I was worried I did not have a chance and did not think I would get any interviews. I didn’t take that advice, but I wish I should have. Just some advice that if you apply for too many programs it will put a strain on your wellbeing. 

 

So I applied to 18 programs and fortunately got 15 interview invites, which was a huge shock. From there I decided to attend 11 interviews that were both virtual and in-person. If you are wondering what those are like, I talked about it in an episode before. So far, I have had 7 acceptances from those 11 interviews and 1 result left. That’s been exciting to see how this cycle has laid out for me and the opportunities I’m receiving. I’m in this place of surrealness where I’m very shocked, but also very tired. These interviews have taken a lot out of me because while it’s great traveling to visit the institution, you do have to be “on” all of the time. You have to be engaging and be compatible with different personalities constantly. It is a lot to take on. In the next few days, I plan on weighing the pros and cons of the programs I got accepted to make a decision. I will be talking about that a bit more in my next episode on what factors I’m considering (but I also talked about it in a previous episode on how to choose the best program for you). At the moment I am tied within 3 programs and have no idea which program I see myself in the best. To be honest, I do see myself in all of these programs so it’s very hard to make sure I am making the right decision. 

 

Overall, this is a regular thing for graduate school admissions (I believe it also applies to Master's programs) is the deadline to make your decision is April 15th. Now that I am recording this (it is March 14th) I have about a month to decide. Thankfully I don't have any more interviews and I won’t be travelling anywhere else. This allows me to sit and think about the best program for me within the next 5 years of my life, which sounds very daunting but exciting at the same time. 

 

Now I am in the transition into a “normal” undergrad lifestyle. I'm working on living in the moment of being a normal college senior. I keep thinking back 4 years ago when I started writing the outline for this episode it was the same day the whole world shut down 4 years ago. It’s crazy that within 4 years the impact COVID-19 had on us and where I am now. I feel as if I could have never predicted it. If I told myself 4 years ago my life now, that person would not believe me. It’s just crazy what 4 years can do to a person’s life. 

 

I also wanted to title this episode “Breathe in, Breathe Out”. For me, this lets me calm down and make the right decisions. Another reason why I wanted to have this episode was to focus on burnout. I feel this is an important this to address if you go into graduate school, any type of professional school, or just the next stage of your life. If I had a nickel for the amount of times people told me graduate school would be hard, I would be a millionaire. At the same time, I know it’s going to be hard, but I want to give myself the best chance to succeed as well. Especially learning to breathe in, breathe out, face the burnout, and learn how to conquer it for whatever path I decide to take. 

 

I thought I would start talking about my experiences with burnout and what impact it has had on me. This all started during high school. It was kind of early to face burnout but I am grateful that I did. I was (just like now) very motivated, very career-oriented, and wanted to make sure I had the best scores. At that time I was taking tons of Advanced Placement (AP) classes, which are like college-level courses. I took so many of them, but I was pushing myself so hard that I wasn’t allowing myself to have any free time and I was mentally drained. I was also physically exhausted because of band and college applications. Mentally, I was out by the end of the year. It caused me to do worse on my AP exams and not see improvements in my standardized testing. This took a toll on me. No matter how hard I tried I could not get any better. I realized I did not have any gas in the tank to give. That was my scenario of seeing what the effect of burnout can have. It wasn’t the end of the world but I saw what happened to me without seeking help. It was hard to see that it was burnout. I thought I was just tired, I wasn’t working hard enough, or I was thinking about things a certain way. But it genuinely was burnout. No matter how much effort I put into a task or studied, I would not get a higher score. 

 

I kid you not, I remember I took an SAT earlier and I got a score within the 1300’s range. I decided to take it one more time in May, which was right at the height of AP testing and everything going on. I remember I worked hard and completed multiple practice exams. But when I took the exam again in May, I got the same score with the same sub-scores. So it was really interesting to see no matter how much more effort I put in, I scored the same. It was not a great time, but I got to see the effect of burnout without addressing it early on. 

 

From learning that in high school, I was able to transition that during college and see how I could prevent myself from burnout. I learned a couple of lessons along the way that could help out. I think this is also luck, but I have been able to continue a larger workload in college and be mentally better. 

 

In college, I learned how to fail. This was something hard for me to experience, especially during my sophomore year of college when I got my first C. But it showed me that grades are not the most important thing in the world. It also taught me to learn for knowledge and not the grade. If you learn for the grade, you will most likely forget the material immediately. You are just trying to get the best score possible and are not applying it to the work you are doing. I learned to fail because that just shows I didn’t understand the concept well enough. Also learning to fail is also learning how to problem solve and see what you need to do to succeed the next time. Every time I get a failing grade (I don’t get them that often) it doesn’t hurt me as much as during high school. When I was in high school, if I got below an 85 on any assignment I would freak out. But now in college, I’ve changed that frame of mind to think, “What can I do to do better next time?”. 

 

The next thing I learned in college was to speak up for myself. This kind of happens in more engineering classes. I see this more since my major is at the intersection between biomedical sciences and engineering. Typically, engineers don’t talk or ask that many questions during the lecture to the professor at least. Whereas in college, the students are always asking questions and constantly engaging. It showed me that I needed to speak up for myself and ask questions. If there was something my classmates and I felt wasn’t graded appropriately or there was a major misunderstanding, I learned to just go up to the professor and ask “Could you explain this for us please”. To them, it’s nothing personal. They like it when you engage with their lecture because it shows that you’re interested and you want to be better. It proved me valuable to speak up for myself and understand my shortcomings. I’d rather be vocal and tell people I am unsure what I’m doing so I can get the help I need instead of silently not knowing what I’m doing, which can result in bigger problems. 

 

The next skill I gained in college was engaging in therapy. I enjoyed it even though it is a taboo topic sometimes. In earlier years of college, I did conversational therapy and then I switched to engaging in mental health and wellness apps daily. It’s been really helpful to document things happening in my life and have someone to vent to. Even though I think my mental health isn’t terrible, I believe it benefits from therapy. You can talk to someone about your problems, vent, or learn how to balance your work life and personal life. They are licensed professionals so they can help you out by looking at your life from a different perspective. It’s helped me a lot I recommend it to anyone even if you don’t have a huge mental health problem. 

 

The last thing I learned in college was how to step back. I learned this more when doing undergraduate research. In my classes, I knew could always finish my assignments in a reasonable time frame. During my sophomore and junior year, I had my independent research project and I was working on what I needed to do. I remember I would get so overwhelmed that it would cause me to make mistakes that I normally wouldn’t have. Because of that, I would have to redo the entire steps. That’s taught me to recognize when I am not thinking clearly or overwhelmed so I can get to a spot to stop and take the evening off. I feel it’s really helpful because you do your best work when you’re in a better mental state. I think that applies to every single career. If you have a better mindset on life or how to solve problems, you are going to solve things more efficiently and with better creativity. It’s just knowing your boundaries and when you need to stop. 

 

So that has been my transition from being in high school and college and what I’ve been doing to mitigate my burnout. In the past eight years, I’ve been able to see the effects of burnout on me and transition to thinking “How can I stop my burnout?” And “What can I do to help myself?”. I thought with the rest of the episode I could talk about some key points of advice on ways to mitigate burnout. Kind of points I talked about before, but also general advice I can give on this. 

 

The first one is hobbies and social activities. It’s really good whenever you’re getting in a rut of work to have something you can vent your frustrations to or put your energy into something more creative and lighthearted. Like if you make a mistake it’s not the end of the world and you are okay that this activity can have mistakes. For me, that hobby is painting or legos. This is something that I can mess up in and take my time. For someone else that can look completely different, such as taking road trips or walking around a park. These are hobbies I feel everyone should have so they don’t feel their whole life is consumed by work because that can very much lead to burnout. 

 

Like I said before therapy or meditation helps to communicate your feelings. If things do get bad you do have someone to talk to or get advice on how to deal with that situation. You can also learn how to balance your life more effectively and live a more fulfilling lifestyle. In meditation, it can be good to center yourself and not be distracted by the outside world. This is more related to adulthood, such as entering graduate school, but for my interviews, a lot of current students have talked about getting an emotional support animal if feasible. I’m looking into getting one myself so I can have some companionship, especially as I start graduate school I don’t want to be alone. Having an emotional support animal to keep me company and someone is waiting for me at home, wherever that may be. 

 

The next thing (I got this from therapy) is documenting things. This can be whatever you see fit (whether it’s documenting things that happened during the day, making a to-do list, rating your emotions, or bullet journaling). Overall, documenting can help you feel in touch with your surroundings and time. Personally, this helps me because I can get easily overwhelmed with tasks and deadlines that time completely slips from me. Sometimes I don’t even know what day of the week it is or I am just stuck in my routine. It’s just good to be aware of your surroundings and time. If you’re in a rut or a high-pressure situation, it’s very hard to see your surroundings and time will go by so much quicker. 

 

The last thing I feel is very very VERY important (I cannot stress this enough) is having a support network. This can look in so many different ways. This can be your family, friends, therapist, mentor, and more. It’s just having a network you can vent to and you feel supported by. I feel sometimes, especially this may be more in professional school, you may feel it’s nice someone understands what you’re going through or at least can empathize with you. This is something I am heavily thinking about during graduate school, is whether I will find a group of people who can understand my experiences, can support and empower me, and whether there are resources available for graduate students. If you don’t have a support network, there are many ways to find one, such as getting therapy, joining an organization, and also participating in community events. Honestly, video-calling friends who aren’t with you physically also works. For some of my friends, they are out of state for college and the rest of their friends stayed to do college in the state. What they do is schedule video calls with friends every week so that way they can be immersed in their friend's life and have someone to talk to. It’s nice to see.

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