There is more to surviving graduate school than making yummy food and fighting off bats. The yummy good helps brings friends together and make the bad days bearable. And the fighting of bats makes for a great tale to make your cohort laugh the next day. But there will always be situations, in grad school and out in the real world, that come without warning. Situations like this:
Last week, somebody broke into my car. Now, in the grand scheme of sudden, unwanted situations, this rates about a 6 out of 10 on my personal scale. High enough to cause you monetary problems and take time out of your week, but no where near a death.
It probably helped that I had a friend with me the whole time, helping me take care of things, like finding the non-emergency police number and a repair shop, while I cleaned up. But I felt surprisingly calm the whole time. No real feelings of anger, no need to cry, just a need to get it taken care of quickly so I could return to life as usual.
Keeping calm is probably one of the best pieces of advice you can ever try to live by. Panicking, crying, throwing a tantrum; none of it would have gotten me anywhere. It rarely does. Keeping a cool head, planning my next move, and surrounding myself with people who know what they're doing gets my way further.
So it sucked, but I got to move on to the fun part much quicker. You know, the part when you get to tell all your friends about how your car got broken in to and all the asshole took was the power cord to your GPS. But left the actual GPS on and by the seat. Or how the neighbor gave advice so unhelpful you thought he was quoting Captain Hindsight from South Park. Or write a blog about what a great teaching moment it was....
- The Pink One
