PHD Comics: Anatomy of a Winter Break
I don’t just find PhD Comics funny: it’s important to me. Grad students are constantly having their self esteem shaken, and are trying to figure out whether what they’re doing is good enough or even acceptable. There’s a lot of “fronting” in academia: almost everyone I know in academia, will tell me, personally, that they sometimes feel inadequate and afraid, but no one acts like they’re actually this afraid in public.
I was ill for the past couple of weeks, I had strep throat. Whenever I get sick and take time off, I wonder if it’s because I need the rest, or because I’m slacking, and this sort of second-guessing makes it harder to rest well. This comic was well-timed for me: most people don’t get a whole lot done over winter break, and so I shouldn’t feel like I don’t belong in academia just because I took a few days to watch a lot of Battlestar Galactica and play board games on my iPad.
