I am actually having a nervous breakdown..., Right Now!!! Options

[ShempTheOtherStooge]

I feel your pain!

When I was in grad school (part time while working in a hgh pressure job as a division VP) I spent ~20 hours one weekend building a multipage, interconnected Excel spreadsheet for monitoring asset values and modeling future values based on actual and projected economic shifts. I needed to send it to school on Monday.

I backed it up faithfully. Monday morning at around 3:00AM my laptop melted down and somehow took the floppy I was backing up to with it.

After contemplating the end of my academic career I started over.

Hang in there bro! I wasn't aware that documents could be corrupted because there was too much data in them. If that's the case how will you ever get it done?

Also, in addition to backing up I now periodically print large documents. I trust NOTHING!

[Charlemagne]

I feel your pain!

When I was in grad school (part time while working in a hgh pressure job as a division VP) I spent ~20 hours one weekend building a multipage, interconnected Excel spreadsheet for monitoring asset values and modeling future values based on actual and projected economic shifts. I needed to send it to school on Monday.

I backed it up faithfully. Monday morning at around 3:00AM my laptop melted down and somehow took the floppy I was backing up to with it.

After contemplating the end of my academic career I started over.

Hang in there bro! I wasn't aware that documents could be corrupted because there was too much data in them. If that's the case how will you ever get it done?

Also, in addition to backing up I now periodically print large documents. I trust NOTHING!

Wow, your situation seemed even more horrid than mine. Did you end up breaking anything? I have no idea how I will try to hold on to what I have. My thought is that I save multiple documents, print out a couple, email some out, etc. I am hoping the computer guru I went to yesterday might be able to salvage my original document because what I have now is basically just pieces of my former document. That said, I am happy just to have that. I honestly was wary of this professor's template from the get go because it seemed sort of "buggy" or quirky from the get go. In other words, fonts would change in different columns, etc. I feel like this whole project is a type of torture to the soul. Anyway, this course is like the Baatan Death March. If I fall to the ground with exhaustion, they'll be a Japanese soldier ready to bayonet me. I must somehow just stay wearily marching forward until May.

[benhamean]

I don't know if this will help, but who knows, right?:

I used to stress out fairly severly while an undergrad (pre-medicine= lots of intense courses, and the need to do very well in all of them).
There was a very clear moment when I decided 'fuck this' with regard to worry. I was studying for a physics exam and my chest started hurting- I said to myself, 'you are 21 years old, and your freaking CHEST is hurting worrying about this stupid shit?".
From that moment on, I decided to just do the best I could, but without EVER getting unduly stressed or worried, particularly about things beyond my control.

I've been that way ever since.

AND, once I decided to say 'fuck that physics exam', it was much easier to study for it. Actually, all my grades went up, rather than down.



Hang in there, and be confident that you'll do what you need to. You can only do what you can do, and you can either be comfortable with that, or you can have a nervous breakdown because of it. Good luck!

[Blodwyn]

That's something I've wondered about for years. I know it's not in the DSM. The term is definitely not used in modern medicine. But did it ever have a clinical definition? I used to want to see someone have a nervous breakdown so I'd know what people meant by it. The dictionary is no help. Does it have to involve crying? Does it have to involve advanced academic coursework? Someone must know.

I'm in a psych grad program, and as far as I know there's no clinical definition of a nervous breakdown. It's more of a loose term. I think the idea is that most people who have a nervous breakdown have things leading up to the break and those are the clinically significant, treatable things. But then again I'm not totally sure - I'm at work today and my DSM is home, and I am still suffering from an incredible amount of gradschool overload.

[tom from out of town]

sorry man. hope you get through this hurdle and can do the teaching part without this added stress

This post has been edited by tom from out of town: Mar 10 2008, 09:00 AM

[Tantra, Goddess of Flight]

I will find a way I suppose. This prof is not the most approachable and forgiving type but I might have to look into some options. I have put a call into a computer specialists about this. I really hope they are able to retrieve this because to start again would be a massive undertaking not to mention that this course moves at a very quick clip and that it would set me behind tremendously. I am almost laughing at how peversely horrid this situation is. It is like getting just about 10 yards to the finishing line of a marathon and then having one's legs give out.

I understand completely. Last semester was my second-to-last course in my master's program and my brain shut down. Really. I could not think. I completely blanked for most of the semester. I just wanted to forget the whole degree and run off an be a flight attendant. Really. My papers, by my own standards, were dreadful, but it was all I could do to just hand one in. In all my other courses, I had gotten either A's or A-minuses, but in this course, I was thrilled to have come out with a B.

I did, however, realize that I really would hate being a flight attendant (I really did have an interview; I've worked for an airline for 18 years and it would have been a departmental transfer.) and that I needed to get over whatever it was that was blocking my head, and just do it (that I began the course with a verbal altercation with an inept T.A. didn't help) because otherwise, all that work would have been for naught.

Physical activity does help relieve stress. Also, it has been shown to improve brain function. So go for a walk, have a protein shake and some B-vitamins, and keep going. You're almost done!