I am not a very balanced person. I don't think anyone around me would say, "Yes, Gabrielle's very balanced, centred I'd say". For a while I had a very bad habit of barreling through life, then crashing as if I'd run out of petrol. Compound that with depression and you get a nice picture of a mess.

But I'm older now. Maybe not much wiser, but I am definitely older, and lo and behold, growing older teaches you some things.

Like...

You can't do everything at once.

Or

Slow and steady can win the day.

Grad school is all about balance, especially if you're in the PhD; at least for me. You can't just be a hermit and study, because unfortunately (fortunately?) networking is also part of the business. Unless you get a dozen published in Nature or win the Nobel during your grad school years, all that research you produce won't mean anything unless you get your name out there.

And that means networking.

Oh the horror.

But in the current political climate, especially in the atmosphere of "academics are these old geezers who sit in labs or musty libraries all day and bicker over semantics" that contributes to anti-intellectualism, I think it's partly the grad students' burden to get out there, and make ourselves known, so that the people won't be so antagonistic to the idea of scholarship.

For the introverts - and boy are we introverted - this is tantamount to getting a large door handle shoved into our mouths and being told to chew. It's painful and unnecessary... or is it? The easiest place to begin socialising/networking would be your cohorts, and if you can't even be friends with your cohorts, how would you network with people who are already published scholars and are way above you in both pay grade and station?

It also helps (again, for me) to have people around me who aren't in grad school. They keep reminding you that there is a life outside research and Elsevier.

With that spiel, I'm back to reading.