I hit a breaking point as a grad student. Here’s how I recovered

At 200 revolutions per minute, 4 liters of bacterial culture came loose from the shaker’s adhesive pads. Facing the pungent dripping liquid and razor-sharp glass shards, I burst into tears. I had reached my own breaking point. Three months earlier, I passed my Ph.D. candidacy exam—only for the lab to be shut down the following week as the COVID-19 pandemic set in. When the university began to reopen, I wanted to be the first person back in the lab. Ito be productive.

But as a newly minted Ph.D. candidate, I struggled to fully understand the intricacies of complex protocols, troubleshoot experiments, and manage my time. Each day brought more failure, more unknowns, and more shame. I felt I couldn’t do anything right, and early pandemic life only made matters worse. As a natural night owl, I would come in midafternoon and work until the next lab members arrived in the morning.

Still, every once in a while, I have fallen right back into my old habits. A few nights before giving a programwide presentation, I stayed up all night preparing talking points and slides. In a sleep-deprived daze, I hopped on an electric scooter to head home, hit a bump, and crashed. From the hard concrete, I stared up at the sky and promised myself another reset.

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