I'd like to share a brief tale of the time I decided to quit graduate school. There may be useful lessons here for current graduate students who are feeling overwhelmed.

1/7

It was a few weeks into my second year. The senior scholar with whom I hoped to work (Brent Shaw) had just been hired, and this was my first oral report in the seminar he was teaching that term (his first at the school, Penn).

2/7

The seminar was on violence in late antiquity. My report was on civil war in Ammianus.

I wanted SO BADLY to impress him. But I simply could not find anything interesting or original to say. So I procrastinated and let it go, more or less, to the last day before the report.

3/7

That night (before the report), I really panicked. I made zero progress. So I decided that I wasn't actually cut out for graduate school; that I wouldn't give the report at all; and that I would leave the program. I went to bed around 2:00 AM with these thoughts.

4/7

Then I woke up around 6:00 AM and decided I didn't want to go out this way. So I gave up on trying to be interesting and original (and on trying to impress anyone) and just assembled a basic summary of information and scholarly interpretations. I cranked it out in 2 hours.

5/7

And you know what? It was FINE. Just fine. My fellow students had lots of interesting comments and questions on the material, and Brent built on what I said to lead a great discussion. And no one ever knew or suspected that just hours earlier I was on the verge of quitting.

6/7

The takeaways:

* you don't have to be perfect all the time

* imposter syndrome is universal

* thoughts of quitting are probably universal, too

* if you *do* decide to leave your program, that's fine, too!

7/7