By Daniel Tedeschi

“Grad school is a marathon, not a sprint.” I have heard this metaphor a thousand times over, but I must say, as a graduate student currently navigating the space, I find it wanting. I find describing grad school as a long walk to be more accurate. The exciting kind, where you trek through mountains and throw a magical ring into a volcano at the end, but a walk nonetheless. Grad school is slow and arduous, but flecked with moments of triumph that make it all feel worth it. However, as I am nearing the halfway point of my PhD program, I find my feet are getting seriously sore.

Losing interest is a natural consequence of doing anything for a prolonged period, no matter how much you love it. Despite knowing this, my lack of motivation has led me to a bit of an identity crisis. I am a first-generation college student. I am queer in a way that refuses to be denied. Because of this, I have always felt out of place in formal academic spaces. Since high school, I have met this feeling with an overwhelming drive to succeed. My logic being: if I push myself to the front of the pack, then no one will have reason to question why I’m there in the first place. Over time, this ambition became a central part of my identity. So, when that drive started to wane, I was left feeling lost.

After some introspection, I came to a significant realization. While I thought I was being steered by a virtuous fighting spirit, hoping to get where I wanted despite the odds, in reality, I was mostly fueled by spite. I was driven to succeed, not for my own benefit, but to prove something to those who might doubt me. While spite might have been compelling enough to get me through a sprint or a marathon, it lost its sparkle about halfway through my long walk to Mordor. 

Spite has a lot of drawbacks, which makes it an unappealing motivator. Failure is a cornerstone of growth, both in life and in academia, driving the progress that comes from learning and perseverance. However, I discovered that my fear of failure, fueled by spite, drove me to avoid it at all costs. Ironically, my avoidance stifled the very progress that failure is meant to inspire. It caused me to be so singularly focused on academic success that I struggled to hold onto personal relationships with my peers. While the quality of my work may have been high, operating only on spite was making my grad school experience a miserable one.

If I truly wanted to finish my PhD, I needed to replace spite with something more sustainable, something that fosters progress while prioritizing my mental health and well-being. The obvious solution to this conundrum was to take the energy I was spending on those who doubted me and put it towards those who supported me. My goal following this self-discovery has been to surround myself with fellow grad students who encourage me to flourish, support me when I stumble, and see me as a person independent of my academic pursuits. Doing so has been pretty scary, as it requires true vulnerability, but I cannot recommend it enough. Whether they are at your home institution or not, this type of support system is worth seeking out.

Having friends that I know I can rely on and who understand what I am going through makes grad school feel much more doable. They have helped me view success not as a necessity, but as an exciting possibility. That is the mindset that is motivating me to return next semester and ultimately finish. If you want to make it to the end of a dangerous journey, take a page out of a fantasy book and travel with a band of lovable misfits.

Daniel Tedeschi (he/they) is a third-year Ph.D. student at Colorado State University studying arithmetic dynamics. In their spare time, you can find them watching reality TV or playing tabletop role-playing games.