Speaker 1: Welcome to Almost Dr. Armas. If you're new to this channel, thank you for checking it out. And if you're already a subscriber, thanks for being back again. In this channel, I talk about my life as a PhD student in clinical psychology and bring you information about the field of mental health. In today's video, I'm going to be doing a recap of my first month and change in graduate school. I was initially doing weekly recap videos, but I sort of lost track. So I'm just going to talk about how it's been so far and what I expect in the future. So first off, I can't even believe that I've been in graduate school for an entire month. It's actually the fifth, middle of the fifth week now, and it's just flown by. I thought that by now I would be feeling really overwhelmed and really busy and just kind of lose track of everything, but it's actually been okay. There's definitely the potential to get overwhelmed very quickly because there's a lot of work and you have to stay on top of your time. But what I'm trying to do is just stay organized and make sure that I don't fall behind. So what I've learned so far is that doing well in graduate school is all about managing your time and prioritizing your time. So you can't possibly spend four hours on everything because if you do, it will be at the expense of other things that need to get done. So some of the professors have told us, if you're spending more than one or two hours on this assignment, you're reading too much into it, you're doing too much. And I think that's been really valuable because it's really easy as a grad student to feel like, this needs to be perfect. I want to get the best grade possible. By now I've had several assignments and a few exams, and I've found that I thought it was going to be horrible and super difficult. And I was a little bit worried about the learning curve because I came from undergrad and some people have a master's in the program. But I actually feel like while the work is challenging or you're picked for a reason to these programs and a lot of faculty will tell us that, you know, you deserve to be here. You worked hard to get here. You're capable of doing this work. And that really, it seems silly, but it means a lot because you can get wrapped up in feeling like you don't belong. In some of my classes, we've talked about imposter syndrome, which is feeling like you're inadequate or you don't belong in a space, even though you technically deserve to be there and worked hard to get there. It's actually really common, but it turns out that those sorts of feelings kind of fade out as the workload kind of goes up and you're, you get a little bit busier and you don't have so much time to be thinking about how you measure up to other people. And that's one of the things that has been critical is just not worrying about how other people are doing on an assignment or an exam and just doing my best. Because if you spend time comparing, you know, not just in school, but in anything that you do, if you spend time comparing, it's just a waste of time. So another thing that I've learned over the past month, one of the TAs for one of my courses told us this. In graduate school, sometimes you are given an assignment and you're kind of thrown to the wolves, so to speak, to kind of figure out how to do the assignment without actually being taught it until afterwards. And it seems really unfair at first because it's like, what am I supposed to do? But I found that the reason why some professors do that is because they're trying to get you to think. And that's the main thing in graduate school. They don't, not that they don't care about your grades, but you're not there to get good grades. You're there to learn, to think critically, to expand your writing skills. So sometimes you might get assignments that seem really challenging or just outside of your scope and you worry like, how am I going to do on this assignment? And it turns out that it's not about how well you do, it's about figuring it out and being pushed. So that was a little bit different and it could be frustrating at first, but I actually think that's kind of cool because it's giving you the opportunity to see what your capacities are. So overall, surviving graduate school is really just about the balancing act. Right now, being a grad student is the biggest part of my identity, but I'm also a person. I also need to eat well, sleep well, exercise, spend time with my friends and my family, make time to stay connected to people that I care about. And surviving graduate school is all about how well you're able to balance those things and your coursework. So far it's been good. I mean, assignments have been due, exams have been taken, but I've tried to keep one day a week that's like sacred. Right now it's been Sundays where I try to just not do any schoolwork. And I might be recording for YouTube, but I'm not working on assignments. I'm just spending time with my friends or by myself or doing things that I need to get done like laundry and just really keeping that time for activities that don't have anything to do with school. Over the past month, there's definitely been one Sunday, maybe two, when I didn't get a chance to do that. If there's a really demanding assignment or an exam coming up, you may forfeit that one day and make up for it another time. I think graduate school is all about being flexible with yourself because you can't devote all your time to school, but at the same time certain things are going to have to take a back seat to your studies. And just getting your family and friends to understand that is also important. So in a nutshell, I would say the theme of the first month of graduate school has just been adjustment. Adjusting to the coursework, adjusting to what my life is like here, adjusting to new people, new professors, new standards, new expectations of me and for myself. And I think it's been good. I'm looking forward to what the next few months have in store and what the next few years have in store. And I know that every quarter will be different, every year is going to be different as things get more demanding and busier, but I feel like this first quarter, at least this first year, is me laying the foundation for how I'm going to survive the rest of my PhD career. That is month one, and if you really enjoy these recap videos, let me know so I can do more of them. At some point, I'm going to do a video on a day in the life of a PhD student, and you'll see me, maybe some of my classmates and friends, and what it's like just being in grad school on a given day. You know, what our work looks like, what our classes look like. So definitely stay tuned for that, and if you watch this, I really appreciate it. Again, I'm almost Dr. Armas. My goal is to inform you, to inspire you, to spark an interest in you, and hopefully also entertain you. Thank you again for watching, and do stay tuned for the next video.