Coding until my elbows hurt from staying in the same position. I'm learning Lisp/Scheme/Racket and oh god. Those last few days have been hectic, and I also solved a shit ton of graded Logic exercises and worked so hard for so long I didn't even take pics from anything study-related :D
THIS THING IS HAARD
I do have a few updates on how things are going, but that'll have to go under the cut. TLDR; I'm alive, still doing my Master's, but with a lighter heart after next week (or so I hope).
Do you remember that post from last month where I was shitting my pants about doing a presentation at the END of the semester? And like, thinking about giving up on my Master's out of sheer anxiety.
That one. I have until the end of september to cancel it, and I'm seriously thinking about doing it. Sent a few emails already, and currently just waiting for the green light from my advisor.
That class' teacher, since day one, said he expected nothing but very, very good grades from the post-grads, bc we have this class with the undergrads, and if they can do it, we have to do it better. 3 exams + 3 graded assignments + a final worth 60% of the final grade for the undergrads, and for the post-grads, an additional final presentation about any programming language.
I'm not understanding shit since day one.
I’ve got a bachelor’s in Bioinformatics, and I get that I didn’t go super deep into stuff like you would in a pure CompSci degree. But still, I had to code a lot; and watching the undergrads just breeze through classes while I’m eating dirt is so, so frustrating. I feel fucking stupid, dumb, like maybe coding just isn’t for me. These past few days I’ve really questioned if I picked the right field at all.
I decided to drop this class.
We’ve got our first exam next week, and when I started studying I just broke down crying. For the past three days, every single time a slightly harder concept came up, I cried, because it felt impossible. Not understanding code feels like reading in a foreign idiom, where you’ve got to figure out what every damn thing means and does. Knowing Python, C++, C — none of that helped me with Racket. And the class is supposedly easy! Trivial! Basic! That’s why I’m spiraling, panicking so much.
This course has only brought me anxiety and sadness since day one. And the professor seems like a decent person, and the material is apparently “easy”, which just makes me think the problem is me. I can’t code, I don’t know enough CS, I should’ve just gone for a master’s in bioinformatics.
I vented to my best friend today; he’s still an undergrad. At first he comforted me, saying the professor’s probably just an ass and I should just drop the class. Then he asked how many courses I’m taking right now. Three! Just three. And I already want to drop one. I need six total to graduate in the next few semesters, and I’m only in my first.
A couple messages later he told me three is way too few and the problem isn’t time management or anything like that — it’s my fucked up head. What I really need is therapy.
It’s hard to talk about this here, because you’re only hearing my side, so maybe you’ll just take my side automatically; so I’ll leave it up to you whether he’s right or not. What matters to me is that I was crying when he said that, and he knew it. Last week when he was crying about his own problems, I literally left my class to send him voice messages, trying to cheer him up. He always says I can count on him for the hard stuff too, but it always ends the same way: him telling me I just need a psychologist, and that's it.
Which… might be true. From your pov, I could be totally crazy or hiding way more issues than I let on (which isn't to say therapy is only for crazy people; it just isn't what I think would help me right now; a personal choice). Maybe I lean too much on this friend, maybe I overshare. My only defense is that today he left me feeling so, so much worse, and it was just a 10-minute conversation. Ten minutes to reach that conclusion, throw the problem aside, and pin all the blame on me — that the issue isn’t the class, it’s my head.
My decision to drop the class came hours later, after trying to study more, after reading the rules carefully and distracting myself to calm down, to think more neutrally. I could keep going, but it’s only the first month and it’s already wrecking me. I don’t know if it’s really worth it just for the credits. I haven’t fully decided yet, but the deadline is soon, and I’m leaning toward quitting. Just thinking about studying for that first test already brings me to tears.
Maybe it’s just me being dramatic, anxious, too sensitive. But if a friend were going through this, I don’t think I’d be half as cruel as my own brain is, telling me I’m dumb and I’ll never finish this degree if I can’t even keep up with this class.
In the end, I still haven’t answered my friend, who asked hours later if I was okay. I’m waiting to hear from my advisor, to see if she supports this choice or has advice. But my harshest critic is me — I can only see the whole situation through this hopeless lens. It’s been a long time since I last cried over school classes. I just hope it all turns out okay.
