#my health policy professor cried in class talking about it so you know

[spicynectarines]

Im soooooo glad I'm majoring in Public Health under the current presidential administration! it's actually sooo fun and I'm totally not worried about my job prospects at all!

[withinmyquietthoughts]

Spring 2016 Part 1

Going back to school after Christmas break was rough. When you get married on December 19th, have Christmas with both of your families, and go on your honeymoon in January, it’s hard to come back to reality. This semester was going to be hard, and I knew that going into it. My schedule this semester had me either at clinical or in class Monday through Friday. I had Mother/Baby/Peds clinical on Monday, Tuesday was Adult Health lecture and Health Policy, Wednesday was Pharmacology, Thursday was Family Health, then Adult Health clinical on Friday. That’s a lot…. Like a lot a lot. But I wasn’t going to let it get me down. I went into the semester with positive thoughts and my head held high.

After about two weeks of getting up every day before 5:00am, I was so exhausted. Prince Charming and I lived about an hour away from my school, so driving was the only “me time” I was getting this semester. If I wasn’t in clinical, then I was in lecture. If I wasn’t in lecture, I was driving somewhere. It felt like I never had time to do anything but go to school, go to clinical, come home to study and maybe get five hours of sleep. It was brutal. The only reason I stayed sane through all of this was my friends. I talked about my clinical group in my previous post. We all got assigned to the same clinical group again this semester, at the same hospital, with the same clinical instructor. It was so perfect! “The Dream Team” as we called ourselves was back together again. They were my saving grace; my rock and my light at the end of the long dark tunnel that this semester was turning in to. I also had Family Health clinical with “B” from the Dream Team, which was great because I had no interest in that class. She was really into Peds and wanted to be a pediatric nurse when she graduated. So I just stuck with her as much as I could, and we got through it together. I think that’s when she and I became very close. We were together almost every day and had the same clinicals too. I was very thankful to have her by my side literally every day.

Our Family Health clinical started off ROUGH. We had a terrible clinical instructor, like no exaggeration she was the worst. For example, on our first day of clinical, we all showed up in the lobby of the hospital like we were supposed to. Most of us got there way earlier than the meeting time, but we were also driving from very far away. So once we all got there, we just sat there waiting on our clinical instructor. 0630 came and went, and there was no sign of her. We all frantically checked our phones and email hoping we didn’t miss a cancellation notice. Nope, nothing there. So we waited, and waited, and waited. Finally, after we had been waiting over an hour, she walks into the lobby. Without missing a beat, she starts talking about clinical and what to expect and how she runs things. And then she said, “Clinical starts at 0630. I expect you all to be here on time, but sometimes I can’t get here on time. So the only person who is allowed to be late is me.”

…. I’m sorry. Did I just hear that correctly?

I looked at “B” and she looked just as shocked as I did. What the heck is this lady trying to pull? Is this a joke? Are we being pranked? Unfortunately, this was only the beginning of a horrible clinical experience. Thankfully I had my friends with me, otherwise I would have lost it. Our clinical instructor constantly tried to get us to do things we weren’t allowed to do. She also belittled and bullied us when we didn’t know the answers to her questions, even though we repeatedly told her we hadn’t learned about any of this stuff yet. It was just plain awful. From the beginning, I knew something bad was going to happen. So I immediately emailed my professor and asked for a meeting. I met with Professor H the next day and asked some general questions about what was expected of us at clinical. Mostly what were the things we could and could not do. Obviously, we’re in a very delicate area of the hospital, and we can’t just run around doing whatever we want. She was so nice and so patient with me as I asked all of my questions. I just didn’t want to get in trouble, mainly because I didn’t trust my clinical instructor to know the difference between what we could and could not do. I vaguely hinted that the reason I wanted to meet with her was because I had concerns about my clinical instructor. She told me to keep doing what I was doing and continue to follow the rules. She also told me to come to her any time if things got worse.

As the semester continued, I was getting so worn out from doing school related stuff literally every day of the week. My grades were starting to show it too; as midterm arrived, I realized I didn’t have a passing test average in either of my classes that required a 75 test average to pass. I met with my Adult Health professor to go over my previous two exams. Thankfully, she was very kind and offered a lot of support and guidance. But I was so scared that I had met my match. There was no way I could recover from this. A failing test average in two classes was hard enough, but then I had to keep up with my other two classes in addition to going to clinical two days a week and all of the weekly assignments we had. I left my Adult Health professor’s office and walked straight to my next appointment with Professor H. Since I was currently failing her class too, I had to set up a meeting with her as well. I thought I might as well get both meetings out of the way on the same day.

When I got to her office and sat down, she looked at me and could tell I was on the verge of crying. So she got up from her chair, shut the door and said, “Take five minutes and say whatever you want to say. Say whatever is on your mind and whatever is upsetting you. Then put it behind you, and let’s figure out what we’re going to do to get you through this semester.” I don’t think she will ever know the impact that meeting had on me. It seems like such a small thing, but when I walked into her office, I had no hope left in me. Let’s not forget I was just in this predicament a year and a half ago. So I had pretty much counted myself out at this point. But knowing that a professor had confidence in me and my ability to pass my classes gave me hope. After I finished wiping my face and apologizing profusely for my ugly crying face, she and I went over my exams and came up with a study plan. She was also the first professor to figure out that if I was asked the question verbally and asked to explain my thinking, I usually came up with the right answer. So she told me, “When you’re taking the exam, close your eyes and talk though the question. You know the information. You just have test anxiety. Take it one question at a time.” And honestly, that worked for me. Obviously it wasn’t a perfect system, but I did much better on the rest of my exams after I took her advice.

My Adult Health clinical continued to go well. One day I was selected to go to the ICU for the day. I was really excited about going there because I thought I might want to be an ICU nurse. But it also terrified me because, as the name suggests, the patients are very critical, and a lot can go wrong with them very quickly. I was paired with a wonderful nurse, and she showed me so many interesting things. I spent most of that day going back and forth between feeling like I had found a department that I could really see myself working in, and also coming to terms with the sobering reality that I still wasn’t passing the two classes I needed to move on in the program. And if I failed both of them, I was out of the program. It was like this clinical day was a carrot being dangled in front of me; such a wonderful thing but just slightly out of reach. When our clinical day was over, and we were walking to our cars, I just broke down and cried. Clinical was my happy place with the people I loved being with. And it broke my heart to think that this could actually be the end of all of it. I tried to stay positive and not be so negative, but it was almost impossible when the evidence was glaring at me every time I opened up my grade book. All I could do was study and pray that somehow the numbers would work in my favor.

[genevievewrites]

Chapter Two: The Ivory Tower

At Rutgers, I would slowly slide deep into a serious depression that wouldn’t be diagnosed for nearly two years. 

I had always struggled with negative thoughts. For as long as I could remember, I would go through these phases, usually in the spring. I didn’t know when they would start, or why, and I never knew why they stopped. They just came, and then they went. 

It would start with thoughts that popped into my head at night right as I was trying to fall asleep. “You’re going to die someday.” Death was then and is now my ultimate fear, which is unfortunate considering scientists still don’t know how to stop the aging process and so it is the one thing I can’t avoid.

It always started with these unwelcome thoughts barging into my head and reminding me that I would die someday. This led to insomnia, exhaustion, and soon the thoughts would badger me even during the day. I would become paralyzingly aware of my own existence. And then, one day, for no clear reason, it would all stop. I would go back to living my life at breakneck speed, from classes to studying to student life and back to class, eyes focused on the prize of the linear path from where I was to living the dream. 

When this depression started, I didn’t see it. I knew I was crying more, and that I was terrified of what came after college. I felt uncertain and scared, but then I picked a graduate program and refocused my gaze on a new career path. I kept crying, but I didn’t notice as much. 

Graduate school was a blur of class, studying, and an increasingly dark inner dialogue that I now know was a textbook example of impostor syndrome. 

Our cohort was much larger than the one that preceded it. The university had also undergone budget cuts, leaving older students to meanly suggest that some of us were just accepted to make up for the funding gap. 

I was paying for my graduate degree in the student loans I had managed to avoid until then. So it was clear to me that I was one of the unworthy applicants who got in because I was willing to pay to be there. 

The work was challenging in a way no undergraduate class had been, with the exception of college pre-calculus. I had always been able to skate by mostly on my intelligence without the need to crack too many textbooks. Besides, I was always too over-scheduled with extracurricular activities to leave much time for studying. 

While I was Rutgers, I lived in the library. I brought my assigned readings to the gym. I took notes in the margins. I came up with questions to ask during class. And every day I would sit in my chair, wondering if everyone could tell that I was a fraud. I wasn’t supposed to be there. I was only there because they needed my money. I could never be a professor. I simply wasn’t good enough to go that far. 

Occasionally, I would catch an upswing. I’d have a meeting with a mentor that went especially well. A faculty member would say that I was the kind of person they hoped would pursue a PhD. That they thought I had valid points and an interesting perspective. For a brief moment, sometimes as long as an hour, I would see the glimmer of a future where I did work that mattered - where there was a reason I was here. 

But eventually, without fail, I would end up hyperventilating on the floor in my room, hugging my knees and sure that everything was hopeless. 

On the outside, I was still that girl. I would have my master’s degree from one of the top universities in my field by the time I was twenty-three. I was living on my own in a different state, making friends and trying new things, like apple picking and travelling all the way to Rhode Island by train. I was learning from renowned human rights activists and feminist economists, trail blazers and trend setters whose work was on the leading edge of the field. I was shining and bright. I was going places. 

I was barely holding the pieces of myself together. 

***

There were a few people who knew. One of them was my father. He knew, because he was on the receiving end of so many tearful phone calls. Sometimes I couldn’t disguise my wavering voice long enough to ask if it was an OK time to talk. I never wanted to burden him with my feelings. But I desperately needed someone to hear me, and someone to talk down that mean, evil voice inside my head. Who better than the one person who had always been on my side? 

My dad is an incredible musician. He has recorded multiple albums and written hundreds of songs. When I was a little girl, he wrote a song about my brother and the innocence of children before they learn to hate each other. He made it up to me by writing a song a few years later about me. I can still hear the bridge, even though my song never made it on to an album. “You’re gonna change the world someday, and I’ll be there watching you do it. I’ll be there.” He had always believed that I could be anything. I clung to him like a lifeline, because I could no longer see my own light. 

But nobody knew how bad it really was. That I couldn’t sleep without TV shows playing in the background to distract my brain, which was constantly sabotaging me with obtrusive thoughts of the worst kind. 

I had move beyond my own mortality to fixating on how everyone I knew and loved would die. And how incredibly selfish it was of me to live so far away when any of them could die at any moment. I was ridden with guilt and shame for not calling enough, not going home enough. I was sure my grandmother would die before I made it back to Texas. I was sure my mom felt let down by my inability to keep in touch. 

When I wasn’t grappling with the tragedy of human existence, I was berating myself for not being a better student, questioning my presence in this prestigious program, and caught in an endless spiral of shame and guilt because I found it so hard to concentrate. 

I also fell into another line of thinking that is incredibly familiar for many of us who have struggled with depression and anxiety. I was absolutely sure that this was the deepest, darkest secret of humanity. That all of us felt this way all the time, but no one was willing to be honest about it. I believed that I was going to feel this way forever. 

Somehow, I still managed to work and to learn. I wrote papers and did research, I worked on projects for the Center for Women’s Global Leadership and tried my hand at analyzing austerity policies using gender budget analysis. I thought about going into economics. I wrote a master’s thesis that deconstructed the myriad ways that we have created the dehumanizing concept of “illegal immigrants.” I was encouraged by multiple professors to apply to doctoral programs, and I finished my degree in two years. 

Right before I left New Jersey, at the urging of a friend from home who I’d finally confided in about my mental state, I also went to two sessions of therapy at the health center. I cried with relief on the bus after my first session, because she told me that I was wrong. I did not have to live this way, an this wasn’t a big secret everyone was keeping. It was my brain, and a combination of mental health issues colluding to create this cloud. 

***

While I was in graduate school, things shifted dramatically in my home state. The Tea Party Wave of 2010 had shifted the balance of power at the state legislature, where lawmakers had begun pushing an avalanche of anti-abortion legislation and passing it at a shocking rate. 

I hadn’t planned to move back to Texas. I didn’t even have a car, which is pretty integral for getting around in my sprawling hometown of Houston. But I couldn’t stay away. What’s more, things hadn’t worked out the way I had planned. I wasn’t able to find an internship in New York City. I didn’t make any real connections with nonprofits in the tri-state area. I had absolutely no reason to stay, and almost $60,000 in new student loan debt. I found myself back in the state I had pledged I would never return to, living in my parents’ house and trying to find my way back to the path.