I taught my first course as a graduate student, during my fifth year in grad school. One thing my advisor was always really great at was making sure his students were funded with research money. However, we ran into a 1-semester gap between contracts that forced me to find other ways of supporting myself. I managed to land a gig as an instructor which turned out to be one of the most important experiences of my life: I loved it.
The only problem was, I loved it so much that I left the rest of my responsibilities untended. That semester, I made zero progress on my research. I had trouble focusing in classes. I was dedicated and hard-working, but only to the teaching. I was getting a taste of what I actually came for, and after 5 years of working towards it, I was ready to be there!
A Taste of the Future
I think the problem I was facing was that school often feels like hoop-jumping. The scenarios are always fabricated – simplified simulations of what we hope to really do someday. Everything we try has consequences. If you tinker on an assignment and don’t quite end up where the instructor intended, you lose points and watch your permanent record suffer. As students, we’re expected to do things the way the instructor says, when they say, period. Everyone in the class is assigned the same work, regardless of their prior experience or needs. It can feel very “one-size-fits-all” but actually fits none.
Meanwhile, as an instructor I had ultimate freedom. I got to explore and try new ideas. Some worked, others definitely didn’t. Don’t misread here – I’m not writing about the difference between being a student and being a teacher. I am writing about the difference between being a student and being a professional. I loved the feeling of being a professional, in the field I was studying to build my career in.
Let’s Do This!
Have you had a similar experience? Maybe you worked an internship, or a co-op, or undergraduate research. As students, when we finally get a taste of what we’re working so hard to achieve it can be hard to go back to class and doing things as they were. I felt so ready to just move on – I wanted to be done with school and start my career.
To make matters worse, I was good at it! I received very high teaching evaluations from my students (many of whom remain in contact to this day). They awarded me the Favorite Faculty Award that year. I’m not bragging, I just want you to imagine where I was in that moment. After years of working in a lab, pulling late nights on homework and debugging code, I got the validation that this career really was for me. I was good at the job I was preparing for, which made it all the more difficult for me to go back to class as a student. I was ready, even though I hadn’t graduated yet.
The Price of Playing
It would be four years before I taught again. I’m glad I didn’t know that at the time or I might have taken them up on their offer to become a full-time instructor (not professor, a year-to-year job that may evaporate at any moment and has little promotion potential). Instead, I went back to class, back to the lab and got the job done.
I resent the idea of degrees as certification (that’s a post for another day). It wasn’t enough for me to just tell myself that I “had to finish” to get the job. I needed a deeper motivation to finish my degree than “its required.” I needed something to cling to day in and day out, one lecture and homework assignment at a time.
This Is Training
I always thought seeing the finish line would be motivating. Honestly, it made it harder until I realized that everything I was seeing was a cheaper substitute for the real thing. An internship isn’t a full-time job. It underpays, gives little responsibility, and it goes away. Same for undergrad research and random teaching gigs as a grad student. Life often tries to hand us shortcuts and substitutes for the real thing, but we all know in our heart of hearts that it would leave us dissatisfied.
That’s what I clung to. I focused on getting the real thing, and being ready for it when it came. Every topic I had to learn was an opportunity to broaden my ability to do the job better in the future. Every assignment was a chance to prepare (though sometimes I had to work very hard to convince myself of that).
Conclusion
If you’ve gotten a tase of the “real world” and are finding it hard to stay motivated as a student, I hope that you know you’re not alone. It’s a normal feeling, though we might not talk about it much. You’re not lazy or unmotivated – you’re just really excited for where this all leads. If you think you’re good and ready now, just imagine how much better you could be with additional training and practice. I can’t count the number of times a recent graduate has told me that some obscure idea that they never thought they’d need ended up being the thing that unlocked their career. Hunt for that thing, and savor the experience, you don’t get many chances to do something like being a full-time student.
Embrace learning, embrace the pursuit of personal power.
