It has been almost a year through graduate school, and I am exhausted. My experience at the University of Manitoba has been a potpourri of emotions, ranging from excitement for doing cool bird research and making valuable connections, overwhelming stress of responsibilities and steep learning curve, giddying happiness of successful grant proposals after multiple rejections, frustrations of troubleshooting lab extractions, heart-dropping panic of steps going wrong that could affect the entirety of my MSc project, and waves of relief when important steps of projects move forward. I absolutely love that I’m researching Purple Martins and working with great people in my lab, and I am excited to see how my results turn out. But the weight on my shoulders of so many tasks and pressure add to my constant fatigue. Balancing graduate work, teaching, and social & personal life is a challenge, let alone taking care of my own self, but I’m learning how to prioritize and time things in my life to stay happy in a busy lifestyle.

On top of the graduate thesis project, there are so many other things going on that I have to keep track of as a graduate student, such as applying to grants & awards, studying material to teach classes of undergraduate students, keeping good grades in courses (which luckily are all completed for my MSc program now!), and being involved in many side projects. All of them are great learning experiences and help me develop my skill sets, which are extremely valuable for moving forward in my future career and life. But they also carry a lot of weight when having to handle everything at the same time. With limited time, the workload as a graduate student seems to be never-ending and sometimes work continues into the nights and weekends without break. While the flexibility in my schedule is convenient, finding enough time to finish all my tasks, while taking care of mental health, has become one of the greatest challenges in graduate school.

I am the first genetics student in the Avian Behaviour & Conservation lab with Dr. Kevin Fraser, using both geolocator tracking data and genomics to study the Purple Martin, a long-distance migratory songbird (the largest swallow on the continent!). Outdoor field work is natural for me, but I have no prior background in genetics, which has made it incredibly difficult to keep up with the pace of the MSc degree timeline. I have support from my co-advisor Dr. Kira Delmore, friends, and colleagues to help me with methods on DNA extractions, bioinformatics, and genetic concepts, but I still feel like I’m in the deep end trying to figure out a lot of this on my own. This experience has certainly helped me develop skills quickly and absorb an immense amount of information in a short time span. I have also gained a much deeper appreciation for people who do laboratory work and bioinformatics, since it can be very painstaking and requires a lot of patience. In a future post, I will go into more details about these researching methods in my project.

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While I really enjoy learning new research tools and being involved in amazing projects studying birds, I would be lying if I said the stress of graduate school did not make me depressed at some points. Along with costs of time and finances, graduate school takes an emotional and mental toll. I feel spread thin over multiple tasks while also helping others, and feel a large weight on my shoulders about the outcome of my project because I don’t want to let my advisors down. While I try to stay optimistic, there are moments throughout my MSc where I’m anxious about the possibility of the entire project falling apart. With the timeline for my MSc, there is very little room for error and delays, and it is scary to go through a new field of research at such a fast pace. Perhaps sometimes I’m over-thinking things at the moment, but these panicked thoughts are hard to escape when everything is so uncertain and unfamiliar. I know these kind of feelings are not uncommon among graduate students, and I’m grateful that I’m not alone going through graduate school.

With the challenges in graduate school, there also comes a lot of encouraging and valuable experiences and networks. I’ve gained new skill sets in laboratory work, bioinformatics, geolocator analyses, among other things, and continue to progress in scientific writing, soft skills, and time management. I’m also lucky to be a part of the Purple Martin field team monitoring nests and handling birds, which I enjoy the most because of the outdoors. I’m also very excited to attend my first ornithological conference in a couple months and present results from a side project in front of other birds lovers and researchers. As a graduate student, I’ve been fortunate to develop many wonderful relations with peers, colleagues, advisors, professors, and have tremendous support from friends, family, and most of all my partner, Matt. The support from all these people make the experience less nerve-wracking and helps lift myself up from the weight of graduate school.

While each evening and weekend could be used for catching up on work (along with housekeeping and running errands), I’m learning to prioritize some time for the pets & Matt, catching up with friends, birding, and taking mental breaks to keep myself well. I am grateful that this stage in my career is temporary, but I also have no regrets in pursuing a MSc degree. I know that these experiences are extremely valuable, but it is also important to make sure the whirlwind of graduate school doesn’t obstruct other meaningful parts of my life. I’m still working on balancing school & work with my daily life (amount of sleep has been the hardest as I’ve started to use the magics of caffeine), but as long as I have my kiddos (my pets Opal, Mocha, and Magellan) and Matt, then I know I have everything I need to get me through the struggles of being a graduate student.

-Evelien