Ugh. It’s been almost a month since my last post. The end of the semester was brutal. But now it’s “break” and I can get back to the important things in life – writing, napping, coffee drinking, and reading. I put break in quotation marks because break really means catching up with all the work I couldn’t finish during the summer session. But this work is my fun work! Writing about my real research interests like cyberbullying, doctoral life, and rural libraries. Frantic writing and poster creating and fall semester prep, oh boy!

me sometimes

All the madness and stress of the summer semester made me curious about how other doctoral students and academics deal with stress, especially the overwhelming variety. Since I began the doctoral program, I’ve experienced an intensity of stress that I never have before. I’m not sure how it’s different or why it feels so intense, but it does. It seems as if the internal and external pressure on my time, sanity, and energy has been steadily increasing since last August. I heard a rumor that it only gets worse after becoming a Doctoral Candidate. But I’m willing to accept that challenge.

Yet, stress can be a good thing in moderation. It can motivate us to accomplish great things, take risks, and excel far beyond we thought we could. My coping mechanism for stress has always been exercise and obsessive worrying. Only one of those is healthy. Without exercise I have no idea where I would be right now. I wonder how other doctoral students and academics (and non-academics who read this blog! who are you?) manage stress. How stressed are you? How successful do you feel you are at stress management? Do you believe that the stress you experience is mostly good or bad?

P.S. I have so much fun stuff that I’m working on right now! Publication ahoy!

• almost finished with my cyberbullying lit review (so close, so close…..)
• editing a case study on rural libraries and marketing I wrote during my MLIS for publication
• editing a LIS education and leadership lit review I wrote for the doctoral seminar this summer for publication
• upcoming guest blog post on the Hack Library School blog (September 3!)
• TAing my first F2F undergraduate course this Fall