by Kimberly Alexander, M.S.
Recently over the last two weekends, New York has had to battle some pretty brutal storms that have resulted in fallen trees and power outages in certain areas. Typically, while these tend to be temporary outcomes, I find myself not temporarily upset by the issue. Actually, even as I am writing this I am feeling pretty angry at the situation that I am in right now because of the storm.
I think it goes without saying that as a graduate student, your free time to complete academic and professional tasks is fairly limited. However, for me, I have been able to lock down Fridays as my day to commit to these tasks and run a couple of personal errands. Well it probably goes without saying that when a Nor’easter is in route, you probably will be stuck in doors for the day. Only problem is that when it finally arrived, my house abruptly lost power and what an angry tailspin I went in!
WHY ME! This is crap! How could this happen?!?! I’m never going to get any work done! I have emails to respond to that now EVERYONE is going to think I’m flaky and unreliable. Things NEVER work out for me!
Well, the short story is that I regained power by that evening and all was right in the world. I did not spend much time at all attempting to challenge some of these beliefs because I think I felt self-righteously tied to my anger because it was an UNACCEPTABLE situation I SHOULD feel angry about. Problem is… although I regained power within the day, the following week after an intense Winter Storm, my cable wire fell and was yanked off my house by a salt truck passing through my neighborhood. Well if you thought the previous tailspin was bad… now I was filled with anger AND dread! After a few calls to the cable company it turns out that my issue is not “high” priority and that my family and I will need to survive for three days without internet until someone is able to service it on Monday.
NO INTERNET!!!!! I NEED internet! I have a midterm due on Monday that I’m GOING TO FAIL! This is ALWAYS happening to me!
First off… This is not “always” happening to me. Losing power and/or cable is definitely not something that is typical for my neighborhood. And even if it was, it still would not be “always.” Furthermore, realistically speaking, things hardly ever “never” work out for me. Are there obstacles? Yes. Is my life always “never” working out? No. Actually to be honest, one of my personal strengths is that I can often quickly identify a way around obstacles in my day to day. While this situation of not having internet for three days is very frustrating, it does not mean that I will not be productive or will be unable to devise a solution to work around the inconvenience. Lastly, how dramatic could I possibly be?!?!? Lol… I am definitely not going to fail my course because of this situation. The reality of the matter is that it will be very uncomfortable to uproot myself and my work from the comfort of my home and desk space to relocate to somewhere with Wi-Fi but once I do that then I am “back in business.” So, simply speaking, I’m not going to fail anything nor will “everyone” think I’m flaky because I don’t have Wi-Fi. LOL All this “three-day weekend” is, is a temporary inconvenience that may warrant frustration but hardly the intense ongoing anger that will keep me from focusing on my work. How many of you tend to escalate hassles into horrors?
