School Rants Thread!

[jeiwa42]

Currently fed up with school.
My Spring Break was completely stressful, even on the days I was "relaxing" and "doing what I want" since the thought of my school work kept bothering me.
The best thing that happened was Jplop Karaoke, thank goodness that happened.
Now, I'm stuck having midterms for 2 weeks, and it doesnt help that after two weeks, theres barely a month left in the semester so there's going to be last minute exams prior to finals, so I dont think there's any time left in the semester for relaxation, and I just dont know how i'll endure the pressure.
Worse part is, this semester, my profs are really into group projects and presentations/performances, so the added stress of having to talk/perform in front of people is a load of icing on the cake (im shy, and that hinders me a lot).

I feel even worse how badly I am doing with my education, and how I despise it so much even though there's people around the world who want the opportunities that I have been blessed to have or have problems way worse than "stressful schoolwork".

I hope things get better, and from the looks of the random thread, 2015 isnt actually looking out as much of a good year it seems. Hope that changes for everyone.

[esm]

I'm so stressed about school. It's not that bad because I have great things waiting for me ahead (graduation, funded summer program, funded PhD program).

But I've honestly been drinking a LOT of smoothies because my appetite has been bad, and I haven't been sleeping well either. Eating and sleeping well have always been my priorities because I don't believe that people can function well in school without these things.

[TotallyUncool]

I hope that your stress level drops soon!

[Zunu]

I haven't been sleeping well either.

Can't help with the eating portion but I find White Noise (http://www.tmsoft.com/white-noise/#download) to be pretty helpful with sleeping.

[TotallyUncool]

I use industrial-grade white noise -- when I was a teenager, I got in the habit of sleeping with a fan turned on, and it's hard for me to get to sleep without something of the sort. Lately, I've been using two fans, plus the fan in my window air conditioner.

[Zunu]

Yeah, I use a fan too sometimes. But that app has all kinds of noises, not just "white noise" but ocean, highway, thunderstorm, train tracks, fire crackling, clothes dryer, dozens more, mix 'em, loop your own recordings, off-timer, wake up timer, etc. Plus, with a fan, you can't use this if you happen not to be alone.

[TotallyUncool]

True -- and they look like they'd be much more comfortable for sleeping than these.

[jeiwa42]

Phew, well, I got through the first half of my midterms. The other half is on Monday but it shouldnt be as bad. I am now finally waking up happily, well rested, full of energy, and looking forward to making the best of each day, as opposed to before where I would barely sleep, wake up upset, scared of getting out of bed to face stressful school work one after the other.

[esm]

I've been able to be super productive in the past week. There's a ton to do, so despite the fact that I've been working really hard I feel like I -could- do better. Since late February I've started waking up at 7 or 7:30 (even on weekends), and there hasn't actually been a day when I'd actually wake up because of the alarm, since I end up waking naturally about half an hour before.

I've been able to eat well again since Monday, probably because I got the bulk of my thesis done (about 10,000 words so far) and sent it to my adviser. I've been staring at the computer analyzing speech files for hours and hours each day, and while that was making me dizzy last week I got used to it and would be done with all of that in an hour if I weren't about to go volunteer at an undergrad research symposium now.

But yeah, I discovered that drinking lots of smoothies and protein shakes between meals really help give me energy to keep working hard. I also ran like 15 subjects for a separate study in the past two weeks, so that interrupts my ability to work continuously most days.

[TotallyUncool]

That is productive -- and congratulations on getting most of your thesis done! I think that a thesis of that kind, involving serious theoretical work plus field research, along with data-collection and analysis, is much more demanding than the typical Lit-major do-all-the-research-in-the-library thesis.

I'm sitting here at home, trying to prop my eyes open for a 9:30 AM online meeting. I could be a lot more productive than that!