Today’s blog is guest-written by Susanna Harris, a graduate student at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
It’s one thing to hear that everything is going to be okay. It’s another to know it and make it that way.
Photo provided by Susanna Harris
At the end of a lab meeting where I had outlined my last of six years getting my PhD, my advisor announced she would be moving the lab from North Carolina to Massachusetts in about six months. Just when everything had settled into place, this announcement turned my bookshelf of plans on its side once again. Suddenly, I didn’t know what would happen next.
I chose to go to grad school partly to challenge myself to accept uncertainty. When I started my PhD in Microbiology in 2014, I thought this would mean reading new papers and adjusting experiments accordingly. As it has turned out, the real challenge has been to constantly get back up as life and graduate school knock me flat on my ass. Yes, I needed strength to power through, but even more than that, I needed resilience.
Continue reading “Experimenting with Resilience: Lessons from Grad School”