 I think it's challenging to have a work-life balance sometimes because everything is new to you. You think that you want to give the best impression, you want to be on top of everything. If an assignment requires four hours, you want to put in six just because you want to be the best. A lot of us are here because we're high achievers and you want to just go above and beyond sometimes. You're doing things that you're incredibly passionate about and that you really love and so there is a tendency to want to just keep working on your project no matter what. Coupled with stress and just pressure from your peers if you feel like you want to be, you want to compete with your peers or you want to be just as successful as well as your advisor can provide another layer of stress. The stressors kind of creep up on you so in your first couple of years you're so immersed in taking your classes and advancing the candidates to see if you're not paying attention to your research or advancing your own research, the dissertation process can be a bit more difficult or other people are more focused on their research and spending too much time in lab and they're sacrificing their performance in classes. So I definitely think those stressors or certain stressors can creep up on you. There is this misperception that your whole, in order to be a successful graduate student, your whole identity needs to be the graduate student who is in the lab all the time or in the library all the time. And I think that misperception can make people feel a little bad if they want to take time out for themselves. Like they feel guilty if they decide to take a vacation over the summer or to take a break at some point during the semester. And I think that's a kind of dangerous attitude to have because you will burn out if you keep going at a break next pace without giving yourself a break. The secret is no one is doing everything all at the same time. Even the people who pretend they are and you think have everything together and everything tied in a little bow. No, they're stressed and they're tired too. One thing that really helps me balance life and balance work is that I write goals for myself. And I write goals for the week and then I break those goals down by day. And when I hit that goal for the day, then I stop. I run first thing in the morning so that I know I fit it in and then, you know, if I have to work the rest of the day, that's okay. So it's just about really setting up a schedule for yourself and realizing that you can't do everything. So you make priorities and you do the best that you can do and make some time for yourself because it's important that it'll help you be a better student. Make sure that you delegate time to do research, delegate time to exercise, and delegate time to engage in social activities with your friends. And don't let anything compromise those times because all three of those things are very important in your journey as a graduate student. One of my biggest hopes during graduate school has been my roommate. When I moved to Ann Arbor, I sublet an apartment for the summer so I could find a place to stay and potentially find a roommate. And when we found each other, she was in political science and I'm in education and psychology. So we had different enough worlds but a similar experience. So when I was stressed out and working on papers or when she was worried about a class that we can talk to each other and understand but still have our own separate lives that revolved in different spaces. Remember that before you became a graduate student, you were a lot of other things as well. You were someone's best friend, you were someone's partner, you were someone's child, you were someone's gym buddy, you were someone's coach. So it's important to think about all, remember that in graduate school you don't drop all those other identities, they're still in play. And so I constantly remind myself of that whenever I think, oh I don't have time to grab a coffee with a really good friend of mine because I have to do work. I remind myself that I'm not just a graduate student, I need to have time to kind of reconnect with my friends, with my family. My second year here, I started a project called Mindset with the Tower Beta Pi Engineering All-In-Society. It's basically a K through 12 mathematics education project. This was such a rewarding experience to me that in fact it increased my productivity in my research life, in my day-to-day life, it just made me happier. That's just quoting my personal experience. So it would be an example of how getting involved with an organization that does something that's really close to your heart, like for me, for the education, can really change your outlook towards your research and your graduate education. There are many programs here on campus that will help you to kind of de-stress and kind of refocus yourself. There's the counseling and psychological services that is free for all students and faculty where you can go in and talk to someone. They have a room that has yoga and games and massage chairs and you can just go and give yourself a 30 minute stress-free break. One of the things that they do that could be helpful is workshops that help people try and time-manage or to try and manage stress better. If you're feeling that these workshops, or if you need more than just a workshop, they also have short-term counseling with therapists and counselors where you can meet with them a few times to try and talk about the kinds of stress we're going through and different strategies to try and manage the things that are on your plate. You can definitely make an appointment at the psychological services or the psychological clinic at the University of Michigan. This is the clinic that's associated with the Department of Psychology and you can meet with therapists a little more long-term to try and establish how to maintain your long-term goals, also how to get to your short-term goals in order to get to your long-term goals and also how to use different strategies to maintain your mental health.