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Grind culture seems to be something celebrated on a lot of platforms. Many of us talk about the nights that we spent, full of caffeine and manic energy, trying to keep up with assignments, readings, and everything else on our plates. There can be an almost toxic celebration of the suffering that comes from the ‘grad school grind’. I know that I fell into this trap of putting aside my physical and mental health while trying to keep up. And it always seemed like other people were doing more, and handling things better. Why couldn’t I keep up?

By the time you are reading this, I have just finished defending my PhD. What a wonderful thought that is as I can currently feel the nervous butterflies flutter in my stomach. After 5 years of working on my PhD, I got to submit it to the exam committee. Although that in and of itself is a huge accomplishment, I could not help but feel more nervous than happy at the time. For those of you who do not know, you submit your PhD 5 weeks before the defense.

Certainly, it’s no secret that grad students have this immense pressure to be working around the clock. Evenings, weekends, holidays; if we aren’t working, we must be falling behind. If we fall behind, we must not be working hard enough. Isn’t it ironic that after years of working with lab rats, we seem to become lab rats ourselves?

Picture this: It’s the summer of 2020, you’ve been quarantining with your family for 2 months, while you count down the days until you’re back at school in September. As an undergraduate student at Queen’s, I was lucky enough to have a summer home in Kingston, which I used as my last-minute escape from the COVID-19 madness. I packed up my bags, said goodbye to my family, and made the two-and-a-half-hour trip to Kingston.