grelleen

I've been in a master's program, preparing to apply for a PhD program, for 2 years, and am now about to graduate. I had planned to apply with the rest of my cohort to PhD programs last fall, but my father passed away unexpectedly early in the semester. Needless to say, my whole semester and my hopes of improving myself did not go as planned. The primary problem I have had ,is juggling all of the roles graduate students are expected to preform (researcher, intern, student, graduate assistant, etc.). It seemed as if I'd always drop the ball on one or two things. For example, I would forget something I had to do for my assisstantship occasionally. I overlook details all of the time, and end up making mistakes as a result. This often lead to me backtracking, and having to push other tasks to the last minute. It also generally took me a lot longer to complete things, in comparison to my other cohort members. As a result of all of this, I feel like to some I've appeared as though I don't care/am unmotivated, even though I essentially spend nearly all of my days working on schoolwork/etc., and rarely taking breaks. I was having some trouble keeping everything together my first year to be sure, but I was preparing to use what I had learned to really improve for my second year; that didn't happen. My father passed away early in my first semester of my second year, which left me in a fog for some time. Although it made me want to bury myself in my work, I started to overlook MORE details in my work I should have noticed, and to forget things more easily. My program was very accommodating throughout all of this; but, of course there's a limit. My adviser, who I respect and admire deeply, essentially told me near the end of the semester that I hadn't demonstrated to them that I was detail-oriented enough to succeed in a doctoral program. I decided not to apply, since I realized that I just couldn't realistically put that much effort into applications at the time, but also because I also didn't feel like I was a worthy candidate for a PhD. Recently, I was told that I almost certainly have ADHD, which explains my forgettfulness/tendency to overlook things, so I'm going to see a psychiatrist about that, but it doesn't really help my current circumstances. I pretty much don't know what my next step should be. I feel like I've wasted most of my adult life, as well as my aspirations, in this field just to fail in the end. Before coming to the program, I had a perfect GPA, glowing letters of recommendation, and had completed several of my own independent studies. Now that I'm about to have my master's degree, I know my application might actually be less appealing then it was. I'm supposing the best course of action would be for me to find a job, and try to do extremely well and build myself up before re-applying. Has anyone else been in this situation? I'd like to know how others have handled it.