Things That Are Inducing Misery Right Now (with the major bits highlighted for your convenience.)

[missbaxter]

1. The guy behind me in the computer lab who sounds like he's hacking up a lung. Go outside and cough there, somewhere far away from me.  And I don't care if he can read this over my shoulder. That's right. Outside. Now, please.
2. The state, or non-state of my PhD. I  think I am failing in every possible way. This could be remedied if I wrote

Comments

[wildmagelet]

But most of the time I don't know why I'm in academia because I find conferences to be hugely boring, and academic writing to be vastly unsatisfyingI couldn't really identify more with this post (except that I'm not sure I'm a natural teacher, either, which makes me question my current academia path even more), and obviously since I'm currently on deferral after being driven into a stress ball by my own PhD, I'm not in the best position to offer advice! :) But I can offer empathy and lots of it! And while I'm very sorry that you're also struggling a bit, on a selfish note it's quite comforting to know that someone else is dealing with similar issues. Post-grad research is hard. I really don't think I understood how difficult it would be; sometimes you can force yourself through it, but a lot of the time it's just about impossible to do that and sometimes you do, as I've discovered, just need a bit of distance from it. I'm sure that you're doing the best you can at the moment - the fact that you're writing this post and worrying so

[missbaxter]

The support and sympathy are very much appreciated! And I don't think it's selfish at all to know that other people are having similar problems undertaking PhDs...I seem to be surrounded by very chipper workoholics with buckets of school spirit and twelve page CVs, which you can imagine does wonders for the self-esteem. Just knowing that other people out there are also in the same panicked state makes me feel not quite so much of a total screw-up