A Moment of Hopelessness

Lately, a lot more bad things have been happening to me than good. Some of these things were in my control while others weren't, and I just want to take a moment to vent a little bit about this hopelessness feeling—even though I know some of you are going to call me out for having first world problems. Life Has Been Good to Me If I had to average all of my experiences in life, I'd say I've had it pretty good. I might even go as far as to put myself in the top 1% in terms privilege. Let's take a look. Family I grew up with both parents and a sister, all of which are still with me today. On top of that, I have one set of grandparents that I still see on holidays. As for the other set, well, that's a long story. On a more positive note, I even have a great-grandfather floating around somewhere. In addition, I've been happily married since March 2018, and I'm quite close with portions of my wife's family. So, we're all alive and well. We aren't the most connected, but I'm lucky to have everyone around. Education In terms of education, I've won the lottery there as well. For me, the first twelve or so years of public education were a breeze. After that, I applied to four schools (Penn State University, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Michigan, and Case Western Reserve University) and got into two of them (PSU and CWRU). Naturally, I made my way to Cleveland to try to expand my horizons. While CWRU was challenging, nothing was more heartbreaking than realizing I couldn't handle both music and engineering. Within 8 weeks of my first semester, I made the decision to pursue Computer Engineering over Music Education. I suppose part of me wanted to make everyone proud—or, rather I didn't want to disappoint anyone. That said, I was fortunate enough to spend time in various ensembles over the years which kept me content. In addition, I managed to find my way onto the executive board of the Residence Hall Association as the National Communications Coordinator. From there, I was able to spend a ton of time at conferences around the country including the University of Delaware, George Washington University, North Dakota State University, and many others. Since we're on the topic of travel, I've been lucky enough to study abroad. In fact, I spent about 6 months in England at The University of Manchester, and I spent a spring break in Poland. With all these travel experiences, I figured I might as well get certified to Teach English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). On top of all that, I made several life long friends, and I even joined a fraternity (because why not?). After four grueling years, I successfully graduated with a 3.6 GPA and a $70,000 salary job (and $40,000 of student debt). Up until that point, life was excellent. Work The fact that I had such a high paying job coming out of college was amazing on its own, but it gets better. That job was a part of a leadership program which guaranteed pretty massive raises over the first two years. For instance, I was already up to $75,000 after the first year. In addition, the job had some pretty sweet perks such as leadership training. In fact, I was fortunate enough to be sent to two trainings over the course of a year: one in New York and one in Mexico. On top of all that, they were even willing to educate me. During the first year, I studied technical subjects related to software development such as Continuous Integration and Simulation. While I didn't stick around for the second year, I would have begun studying business subjects. Regardless, I managed to snag some college credit which I should be able to redeem at a handful of universities including Georgia Tech. Despite all the perks, I didn't love my job. Granted, I don't need to talk about that here. I've already covered it extensively in a separate article, but I figured I should mention it to avoid contradicting myself. Life Has Been Better Than Good, But... So after laying all that out, I have to admit: I've had it great. In fact, life just keeps going my way. Before I quit my job, I managed to attract the attention of four grad schools who were willing to accept me as a student (Arizona State University, North Carolina State University, Case Western Reserve University, and The Ohio State University). Naturally, I've found myself as a PhD Student at The Ohio State University where I intend to earn a PhD in Computer Science, so I can become a professor. That said, I don't bring this all up just to gloat. I bring it up because I believe you need some context before I dig into my recent series of unfortunate events. As I reveal each one, I ask that you reserve judgement and listen to my case. It's been a hard couple of weeks. From Qualifying to Failing Previously, I mentioned that I didn't score well on my first set of exams. In particular, I walked out of my first two exams with the following scores: 63/100 and 76/100. Obviously, neither score is stellar. In fact, both of these scores would have been considered failing in my department had it not been for a more than generous curve. That said, the first score fell below the median while the second score was the median. Now, I'm not one to complain about grades. After all, I've seen my fair share of poor ones: welcome to CWRU. However, these grades stung a bit as I was planning to avoid taking the qualifying exam if possible, and these grades likely eliminate that possibility. I'm just two exams in, and I already know I have to prepare for a future exam. To make matters worse, I scored just as poorly the second time around. Well, that's not totally true: 63/100 and 79/100. That's a 3 point improvement overall! But, wait; what about the curve? Unfortunately, that did not go in my favor either. This time both exams were under the median. So while I improved a little, everyone else improved a lot. Naturally, these scores sent me into a bit of a panic because I need to maintain a 3.0 to keep my funding. In other words, these test scores could literally send me packing. That's not exactly how I imagined my first semester of grad school. A Lack of Funding Speaking of a lack of funding, I had a pretty nasty funding scare recently. According to a classmate, HR had begun assigning teaching roles for the next semester, and I hadn't heard anything. As a result, I decided to inquire anonymously as I didn't want to be embarrassed: Should I be worried if I'm currently teaching, and I haven't heard anything? I thought the PhD contract was through May. To which I was told: Yes, you should be worried :o) Contracts are for one semester only. Please email me. Naturally, I spiraled into a bit of a panic which only got worse the longer I waited for the news. Eventually, I decided to reach out to my advisor because I needed a backup plan ASAP, but I didn't hear from them either. By the end of the week, I ran into my advisor who plainly asked if I was doing alright. Of course, I wasn't, and I told them that which gave them a look of surprise. As it turns out, they reached out to HR, and everything was fine. At that point, I was beginning to wonder why no one had told me anything, and it turns out that my email forwarding had stopped working; I had missed an entire week of emails. Less Money, More Problems To add insult to injury, money has been relatively tight since I quit my job in March. Remember how I said that I was making $70,000 a year? Well, now I barely crack $20,000. Add that to that fact that my wife is a teacher, and you can probably imagine how we're doing financially. Now, to be honest, we're not exactly pinching pennies. After all, we're pretty frugal. When we go out to eat, we share a meal. When we get groceries, we buy only what's on our list. That sort of discipline has kept us relatively comfortable, but I don't enjoy dealing with sudden issues like car repairs which can unwind several months of savings. Since money has been so tight, it's made working on this site all the more frustrating. After all, I would have hoped that launching a site in October of 2016 would have produced some sort of value by now. Unfortunately, I haven't been so lucky. Currently, my one and only paid subscriber is one of my best friends, Virtual Flat, who I wrote about recently. With their contribution, I've made a modest $5/month before fees and taxes. Now, you may be wondering how the ad revenue is doing. As it turns out, I'm doing quite well there. Since about September, I've been receiving roughly 400 page views a day which has converted to about $9/month in ad revenue. In other words, I can afford my monthly Netflix subscription thanks to this website. Every day the website stats seem to improve, so I can't really complain. However, the growth has been incredibly slow for a project that I've worked on continuously for two years. Honestly, I'm surprised I've managed to publish two posts a week over the course of this first semester. Sometimes it feels like a waste of time, so I hope it's helping somebody out. Crisis Averted At any rate, I'm looking forward to my next semester, but I can't say that these bumps in the road have been any good for my mental health. In fact, I've had to take a few partial mental health days this semester just to reset a bit and catch up on sleep. With the way that academia is today, I'm hardly surprised that I have students who are constantly begging for extra points. We have established a culture of death by GPA, and it's completely ludicrous. My ability to perform on an exam should not determine whether or not I can afford to eat, but this is America. Hopelessness is the name of the game.

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