Everyone is being so harsh

LegacyUser

I'm in my early twenties (female) and doing a postgrad course. I loved it before Christmas, found it interesting and made some friends on the course. Unfortunately, I had to take a part time job in December as I was running low on funds. It isn't many hours a week, but means I can't attend the clubs and societies I used to and it adds a lot of stress. Still, I enjoy it and before Christmas I was happy with my life. Just after Christmas, when I returned to college, it all started to go horribly wrong. I had been having niggling health problems for a few years, had been to the doctor countless times and pretty much told to stop worrying and that there was nothing wrong with me. Turns out I have at least one serious condition, which could mean I'm now infertile (I'm still undergoing tests and scans), and a few of the 'small' health problems may not actually be so small after all. The psychological impact of this was huge - it was devastating to find out I hadn't been wrong and that my condition(s) could probably have been treated if I'd got them earlier. I'm beating myself up for not making more fuss, although to be honest, I DID go to the doctor many times. I have a huge list of notes at the GP and I had been referred several times, but nothing was found. Anyway, this is not the point.

Basically, as a result of all this stress and the time that's been taken up because of it all (spending time worrying and also hours actually waiting in doctor's surgeries and hospital waiting rooms), I'm falling behind with my work. The few hours I might have had to catch up are now being spent on working, which I can't give up because I now need extra funds to pay for private treatment (waiting lists are months long). I'm so stressed and unhappy all the time. I have weekly meetings with a small group and our thesis supervisor and she's pressuring me to come up with a solid topic for my thesis and have texts chosen to look at, but I just have not had the time. I've spent every waking hour at the hospital, at work, or doing assignments which need to be handed in. She and other students are being so harsh to me, saying to stop making excuses and that they were sick last week too. They had things like chest infections and colds - hardly the same as what I'm going through, in fairness. I really really want to work on my thesis, but I just feel that it's taking 100% of my efforts to attend all my classes and hand in work. Any day I have no lectures, I have a medical appointment, and I work most evenings.

How can I explain that I'm seriously stressed without actually saying what's wrong? I am not comfortable with going into it and don't feel I should have to. I'm not lazy or an excuse maker and it's driving me around the bend that people are thinking I am. I can't even remember the last time I did something for fun. I don't have a TV, I don't waste time. My life is utterly miserable and I am still not doing enough for my course. I know everyone has their problems, I've always had my own, but this is really devastating and this is the first time an outside problem has affected my academic work this much. I just cannot stop thinking about the fact I could be seriously ill. I'm run down, I'm achey and I'm having headaches all the time. I'm short tempered and impatient, I make an effort to continue to go for coffee and lunch when people offer but none of it seems important to me now. Help

Taltos

Sorry to hear about all the crap going on in your life.
The only thing I can suggest is going to talk to your tutor and possibly your thesis supervisor. These folk are there to help you and they will cut you some slack but only if they know what is going on.

Put yourself in their position. A student comes in with not the appropriate amt of work completed and tells them that they were/are sick - this is an excuse they hear repeatedly. However once you explain what is really going on here to your tutor then the college has mechanisms to help you.

I know you might not want to discuss what to you is a very personal thing - but you might just have to let someone in on it. If only to help yourself.

LegacyUser

I have been to see my tutor, told her everything. She was sympathetic, I guess, but still didn't seem to realise how serious it all is. She also doesn't seem to understand how depressed I am over this. It's not like I put my back out (which I did last term!) and it's pure physical pain, I'm suffering a pile of mental anguish over it as well. It's the sort of thing that's embarrassing and awkward to talk about, so that's another big issue. I can't just announce it to everyone I could when I hurt my back.

So my tutor said she would support me, but that at the end of the day, there isn't an awful lot she can do, as I can't defer my studies. She would be able to organise extensions and so on, but that doesn't help much as it pushes stuff further back and just means I'll have even more work to do come May. I've always had perfect attendance and good grades and I'm a serious and intelligent student, so that looks good, but I need people to understand that I'm sick without me having to produce doctor's notes all the time. It's not like a chest infection where you're sick for a week then fine, it's a really long term thing, a lot of it being mental, and the physical stuff is chronic, so it's difficult to produce 'evidence'. I mean, obviously I have appointment cards and scan letters and stuff but it's all very personal for me. I am still on the waiting list for counselling so I have no documented evidence about my crappy mental health.

I guess the peer relationships are equally hard, it's really difficult to listen to people saying I need to 'make time' and that they were sick too, etc. It's hard not to get angry. I do say I've been sick and drop heavy hints that it's serious but a lot of them don't 'get it', presumably as they've never had to deal with any serious illness. It really is impossible to make time when any spare time you have is spent at the hospital and your concentration is ruined by worrying all the time but they don't seem to get it. I don't want to come across as a whiner or making excuses but I find people so unsympathetic. It's not even that I want sympathy cos I don't, but I really don't need a pep talk or to be told I need to get my motivation up. I already bloody know that. I know what I need to do. I just can't do it right now.

I also get irritated easily listening to people talk or moan about stupid things. I know it's nobody's fault I'm sick, and I'd hate to become the kind of person who thinks everything is worse for them, but it's impacting on my social interaction. I'm becoming quite impatient and finding it hard to identify with people.

LegacyUser

Unregistered wrote: »

I have been to see my tutor, told her everything. She was sympathetic, I guess, but still didn't seem to realise how serious it all is. She also doesn't seem to understand how depressed I am over this. It's not like I put my back out (which I did last term!) and it's pure physical pain, I'm suffering a pile of mental anguish over it as well. It's the sort of thing that's embarrassing and awkward to talk about, so that's another big issue. I can't just announce it to everyone I could when I hurt my back.

So my tutor said she would support me, but that at the end of the day, there isn't an awful lot she can do, as I can't defer my studies. She would be able to organise extensions and so on, but that doesn't help much as it pushes stuff further back and just means I'll have even more work to do come May. I've always had perfect attendance and good grades and I'm a serious and intelligent student, so that looks good, but I need people to understand that I'm sick without me having to produce doctor's notes all the time. It's not like a chest infection where you're sick for a week then fine, it's a really long term thing, a lot of it being mental, and the physical stuff is chronic, so it's difficult to produce 'evidence'. I mean, obviously I have appointment cards and scan letters and stuff but it's all very personal for me. I am still on the waiting list for counselling so I have no documented evidence about my crappy mental health.

I guess the peer relationships are equally hard, it's really difficult to listen to people saying I need to 'make time' and that they were sick too, etc. It's hard not to get angry. I do say I've been sick and drop heavy hints that it's serious but a lot of them don't 'get it', presumably as they've never had to deal with any serious illness. It really is impossible to make time when any spare time you have is spent at the hospital and your concentration is ruined by worrying all the time but they don't seem to get it. I don't want to come across as a whiner or making excuses but I find people so unsympathetic. It's not even that I want sympathy cos I don't, but I really don't need a pep talk or to be told I need to get my motivation up. I already bloody know that. I know what I need to do. I just can't do it right now.

I also get irritated easily listening to people talk or moan about stupid things. I know it's nobody's fault I'm sick, and I'd hate to become the kind of person who thinks everything is worse for them, but it's impacting on my social interaction. I'm becoming quite impatient and finding it hard to identify with people.

Hi, i just wanted to say you have my sympathy. i'm a sickly person and tend to catch everything thats going, and sometimes it can be seen as just being moany. i had a really bad bartholin abscess last year (this is an infection in a gland near the vagina) and basically couldn't move for about 2 weeks until i finally went to hospital. luckily my problem was easily treated and i was back to normal a few weeks later, but it disrupted my life and wasn't something i felt comfortable talking about. i even found it hard to tell my housemates. i was paranoid that "i have an infection in a gland near my vagina" just always sounds a lot like "i have an std" or something. when i had to explain to people where i'd been for the past few weeks i just said something like "i had a really bad infection and had to go into hospital for a while" and this seemed to always suffice when dealing with people older than me (mid twenties), i guess they have the experience to know when things are personal. acquaintances my age usually tried to ask what it was, and sometimes i'd just tell them "i had to get a bartholin cyst removed" and they'll just look blankly at me and i'll just be like "yeah, it was just a little infection on a gland, i'm grand now though"

i know your problem isn't as simple as that because it sounds like its not going away anytime soon, but i found that generally being vague and mentioning the hospital was enough to get people off my back.
if you can talk to someone in college about it, maybe its possible to defer the rest of your course til next year, when you've come to terms with things a bit better?