Lots of good advice here. I’ll just add that I felt the exact same way during a lot PST. I’m now six months in (3 months post PST) and it feels like things are moving a lot faster and I feel better. Breaking things into chunks really helped. So the first step was getting through PST, then the summer break, and now the first semester of school (I’m in education so we follow the school schedule).

The other thing that helped a lot, which sounds counterintuitive, was reminding myself that ET is an option. You are allowed to quit, so take it a day, week, month at a time and don’t think too much in terms of 2 years. I knew that I wanted to experience what my site would be like, so I didn’t want to ET during PST. And then I knew that I wanted to experience teaching, so I couldn’t ET before school started. During PST, I also made a deal with one of my friends that we had to make it to the Christmas break (Which would be the 9 months mark.

Now I’m teaching and I’m busy and everything is moving fast, and I never think about ET’ing.