My First Semester of Graduate School

It’s hard to believe that I have officially completed my first semester of graduate school at Texas Tech.

In August I was moving into my one bedroom apartment in this new town and anxiously awaiting to get started on grad classes. I remember walking into my first graduate class (theories) and quietly and quickly finding a seat in the back of the room. I remember thinking “most of these people went to school here…there is no way we’ll ever become friends”.

To be honest the first two months were hard not academically, but socially. I had no friends. I had no social life. I was at school all day for work and then at night for class and at CrossFit for a morning or afternoon class. And the cycle kept repeating day after day. It’s not like I didn’t talk to people, but it’s all very basic conversation when you’re getting acquainted with people.

Thankfully, September and October ended up being kind of busy. I had a friend come visit me, my boyfriend came to visit, and we had family happenings a couple weekends. The weekends that I actually spent by myself were few, but always made the reality of not having any friends here sink in deeper.

Fast forward to the end of December and I’m happy to say that I have an established friend base at grad school. I know I can walk into the teaching assistant office and strike up a conversation with anyone. When I get to class I know there will be people to chat with. Eventually some of us started hanging out on weekends and on a couple week nights. We’ve been to a pumpkin patch, Carol of the Lights, and bowling to name a few activities. By the end of the semester a big group of people from my classes have started hanging out more during the week and on weekends and it’s been super fun.  

I guess if making friends were easy then they wouldn’t be genuine relationships and I wouldn’t appreciate them as much as I do today. Now we all get to start off next semester with a bang instead. The funny thing is that most of us felt the way that I did. Assuming that every one else already had friends. All it took was some conversation and hanging out to show that wasn’t the case.

The academic side of grad school was different than I expected. I’m in the media communication program, so I took theory, research methods, and digital media production. The first two were exactly what they sound like: media theories and how to conduct research. For digital media I learned HTML code and CSS and the final project was creating my own website. I totally geeked out over this class and loved the website I created. Most of my time overall was spent behind my computer or reading academic journal articles. I like to blame that as the reason I didn’t blog much this semester. When I finally got done with school work, I didn’t want to stare at my computer any longer and my brain no longer wanted to be thinking.

I was really fortunate to get a job in the college as a teaching assistant for the fall semester. I attended 3 different undergrad classes during the week to take attendance and monitored a computer lab a couple nights a week. For two of the classes I graded some assignments and quizzes too. I was blessed by the professors I got to work for and couldn’t have asked for a better assignment. Hopefully I’ll get to work for them next semester too!

One thing that I think helped me have a successful first semester was always having a grateful attitude. TTU has always been a prestigious school in my mind that I never imagined I would attend. The program I’m in is a fast track and I’ll be done either this summer or next December. So I’m very aware that my time at Tech is relatively short and I want to really cherish it. Even when days were mundane or stressful, being thankful for where I was always helped. 

Now I really hope you don’t think I was throwing a pity party about the friend thing. I was just being honest about something that I think a lot of people post-college struggle with. I’m excited for the upcoming spring semester  and for the time I’ll be spending with friends. For now I’m going to enjoy my Christmas break and hopefully you’ll see more from me on this little blog. And if you want some insight into my daily life as a grad student click here. 

Any questions?

Did you have any life changes or new things happen this fall?