Conclusion: You should have them. And I'm not necessarily talking about romantic relations, but friends and family. I bet you are thinking, "If she found that as a surprise, then maybe she isn't smart enough to be in graduate school."
Addressing the last part first: I'm probably not smart enough to be in graduate school, or at least most days it feels like it. If I had to wrap up my graduate experience into a nice little neat box and give it a name, I'd call it humbling. Well, I'd probably actually call it hell, but humbling works too. When I first got into graduate school, I was all like "wow, World, look how smart I am!" Well the world had the last laugh in that one because I was exactly 20 seconds into my first day of grad school over the summer when I seriously hoped that no one could tell how much I didn't know. This, I'm told, is natural. But it doesn't necessarily go away with time. I still don't believe that I'm smart enough to be in graduate school and I've got about 9 months left. Fake it, 'til you make it.
Okay, now back to relationships. It wasn't a surprise- not necessarily. But really, relationships are REALLY hard when you're in grad school. No one tells you that. When I signed up for grad school, I didn't realize exactly what I was signing up for (which is probably a good thing because I don't think I would have signed up if I did). There have been months at a time where I feel like life couldn't get much worse, and lo and behold, it does. I've almost quit so many times, but fortunately/unfortunately, I've hit the point where no one, even myself, is going to let me quit. So with all that, there are two grouping of relationships you will have in graduate school: those who know and those who don't.
Okay, that's a bit harsh. But what it really comes down to is that there are people who knew and loved you before grad school who have this abstract idea of what grad school actually means. i.e. the people who tell me, "Oh. All you do is research. Well, that must be so easy." When I got to grad school and started realizing just what I signed up for, I could barely talk to these people. This group includes my mom, who could quite possibly qualify for best friend status, my best friend(s) from high school and college, etc... For some of these people, I just felt like I couldn't relate to them anymore. One hs friend wanted to know about my dating life when I would traverse back to the homestate and see her. DATING LIFE?! Didn't she know I was in survival mode? Just trying to, you know, survive the physical and emotional metaphorical rock called graduate school that was crushing me? I really had to learn how to navigate those relationships, and sometimes that meant letting go. Which was really hard. But at the same time, these relationships are necessary because, as our speaker told us, these people don't care how far we are into chapter 3. Their opinion of us doesn't change based on our success or failure (and there's a lot of failure) to grow spectacularly beautiful single crystals of a desired compound. They loved you before grad school, and they'll love you after.
And then there's the knowers. If you want an awesome friday night, hang out with a group of graduate students talking about grad school. Actually, that's terrible and depressing advice. Don't do it. Unless you're of course a grad student, or love a grad student. I went to dinner with three other graduate students last night and when the conversation turned to work, I swear a dark black cloud of suck just hovered over our table. Because we KNEW. The knowers are great because you can relate, you can bounce ideas off of them, you can gather advice and data. But these relationships are also really hard because, let's face it, I spent 9 hours yesterday focused on grad school stuff (and only minorly freaked out
We also talked about the importance of balancing grad school with life outside of grad school. Unfortunately, there's no formula about exactly how that balance should go. And I still haven't mastered it. Plus, it's not like there's a real like between life and work. It's more wiggly and wobbly than that. Life bleeds into work, work bleeds into life. But I'm sure if you could find a formula that did give the proper proportion for each person, you could probably get a PhD for that. Or at least a gold star sticker. I'd go buy one for you for sure.
So, if I had to give a new graduate student advice about starting/surviving graduate school, I think I would say: Relationships. Have them. With those who know and those who don't. And make sure grad school doesn't become your entire life, which happens when you don't have relationships. See where I'm going here?
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