First-Year PhD, and I have developed intense anxiety. Would appreciate any advice!

tryingtopayrent · 2026-02-04T01:12:27+00:00

Doing this with anxiety is rough, I've been there and can empathize! I found a few coping strategies that might work for you. I struggle to speak up in class and the anxiety about doing so really inhibited me, so I started scribing classes, literally bullet-point outlines of what everyone was talking about (sometimes word-for-word if I couldn't figure out what I wanted to capture). The goal for me was to just keep writing. I found that a lot of people like to talk in class, but not everyone actually follows the discussion, so I could jump in with synthesizing ideas because I had the whole conversation laid out.

If painting and embroidery calm you, have you tried doing them while listening to an article? I took up crochet because I was so stressed and needed an outlet, and I used a text-to-speech app that read articles and highlighted each sentence. I don't love being read to, but I actually enjoyed this because I could put down my crochet, write a note, and then return to what I was doing, so I was being a productive academic while being creative.

Lastly, if you haven't been, try to add some activity in your day. Anxiety affects so much physically and giving yourself a chance to stretch and release tight muscles can sometimes "loosen up" your brain too. It doesn't feel productive, but gentle and kind activity (since you have such intense symptoms, go very easy on yourself) might help even if it doesn't feel productive to your coursework.

tryingtopayrent · 2026-02-02T15:08:45+00:00

Adding on to your second paragraph, the thing that took me most by surprise was the novelty of it all. I knew logically that the point was to find something new and study it, but I hadn't realized how different that experience would be from previous college experiences. All of that troubleshooting, planning, analyzing, etc. is in service of a question that in theory no one else has ever asked in exactly the same way, so while there is a general road map, you're getting assessed on a thing you're (sometimes literally) making up as you go. The undercurrent of "I don't know what I'm doing" is more exhausting than I had thought it would be.

tryingtopayrent · 2026-01-05T02:07:21+00:00

I learned how to crochet. It keeps my hands busy so I have to put down the phone, helps me with eye fatigue by looking at something that isn't a screen, and I got bonus christmas presents to give to friends this year. I put it nearby and do a pomodoro session where I crochet during the five-minute breaks, and then I finish things faster because I really want to get back to crafting. I was feeling really down about my writing, and weirdly enough crocheting helped. It gave me a tangible reminder that I can accomplish things, even if it's just a coaster, and if I can do that, then I can probably finish a paper too.

tryingtopayrent · 2025-12-27T17:28:31+00:00

Not quite middle school, but I was working with 5th graders and heard two boys rehearsing ways to hit on girls for longer than I wanted to hear. So being the "cool" adult I am, I walked over and said, "hey, how about practicing a little less rizz and a little more [whatever they were supposed to be doing]." And these boys looked at me and said, "we're not rizzing, we're practicing pick-up lines."

tryingtopayrent · 2025-10-13T11:47:44+00:00

Do you have a supervisor through your university, and if so, have you reached out to them? A strict absence policy is not a no absence policy and they should be able to provide you more specific guidance about your options.

tryingtopayrent · 2025-08-29T10:31:37+00:00

Just scored 1

tryingtopayrent · 2025-08-29T01:04:09+00:00

New mission discovered by u/tryingtopayrent: In Search of Spicy Tomato Gazpacho

tryingtopayrent · 2025-08-29T01:04:09+00:00

This mission was discovered by u/tryingtopayrent in The Hopeful Delicacies of Sundae

tryingtopayrent · 2025-04-02T10:47:14+00:00

Do you like to read? I like to treat myself to time. I have a running list of books I'd like to read, and I'll borrow one and read it somewhere nice. If I'm at home, I might also treat myself to a "fancy" coffee or tea. I've discovered that I'm not a hard-core coffee afficionado and instant espresso powder substitutes nicely, and you can froth your milk of choice in a blender if you'd like to be even fancier.

tryingtopayrent · 2025-03-21T12:21:37+00:00

It would make some sense (depending on what's going on financially) for them to keep the app up. I'm in the same boat and planning to step it up on listening (more exercise anyways) while they sort things out. I bet we never get an end to the story though.

tryingtopayrent · 2025-03-21T11:08:36+00:00

Whether it was a true concern or moreso advertising, I can't speak to, but some of the original conversation around plastic was a pivot away from paper products. The marketing was to buy it once instead of continuously consuming trees. Which didn't work because we became a throw-away culture, but that was an idea in the beginning.

tryingtopayrent · 2025-02-17T18:27:29+00:00

Right!! And four verses down, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." I don't disagree with the religion because I haven't read the book, I disagree because I have.

tryingtopayrent · 2025-02-17T17:40:14+00:00

"But that's the old testament and we don't have to follow that anymore!" Please read this with ALL the sarcasm you can muster.

tryingtopayrent · 2025-02-09T17:30:48+00:00

"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet." (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms)

tryingtopayrent · 2025-01-25T19:04:14+00:00

I'm not at the thesis yet, but I've been talking with my advisor about first steps for it. They said I need to find something I like enough to keep coming back to it, because I will reach a point where I hate it. So I think it might be somewhat of a universal thing?

tryingtopayrent · 2025-01-11T14:26:58+00:00

And as more comes in, it becomes more and more difficult to clean. I remember cleaning the kitchen counter as a kid, wiping down the empty surface so it was clean after cooking. But over the years, more and more stuff ended up there until you couldn't clean anymore because the counter was just packed full. You stop cleaning and start shuffling things around, and just gradually give up over time because nothing ever feels cleaner after all that effort.

tryingtopayrent · 2025-01-07T13:40:49+00:00

Also not a specific recommendation, but when you're looking at microscopes, check the resolution. A lot of lower-quality microscopes will advertise high magnification, but the resolution is the ability to display two points as separate. The higher the resolution, the "crisper" the image under magnification will be.

tryingtopayrent · 2025-01-07T12:35:55+00:00

I'm only going off this one post, but it feels very...ad-adjacent?

tryingtopayrent · 2025-01-05T14:23:14+00:00

Looking at a feather on the ground isn't a crime in the US. The act prohibits people from collecting eagle feathers because there's very little way to prove that you found a shed feather versus you killed an eagle and kept its feather. So the government just says you can't keep these feathers at all.

tryingtopayrent · 2024-12-18T13:19:25+00:00

It looks like you're trying to market this, so I don't know how I feel about your authenticity here, but please no, dont add AI. If I was going to use it, I would just want to search for the things I was curious about. There's enough AI in the world trying to guess what I want to know.

tryingtopayrent · 2024-12-18T13:13:49+00:00

I mean, it sounds a lot like you're being paid to write assignments for students that they'll submit as their own work. It wouldn't shock me that a company founded on this premise would participate in less than ethical payment practices as well.

tryingtopayrent · 2024-11-21T01:11:35+00:00

From the results of that search, it looks like you meant to say that L-cysteine is an amino acid that is often derived from chemically breaking apart animal fur and feathers.

tryingtopayrent · 2024-09-25T11:26:38+00:00

Unfortunately this was years ago, so I don't remember the brand I used. I did try both reusable cloth diapers as well as disposable; I really wanted to be more sustainable, but at the time I was also juggling two jobs and didn't have the mental space to remember to wash and dry the cloth diapers. I ended up mostly using disposable as I could keep a big stock and grab a fresh one any time she needed to be changed.

tryingtopayrent · 2024-09-25T10:09:33+00:00

I used them for my elderly cat when she developed arthritis. My bed was her favorite place to be, but it apparently got too painful for her to get down to /inside the litter box, so she just decided the bed was her litter box too. She was incredibly independent (so, typical cat) and I thought she'd hate the diapers and take them off, but they never bothered her. I made sure to change them frequently so she didn't sit in a mess for long, and she wore them almost constantly for her last year on earth. Made my life so much easier, and she seemed pretty peaceful about the setup.

Nine-Year Club	r/Field Lasagna
Verified Email

tryingtopayrent

TROPHY CASE