Making sense of the chaos

I’ve somehow dragged myself through a really challenging few months, and although in many ways there have been some incredibly positive changes in my life, it hasn’t been easy. I started a postgraduate course in January and I was extremely enthusiastic leading up to the start of the course. I would be studying something I was interested in at an excellent university, and all of my communication with people from the university had been really positive and encouraging.

But then I started studying and I fell apart. I didn’t go to class as often as I should, in fact, I hardly went at all. I struggled through readings that were sometimes accessible and sometimes weren’t, and when they weren’t I felt too overwhelmed to reach out and ask for help. I was dealing with some complicated family stuff, but who isn’t, so I reasoned that this wasn’t a good enough excuse to not be working. And deep down, I knew that no matter what was going on in my personal life, that wasn’t the reason why I was struggling.

Postgraduate study has made me confront a lot of things about the way my brain works, or doesn’t. And some of it has been nice and some of it hasn’t. I’ve always known that I struggle to concentrate. I’m a good student in many ways. I pick up ideas quickly and I love to learn. But I rush through tasks, fail to read instructions properly and get distracted easily. I have bursts of energy where I start new projects, throwing myself into them and focussing on them to the exclusion of all else, but as soon as I lose interest, I push the project aside and start something new, or usually crash for a while, unable to do much of anything. I’ve always known that this is a problem for me and yet I’ve been able to work through it because I’m usually presented with work that just isn’t that difficult for me.

“Fake it till you make it,” became somewhat of a personal mantra, and it was one that I knew was unhealthy but there was never much incentive to do anything to change it. Could I even change it, if it’s how my brain seems to work?

Then I started a master’s degree and faking it was no longer an option. I couldn’t skate through the semester getting distracted by personal projects and then somehow turning in decent essays at the end of it. I knew I couldn’t do it, and yet I also couldn’t bring myself to do anything about it. Because sitting down to read each week, or to log in to a Teams seminar felt impossible. Quite simply, I had no idea how to learn in a way that works with the way my brain operates. I still don’t, but I feel like I am making some progress.

It’s not as simple as just sucking it up and dealing with it. When I say I can’t concentrate, I really mean it. It ruins my life. I forget deadlines and miss appointments. I fail to send emails because organising myself enough to do it feels like climbing a mountain. I tell people I’d like to work with them on a project, meaning it very sincerely, and then will find myself distracted by something else. I know there are probably reasons for this, but the irony is I can’t do anything about them, because the act of calling someone for an appointment or filling in a form feels like such a huge task. My inability to keep track of time or prioritise tasks is incredibly destructive. I can go months without speaking to a friend, and have no concept that so much time has passed. So it strains my personal life as much as my academic and professional one.

So I reached the end of this semester in a complete mess. I hadn’t reached out for help, but I had also faced some inaccessibility. I was exhausted and couldn’t bring myself to start another conversation about access. So I curled up and ignored everything until it became a huge problem. Add in an ear infection which limited my ability to read with a screen reader for a couple of weeks and suddenly things started coming crashing down around me. And finally I reached out for help because I realised that I had no choice. I was going to fail university if I didn’t tell somebody that I wasn’t ok.

I considered dropping out. Not because I wanted to, but because it would have been easier to just give up. But I’d also been awarded a scholarship that I knew I couldn’t pay back, and I felt guilty for taking that scholarship away from someone else if all I was going to do was fail. So all of these things prompted me to reach out and ask for an extension to a couple of essays, which then resulted in someone at the university putting me in contact with someone else who works to support students.

The good news is that once I said I wasn’t ok, everyone was very understanding. I’ve had a couple of meetings this week with someone from student support, and also my project supervisor who is also my academic tutor. They have both helped me organise my life a little more, and talked me through what I need to do and when. It also turns out that I haven’t had access to some materials that I was supposed to, but I’m so used to honestly having no idea what I’m supposed to be doing, I’d just assumed it was a mistake on my end.

My second semester has already started, and I am feeling overwhelmed. I still have some work outstanding from the first semester and I feel like I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing for each of my classes. Just reading over the material to figure out how often we meet and what tasks I need to prioritise for each meeting is difficult for me. But I’ve scheduled a meeting with one of the module leaders and I’ve emailed another to ask some questions. So even those small actions feel like progress.

I also looked at my timetable today and wrote out which classes I am supposed to attend when next week. I’m not sure if they change week to week, but the timetable online didn’t match the one that had synced with my phone, so I realised that it’s easier to approach this each week and feel less overwhelmed, than trying to write down weeks worth of appointments that could then change.

Amidst the chaos I started a full-time job, which definitely adds some scheduling conflicts into the mix, but has overall been very positive. I’ve joined a team who are really nice and who have welcomed me. And I feel like I’m doing well at work, or as well as anyone does in their first few weeks. I find it somewhat easier to stay on track at work because everything is very clearly scheduled. I meet with people or they email me with specific tasks they’d like me to work on. I put those tasks in my to do list app and then map out time in my calendar. In a strange way, the disaster of this last semester at university taught me that this is what I need to do if I’m going to be successful and stay on track. If I can see exactly what I need to do, I can usually do it. But as soon as there is some ambiguity or everything feels chaotic, I start to spiral quickly.

It’s been hard. Realising that these things that have always made life difficult are now making it almost impossible. It’s also made me question how much easier things could have been in other situations if I’d known what I’d needed, or how to access support. It does concern me, looking towards my future and wondering what I’ll do if it’s work, not my degree, that becomes so difficult for me to manage. But I also reason with myself and remember that I can speak to people, in fact I must speak with them. It’s ok to ask questions and to clarify details, preferably at the start. If I have to live within the lines of a rigid to do list and calendar at least at work then it’s what I have to do.

I wasn’t sure I was going to write this down or publish it because it feels very personal. I’m not even sure what exactly I’m writing about. I’m sure many people will read this and think we all need a calendar, or that university is hard for everyone. And I’m not trying to say my problems are somehow worse than anyone else’s. But it felt like there were too many of them for me to work through, and reaching out was one of the hardest things.

Hopefully now I am speaking openly it will get a little easier, and I can get rid of this stress headache that seems to be hanging around. I want to be able to enjoy studying again, rather than feeling like it’s the most impossible thing in the world. And I definitely encourage others who are in this situation to tell someone. That first email is absolutely the most difficult. I found that arranging an actual call was really helpful, because it was so much easier to tell someone how I was feeling than to try and find the right words in writing.

I don’t have an inspiring message to close this with, because in all honestly I’m still in the middle of all of this. But I’ve realised that you can’t create this perfect persona for yourself, or if you do, it’s going to be impossible to live up to it. So I’m writing my truth, because that’s all I have.