Today’s post comes from Becca Cassady, a sixth-year doctoral candidate in the English Department. Becca is the Graduate Writing Center Coordinator as well as a Doctoral Administrative Fellow for the Baylor Graduate School, and she previously served as GSA’s Executive Vice President. She also mentor’s undergraduates in the Honors Residential College. Becca’s dissertation research focuses on writing transfer among tutors in a university writing center context.
Grad school is its own unique beast.
It’s a season of life that’s especially demanding of your time and mental (and emotional) energy, even more so if you’re in the thick of a dissertation or thesis. We’re students, but our education, particularly toward the end our degrees, is more like a full-time job. Even full-time jobs, however, need limits within the context of our lives. With the pressure to perform well, to prove ourselves to our professors and colleagues, and to contribute to our fields, it’s easy for grad students to allow their work to consume them—even outside of the classroom or lab.
There were times during my coursework when I needlessly overworked myself. If you had asked me why, I don’t think I’d point to any particular person or institutional voice putting that pressure on me. I think it was cultural, and it didn’t help that many of my classmates were doing the same. I spent many of my evenings glued to my laptop, I rarely kept sabbath, and I felt guilty any time I turned off my brain and turned on the tv. When I did take a morning to kayak with my cohort or practice calligraphy or [insert favorite hobby here], I always had a nagging urgency to get back to writing. Many times finishing dinner meant settling down in a coffee shop, not with a good book and a favorite beverage but with my laptop and a stack of journal articles.
Some of that isn’t unreasonable (shoutout to all of my dissertating friends), but when work became my default mode, I had to take a step back and take inventory of what I was doing. Could I still perform well if I took a whole Saturday off or kept more evenings free? What would it mean for me to take a bit of that study time and invest it in my personal life?
The most successful grad students I know are those that recognize there’s more to this season of life than, well, grad school. They set up boundaries, carve out non-negotiable time to rest, and (guiltlessly) take time to do things they love. Here are a few things I’ve found helpful as I navigate boundaries between work and rest:
- Schedule a day of rest. Call it sabbath, call it something else—regardless, carve out a 24 hour period in which you don’t allow yourself to do work. For me, that’s Saturday night around dinner to Sunday night around dinner. That allows me to still get some last minute work in to prepare for Monday, but only after a time of recharging and rest.
- Make time for your hobbies. We are all so busy, but don’t sacrifice keeping up with the things you love most. Example: I love calligraphy. Saturdays are one of my best work times, but you best believe that for two hours on the first Saturday of the month I’m with the Waco Calligraphy Guild.
- Know there will always be more work to do. If you wait to take breaks or do things you enjoy until you feel caught up, chances are you’ll be working 24/7 until the day you graduate. If you have things that are important to you, don’t compromise on them. For me, that’s church—I go to Sunday service and my community group even when I feel like my to-do list is running off the page because I’ve learned that there will always be more I “could” be doing.
- You have to eat; do it with friends. Meals are a necessity. If you’re in a particularly busy stretch of your program, use those breaks that are already built in to recharge and catch up with friends either in person or virtually, and don’t talk about work.
- Turn off email notifications on your phone. I can’t tell you the number of enjoyable moments that were cut short by a seemingly urgent request from a student or an ominous subject line. Sure, you can keep your work email readily available, but by turning off your notifications, you choose when to check it rather than having emails constantly intrude into your personal time.
- Recognize that sometimes breaks are more beneficial than “working.” Covid has changed our work rhythms, and working from home makes it tempting to work non-stop. But you can only do so much in a given time before your brain (and eyes) get weary. If you’ve had a long day, that last hour of staring at your laptop with zero progress and ample distractions would be better spent doing something you enjoy—or at least a break before sitting down to work again.
Sunset at Lake Waco, Woodway Park
Fast forward to my last year of my PhD program and I can tell you that those boundaries and the time I carved out for myself were vital to making it through my comps, my prospectus, and now my dissertation writing. I still met all my deadlines, but not at the expense of the things (and relationships) that brought me joy. More than that, I was far more productive than when I was constantly subjecting myself to long, unending work sessions. And I actually began to enjoy my work again when I wasn’t breathing it 24/7.
To be clear, there will always be exceptions. There will certainly be days and weeks when you need to put in extra hours. There will be exams or publication deadlines that you have to meet. There will be high expectations of you, and you’ll have to put in the hard work to get this advanced degree. That’s the nature of the beast. But the mindset you have about work and rest is something you’ll carry with you into your next season of life, your next job, your next city. Practice fitting your work into your life rather than fitting your life into your work. You may find it makes your work that much more enjoyable.
Have a topic you want us to address on the Bear Tracks blog? Tell us here or email Becca_Cassady@baylor.edu.