How to Grad & Beyond with Betul

If you are a grad student, you probably are an ambitious person. You probably want to solve important problems and save the world! That means you also probably want to make things happen even if the current is against you. Your mission is your identity and you are set in your ways. If this resonates with you (it did with me for sure!), then you have a new learning to do after grad school: the lesson of letting go.

It is hard to let go and accept what comes your way in grad school because you have a lot of ideals in your mind on how to contribute to the world, and this gives the motivation to do whatever it takes to achieve that ideal state. In the grad school context, which has had a set way of doing things for a long time and is resistant to change, this often means that you also have a set mindset and want to achieve your mission in the way you want. After all, you are the product of the environment you are in.

Once you are out of that environment and in work life, then reality hits: there are so many other factors in every task you do other than yourself and your mission. It is not just you and your advisor anymore. It is you, your manager, your manager’s manager, your colleagues – most of whom probably have wildly different backgrounds and ambitions-, the company, so on and so forth. If you are married by this time and have kids, then you add that factor as well. This is when you realize that your mission cannot be achieved in the way you planned in grad school and certainly not by yourself only. And this realization helps you start letting go.

The process of letting go after grad school is painful at first: your mission was your life purpose and it is never fun to lose your life purpose. It makes life meaningless, initially. Then, the nicer part of this process comes after this initial struggle. You start accepting life as it is and rolling with it more and more each day. This is when you start feeling a burden being lifted off of your shoulders. This is also when you start realizing that you are not responsible for saving everyone, and it is better if you focus on saving yourself and your close circles first. Your close circle might expand and become as big as you wanted to save during grad school years. But that is no longer a priority and you are happy with it.

Sometimes, you think if you are becoming selfish by focusing on yourself and your close circle. But you need to remind yourself that you are not: you are just more strategic in starting small and working to see if you can extend the small circle. But you are also more accepting of your limits as a single human being and do not burden yourself.

So, give yourself a break and let go, even during grad school if you can. Or at least after. You deserve it. Life is better if you let go.