Here are my three tips to transition well when starting a something new.
My sister recently texted me while she was attending her graduate school orientation, and it got me thinking of when I started graduate school (almost ten years ago!!!) and how I cried the whole hour driving home, thinking I couldn’t do it.
I was an anxious mess, wondering what I had just gotten myself into. I signed a legal, binding contract that, at the time, a program through my employer would pay for my master’s degree.
I debated getting out of the program and going safely to what I knew wasn’t graduate school at the time.
However, the following week, after my crying session, I returned to class. I told my professor how I felt and may have told him I had cried the whole way home.
(Fun fact: I just learned that my sister would have this same profession at a whole other university!)
I continued to show up and write my papers week after week.
At the end of the last class, my professor told the class that a student had cried the whole way home the first night, but that student and the rest of us had finished our first graduate school class. I was a little embarrassed, but he didn’t mention my name, which was fine.
With this story in mind, it got me thinking about how things can seem so scary at first, and we may have a freakout moment, but once we get into the groove of things, they don’t always seem so bad.
With school restarting and a new season approaching, I wanted to share a few things I learned when starting something new and how to cope with the freakout moment.
1. Give yourself time to freak out.
I am the master of freaking out and if it was an olympic sport, I would win the gold metal.
Maybe that will be the next great sport in the Olympics, since breakdancing certainly won’t be.
If that’s an hour or fifteen minutes, give yourself space to be like “holy crap” and then move on.
Your mind and your body are still adjusting to this change even if you wanted the change to take place.
You can still trust Jesus and give yourself space to freak out.
2. Please continue to show up, even if it’s hard.
The first few classes of my graduate program were challenging, especially with all of the papers, but I continued to show up week after week, and so did the rest of my class.
We all showed up and did the hard work even when we would rather not write another paper.
Show up even when you know it will be hard. You will be so proud of yourself that you did.
3. Talk to others who are in the same boat as you. They are rowing in the same direction.
I talked with a lot of my classmates during my graduate school years, whether about the next paper or about how I was feeling about completing an internship and all that is required in graduate school.
It didn’t make me think I was rowing my boat alone or even in the boat alone.
They were there too. We were all riding along together.
If you are wondering, my classmates and I graduated from graduate school 18 months after we started.
Whether you are starting graduate school or a new chapter in your life, give yourself space to freak out, continue to show up when it’s hard, and talk to others who are in the same boat as you.
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