the workload just keeps piling up

[frankdux]

anyone else feel overwhelmed with the amount of studying and work required in their program?

i already did one masters in math education which was more or less a joke. no more than 4 hours of studying a week, max. now i gotta do at least 5 hours of studying a night. and even then i feel behind, so i end up sacrificing entire weekends to studying as well.

how do i deal with this? and is anyone in a similar scenario?

a part of me regrets getting myself into this mess. i have no free time for myself at all!

[zilch]

There's a reason they say that grad students don't sleep.

If you're really having trouble, you should arrange to meet with your professors or go to office hours and ask them to help you with the material. Other than that, just sleep when you can, remember to eat and keep working. I know a couple a friends who pull 16 hour days 3 or 4 times a week and spend all weekend sleeping so they can keep going next week. We are still students, we put up with this now to enable something better later on.

You should also try to set limits (ie in bed before a certain time regardless of whether the assignment is done or not). And every few hours set everything aside and go outside and walk around for a few minutes (weather permitting of course). I use to take short walks all the time, it really does help clear your head a bit.

[fuzzylogician]

I spend at least 10-12 hours in the office every day, and still can't afford to take the weekend off. It's overwhelming, but with almost half of the semester gone, I feel like I'm finally getting into a good rhythm. I'll just reiterate what friends from more advanced years keep telling me: don't try to be perfect - it's ok if you make some mistakes or submit portions of the assignment that you know aren't perfect. Your main goal should be to get past this year so you can start doing your own research. No one is going to hire you because you got perfect grades in your 1st year courses anyway!

Since I've made this mental switch in my mind that not only do I not have to be perfect, but for the sake of my mental and physical health I had better the hell not even try, I feel a definite decrease in my stress level. I go home earlier, sleep more (and better), and have recently started dedicating Saturdays completely to none-academic activities. I highly recommend doing that.

[liszt85]

That's good advice, fuzzylogician! I'm taking 3 courses (4,4, and 5 credits) and 3 credits of independent studies for my first year mandatory project which I must submit a paper about and submit to a conference by February, and am course assistant for 4 courses (grading duties only)! The 5 credit course is a syntax course and I've never done any syntax before and Peter Culicover is teaching it and he assigns a crazy load of homework! They are challenging problems most of the time and very enjoyable but when you're done with it, you find that its time to go to class again and that its time to turn in an assignment for another class. So yes, its been hectic but I don't work in the afternoons/evenings on weekends and make it a point to spend it walking/jogging/going to a restaurant with my wife/ practicing the piano, etc. I've never worked this hard my entire life and am getting a real taste of American grad education. I'm glad I chose to attend an American grad program than a European one because I now understand why sometimes these degrees are more valued than their European counterparts (even if they're equally good content-wise).

[StrangeLight]

i didn't have an entire day, weekend or not, holiday or not, where i didn't do at least a few hours of work until my final paper of the semester was turned in. i pulled at least one all-nighter a week and didn't sleep for more than 6 hours a night except on weekends. i had 4 graduate seminars, so i was reading four books a week, and the average length was around 300 pages each. 1200 pages, 20 pages/hr (if i read it carefully, which i tried to), that's an average of 60 hours a week of work. add to that research papers, presentations, and working on my masters research. i'd say that 70 hours a week is a safe estimate. i totally crashed by the end of the semester and spent the past two weeks doing a lot of sleeping and no work. some of my colleagues were cracking at the end of the year the way i had been since the end of september.

i'm not saying this as a contest to see who did the most work. even the people with fewer classes had to TA when i didn't, so everyone in my program was busy. i'm just saying that it's really common for graduate students to put in well over 50 hours of work a week. i had this sickening feeling about once a week where i knew that if i did absolutely nothing but read or study from that moment until my class the next day (no eating, no sleeping, not leaving my apartment) i still didn't have enough time to finish my work. according to my fellow students, that's par for the course.

i had no time for myself either. it sucked. i spent the last two weeks de-stressing instead of working and i'm probably behind schedule already. this is just kind of how it works until the summer. then you get to have fun for four months before you start all over again. YAY!!!

here's my real advice, though: don't do all of the work. do just enough of it that you understand the point of the work assigned. you know the argument in the book, or you know how to do a certain proof, or whatever the work is. but don't obsess with knowing it all cover to cover because you won't need most of that knowledge and it takes up a lot of your time. just figure out what you're supposed to get from the work and then move on.

in the last week of classes, i finally discovered that most of the people in my seminar only ever read half of the book, or the intro and conclusion, or the reviews. there i was struggling to drag my eyes over every line on every page, and no one else was putting themselves through that. you can't do everything in a week, you will always feel behind, so you have to manage how you study.