Well, I live with a girl in my cohort. I was skeptical at first but it's actually turned out to be one of the greatest things that could've happened. We are a lot alike and not at all competitive with each other. She's becoming a best friend very quickly and it's been nice to have someone around doing the same courses and going through the same transitions. I've also made a couple good friends in my cohort and a few in the cohorts ahead of me so I feel pretty good about that. Adjusting overall has just been different than I anticipated. I haven't been in school for a bit so, for instance, I had my first midterm last week and it was brutal. Not because of the content but just trying to remember how not to freak out during a timed test. haha.
My research has been developing more quickly than I would've thought, actually, but it's great. I ended up applying for NSF (though I don't even pretend that I'll get it). The process of applying was good for me because it forced me to think about some things and how I want to go about pursuing my research. It also forced me to get into contact with one of my LoR writers and in doing so, he wanted to read my proposal. Turns out he's editing a book on a topic that is pretty closely related to the line of research I'm working on and he asked me to write a chapter. Soooo that's exciting and terrifying.