Speaker 1: Thank you for checking out this video. My name is Arielle and I'm the founder of Grad Life Grind. And in today's video, I'm going to be talking about some limiting, false expectations that I had of graduate school before I started. And I'm going to present the reality to you. And the reason why I think this is important to share is because if you are a current graduate student, or you're about to start graduate school, or you're somebody who is hoping to be a grad student in the near future, I don't want you to have these false expectations. I don't want you to have limiting beliefs that are going to negatively shape your experience as a grad student. I want you to have all the information that you need to succeed. You might find that you have some of these thoughts yourself. If you're a current grad student, you might realize that you also had some of these expectations and hopefully you have realized that they're not actually true. But either way, I'm going to go over some of the primary ones that I think held me back and how I was able to realize that they're not true and overcome them. So the first false expectation that I had in grad school was that my dissertation needs to be groundbreaking. It needs to be this amazing project that is like the pinnacle of my career and the reality is that my dissertation just needs to get done. I have a playlist on my channel all about the dissertation journey. I have been trying to develop my dissertation proposal. Right now I'm in my third year and I'm hoping to propose my dissertation project soon, but if you want to stay up to date with all things dissertation, make sure that you're subscribed to this channel and go check out that playlist. But anyways, the point is that for some reason I thought that the dissertation was this like mega project and it needed to be like Nobel prize winning. And the truth is that a done dissertation is still a dissertation. A good dissertation is a done dissertation. At least that's what everyone in grad school says. And you really don't have to take on an ambitious project. If anything, that might be the wrong thing to do because then you might not finish in time. It might be more stress for you, which is not necessary. So that's the first thing that I think held me back and I ended up changing my dissertation idea because I thought that I needed to do this big project and I ended up downsizing anyways so that's the first one. Hopefully it helps you going into graduate school to know that your dissertation doesn't need to be this amazing career. Your graduate school career is actually the beginning of your career so if you're going to have a research career at all this is just the start of it and you're hopefully going to be doing something that is going to lay the foundation for that research career not be the biggest thing. It would be kind of crazy if your peak was in grad school. The other thing is not everybody who is pursuing a PhD or graduate school in general wants to have a career in research, so there are some folks who end up doing something completely unrelated to their dissertation and that's fine too. So don't add that unnecessary pressure to yourself like I did and just know that whatever you end up doing for your dissertation will be enough. The next expectation that I had about graduate school is that I would know everyone in my program or in my cohort and that everyone would also know and like me and I don't know really where this came from. I think that most graduate program cohorts are really small and mine is actually quite large so I can't possibly even know everyone or have a close relationship with everyone but anyways the reality that I realized is that I don't need to know everyone and I definitely don't need everyone to like me what I really need to do is nourish the relationships that nourish me and find people that are like-minded find my support system and really give time and energy to those relationships whether they're professional or personal and just being okay with having differences in opinion with people so that is one expectation versus reality that I think can also be really empowering don't go into graduate school thinking that you need to be pals with everyone that can be not only unrealistic but also a waste of your time find your people find your tribe one of the most powerful pieces of advice that I can give to people who are pursuing graduate school is to find their like core support group because grad school is so so hard and you can't do it alone I mean I guess you can do it alone but I don't think that you should and it just makes your life so much easier and it makes the experience so much more fulfilling to have people that you can trust and rely on to get through it with so do not like me so do not be like me and believe that you need to know and like and network with everybody okay so number three this expectation is probably the one that held me back the most in my first year of graduate school and before I tell you I want to make sure that you like this video, subscribe to this channel so that you can stay up to date with all the grad school content that I have for you here on Grad Life Grind. Now this is probably the silliest belief that I had and I also don't know really where I got it from but my expectation coming into graduate school was that grad school was going to consume my entire life and that I wouldn't have time for self-care, for social relationships, for family stuff, for any of the hobbies that I love and that are important to me. I just thought that I was going to have this one track mind for five to seven years and that I was only going to be in the books and I was always going to be studying and that I really just wouldn't have a life outside of school. The reality, thank goodness, is that that's not the case. The reality is that you can have whatever your version of work-life balance is. That doesn't mean that there won't be seasons where you're working a ton. It just means that that belief, that expectation is not true. The reality is that you can have a fun and fulfilling social life. You can have a fun and fulfilling work life and you can have the time. You should have the time to take care of yourself and honor the things that you like to do that you need to do for you. You can honor the people in your life that are important to you you just need discipline you need boundaries and you need to be intentional about it and that's what I've been learning how to do in the last couple of years as I advance in my graduate program so that is a belief that I don't know I get I think I don't really I never knew anyone who was pursuing a graduate degree so I don't even know really where that came from I just knew that grad school was going to be hard and I was like it's going to be so difficult and so challenging it's going to require every ounce of my time and energy and attention so I literally warned my friends and family back home like don't expect to hear from me a lot don't expect me to come home a lot and I was wrong and I'm grateful to say that I was wrong about that because honestly my life has been so much better and more adventurous and exciting than I ever thought that it would be during this part of my life. With that being said if you're about to start graduate school and this is a worry of yours and you're like oh my gosh how am I going to have a life how am I going to maintain my friendships and my family relationships or my relationship with a partner don't freak out it's totally possible you just need to go into this knowing that it's going to take effort it's going to take effort it's going to take planning it's going to take communication with other people in your life in order to have that balance the next expectation that I had was that literally everybody in graduate school was going to be better than me that all of my peers all of my classmates, everyone that I met, I just had this wild belief that everyone would be smarter than me, more innovative than me, more creative than me, have more experiences than me. And thankfully, the reality is that that's not true. The reality is that some people are smarter than me. Some people might have more experience than me. I went into graduate school straight from undergrad. So there are definitely people who have more work experience, who are older than me, who have more life experience than me, the truth is that yeah, there are people who are probably more creative or think differently than me and are more productive in their research than me and that that's fine. The reality is not that that's a bad thing. The reality is that I'm me and people are who they are and I'm doing the best that I can and the most important reality is that in graduate school I'm in competition with myself. I'm here to learn more than I did when I came in I'm here to become a different person than when I came in and I'm not here to compare myself to everybody so that is an expectation that I hope that you don't have I hope that you realize that you do belong in graduate school if you were admitted to graduate school it was for a reason if you are pursuing graduate study then you have everything that it takes and yes there are going to be people who might be more qualified in some aspects of your grad school career or your field of study but that doesn't mean that you don't belong the last expectation that I will share today is that I expected I believe that graduate school was going to feel like forever and my program is in clinical psychology it's five to seven years in in most cases I'm on a five-year track but that felt like such a long time and maybe it's because I was pretty young I was in my early 20s when I started but it has flown by the reality is not equal to the expectation the expectation was that it was going to like delay my life starting and that I was going to feel like I was in school forever which sometimes it does feel that way but in the grand scheme of things things have gone by so quickly like my third year is about to end I'm going into my fourth and after that it's internship so things are going way more quickly than I expected I look back and I can't believe how fast everything has gone I can't believe how much I've grown in a good way things have just developed so profoundly I think from one year to the next even looking from my first year to my second and from the end of my second to now towards the end of my third there's so much change and that's so awesome sometimes the days feel ridiculously long sometimes the weeks or the quarters semesters months feel so long but when I look back it's in the blink of an eye. I can't believe that it's almost three years since I moved cross-country and started this chapter of my life so if you're expecting that grad school is going to take forever, it's not. It's going to slip right through your fingers so you should try to enjoy every moment that you can, celebrate every win that you can, and remember that it's going to go by in the blink of an eye, literally. The other thing that you should know is that even though it seems like your life is not going to really start until you've graduated life is happening now life is happening as we speak and people go through all sorts of life transitions in graduate school people get married people have babies people go through breakups people lose loved ones and especially during the pandemic we've seen that so much life is happening at all times and your graduate program or your career development whatever it is that you're working on right now is part of your life. So it's not that there's grad school in a vacuum and there's life over here. It's all together. So that's an expectation that I'm really glad that I've finally been able to let go of because the reality is that things are going so, so quickly before I know it. I will be a licensed psychologist and my life has been happening. So much has happened in my life personally and professionally just over the past two and a half years. So definitely don't hold that belief coming into your graduate school career because it's just going to hold you back it's not true and as you can release these limiting beliefs you can walk into the grad school process and your academic journey with so much more freedom feeling more empowered at least i hope that's what this video is doing for you so there are probably lots more limiting beliefs or silly expectations that i had of this grad school journey but for now those are the ones that i'll share for today and if you're a current graduate student and you resonated with any of the things I shared please let me know in the comments tell us how you overcame it if you're a current grad student and you had some other beliefs about how things would be and you realize that the reality is much different tell us in the comments tell me in the comments if you are going to be a graduate student in the future whether you just got accepted or you're going to be applying soon and you have worries or fears or beliefs about how graduate school is going to be super hard or challenging in a way that you can't overcome which yes it's hard but it's it's not impossible if you have any beliefs like that let me know in the comments and I would be happy to chat with you and address them and with all that being said thank you so so much for watching this video thank you for spending time with me and I hope that if you found this video useful that you will share it with somebody else take care Thank you.