Living for the Future

Graduate School Anxiety and Overall Stress

As you may have heard, I am starting graduate school at Claremont Graduate University in Positive Developmental Psychology. I am pursuing my masters at the moment, with hopes that perhaps I would continue on to get my doctorate. And it's time I admit something: I am scared. I am terrified. I am overwhelmed. I am vulnerable.

A masters in positive psychology, AKA the psychology of happiness and positive emotions, seems like it would be perfect for me. And in many ways the field is excellent, still in its early stages with CGU at the forefront. But still, transitions are tough, and I'm scared.

I'm scared that I will achieve my master's and have nowhere to go. I'm scared that this is the wrong field for me. I'm worried that I don't even know what to do with my life. I'm anxious about career paths. I'm concerned I'm spending tuition money on an education I don't deserve. I'm terrified I don't even know why I'm doing this, that maybe I am just following the motions until I realize what I am looking for. And what if that is nothing like what I have been working towards?

I sometimes reflect on the idea that I defeated the odds. That everything-- medical misdiagnosis, severe depression, anxiety, situational triggers, suicidal ideation-- everything, was stacked against me, yet I pulled through. But that comes with its own crisis and confusion. 

I never planned on living, I only planned on existing. 

What does this life mean now that I have been gifted it again, every day I wake up? What am I supposed to do to share my passion and my inspiration with the world? 

So I fear that academia may not be the right path for me. But maybe it is. Most likely, this transitional anxiety and graduate school crisis will subside and I will chug along with my textbooks to Starbucks and I will keep living.

Because now I am living, and I don't want to waste a second of it. And maybe that's why I'm scared to study and work, because it would mean building up to a future I never thought I would get to. Having a traditional job, fighting for others and not just myself, spending my free time in creative outlets-- it's a wonderful vision. But it's also something I never planned on, a figment of imagination for a character in my head. But now that strong, healthy person is me, and I have to live up to 16 year-old Rebecca's depressed vision of what would never be. 

I know how to be mentally ill, but I am just now learning to be healthy. To live and let live, to do the boring activities because time is not running out. I have time to commit to myself and my education, and I just need to remind myself I deserve it. 

I deserve this life I am living. It can be uncomfortable and anxiety-producing and hard work, but I am growing into a person I earned the right to, an identity I can finally claim as my own.

With love and strength,

Rivi