🚀 go-pugleaf

With reference to the graduate student friend who feels inadequate/
incompetent/confused and is becoming depressed [public posting requested]:

I've been there! Beating your head against the wall doesn't help! After
a certain point things start becoming self-fulfilling - you don't work
well, you feel bad about it, you avoid work, you acquire guilt/indequacy
feelings, so you don't like work, so you don't work well... It's a nasty
cycle. !!TAKE A LEAVE OF ABSENCE!! The sky will not fall! Your school will
not tell you you're an Evil human being (if they do, they're more fouled
up than you are.) If you present it just as something you Have To Do,
parents/advisers/administrators can be surprisingly supportive - you've
got some respect accumulated by having made it as far as you have (even
if you feel you haven't done anything "recently" to earn it.) 

Most graduate schools, if you were worth having to begin with, will 
cheerfully take you back when you're ready. Ask what the policy is! (One
of my old schools took the pleasant position that once you were admitted
you were admitted, period, forever.) There may be a problem for a term
finding financial aid for you, but I've seen schools scramble on someone's
behalf well above and beyond the call of duty. (Maybe they do the scrambling 
because they like you *more* for having gone away AND come back.)

Teach sailing, work in a factory, let your brain cells cool down and
straighten themselves out - 12 years plus 4 years plus 5 years can be a
long time at one stretch for anybody! 

I wish someone had told ME this at the right time. Hope it helps.

garry wiegand / older and a little wiser
garry%cadif-oak@cu-arpa.cs.cornell.edu
garry@128.84.253.8   (we're having addressing problems)