Week #5
Grad school is tough.
I wish I had anticipated the amount of work there would be. Not because I am not enthusiastic about putting in the work, but because when you work on so many things at once, you don't work on anything at all. Every week has around 4 different assignments due, which means around 1.5 days for each assignment. If I exclude sleep, food, commute, and other such things, it's just 12 hours per assignment. God forbid you fall sick!
Maybe it will all work out in the end, and I will look back at this note thinking about how naive I was, and I hope it turns out that way. But I am not sure I will see it that way, and I just feel that the density of coursework is to blame. Instead of focusing on the core subjects and principles, they have compressed a 2-year program into 1 year.
Enough complaining; this week included some of our first assignment submissions, and we got to see each other's work. I might have worked a little too hard to make a good first impression on both my professors and my peers. I hope it was worth it. I also saw a lot of people just starting out, feeling intimidated by other people's work. I don't like to see this, as I was once in their place, and not many people helped me. I hope I can create a better environment where they feel inspired, feel like they can reach out, and ask for help instead of feeling bad about their work.
We also had a little alumni meet-up at Dolores Park, which was pretty fun and energetic. Though most of the people there were from my cohort, it was great to meet them outside the classroom!
