Anxiety, PhD and Asperger

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First off, I am a first-semester physics PhD student at Minnesota. I had latent anxiety issues for years but never did it get to the point where I could give up on that aspiration because of my mental health. The issues became too severe for me to ignore when the midterm grades were returned to the students in the two mandatory courses I dropped due to the intense amounts of stress they caused. The receipt of said grades happened in early November.

It was disappointing especially since there were massive discrepancies in homework grades vs. midterm grades. Clearly I understood the material just fine, especially since I would try to do the homework on my own, before everyone else starts (and sometimes I could finish homework sets before other people even start) so I know my anxiety is not caused by any intellectual failure. And also I could grade thermodynamics homework just fine; I think it contributed nothing towards my pains since I could still do it just as I used to before the pains cropped up. I made a point to grade these homework as fast as possible since prompt grading would help the students' understanding and learning.

Due to the amount of pain these courses caused, I dropped them, knowing that I would have to retake them at a later point. I spent some time this month trying to understand the pains, where they came from, before I could actually go to therapy, where I asked for an anxiety test and my anxiety was diagnosed as severe. I also thought it would make me feel better once the coursework is over if I somehow improved my PhD GPA over my masters one (that is, if I finished the coursework stage with 3.80+). And I also know that comfort with the material would make me much more comfortable doing research that built on it; as such, poor grades would make me much less comfortable. Now, I understand that there is some disconnect between coursework and research, especially if I somehow did experimental or observational research.

Because of the long lead times to get seen for mental health with university mental health services, I had to wait three weeks to get an appointment and so, in the meantime, I somehow relied on the departmental secretary for support (and almost as if I was using her as a therapist without referring to her as such). All the progress I made with her was that I am now convinced it was not due to some loss of intellectual functions. But my sleep quality deteriorated, my brain fries much more easily now (even though I can still do everything I used to be able to do). And then I got referred in the community for therapy.

However, exercising my waiver options on the first two quantum mechanics courses turned out to be a good move on my part since I'm doing just fine in the third graduate-level QM course, without it causing me nearly as much stress or anxiety as the other courses I dropped. (I technically have three courses left but the other two require no real work on my part and have no substantive physics content, but I have only one course with actual physical content left) So I have made a list of what contributed and what didn't contribute to my anxiety:

What contributed:

- Unhealthy relationship to a prospective research topic
- The discrepancy between homework and midterm grades
- The weight placed by prospective research advisors on graduate-level grades (especially one of the top two choices; the other cares more about a course I have yet to take than any other course)
- The weight I place on my academic performance at large in my self-esteem (perhaps unhealthy, too; I suspect I will have to work on that as well)

What did not contribute:

- Life away from home; it's my first time living away from home - and abroad at that
- Finances
- Language issues
- My TA duties
- My work ethic
- The departmental environment (no PhD program would have a 80% graduation rate without at least some humane treatment of grad students)

By now I would say that, if it was only about intellectual capability, I would be able to carry a PhD to completion since other students at my level graduated with the very degree I am seeking, from that very physics department, in the past. I can be brilliant when I am healthy, but when mental illness strikes...

Given the above, should I simply drop out or I should attempt to return (mental health pending)? In both cases, I will return home after the semester is over, continue either medication or therapy. Actually I think therapy should be tried first.

But one shouldn't overlook what makes me look like an overachiever and not:

- For me to be able to process and implement criticism, said criticism has to be constructive; if the criticism is constructive and implementable, however, I can accept it just fine
- I may be pinning my self-worth on my academic performance to an extent
- If a certain threshold is met in absolute terms, I do not care about my rank anymore (if I had an A and the average was an A as well, for instance, I would be just fine)
- I might hold high expectations; while I do not want a perfect record "per se", I have little maneuvering room between my target GPA and a perfect one; given that Ws are nonpunitive, I'd rather have a W than a B at this point
- It's hard to set high expectations of myself in something if I am a rookie at that particular thing
- There is a time for perfection (or near-perfection) and there is a time for failure
- It's easier to set high expectations for something when the benchmarks for performance are clear and I actually have experience with that particular thing; the more experience I have for something, the less tolerance for failure I have for that

Now I am wondering how autism affect anxiety treatments, like CBT/DBT. The counseling services at school said that not only my mental health problems were too severe for me to ignore, they were too severe for me to stay in grad school because the risk of relapse would be too high and treatments would be much less effective while in grad school. Which leaves me with taking medical leave as my only option to get the most out of my treatments.

P.S.: I made numerous attempts at talking about mental health with my peers, NT or autistic, and some of them just confessed to me that they were on medication or otherwise had other mental health problems, that they wouldn't reveal to people other than family or healthcare professionals.

You should continue on.

Your situation is definitely not hopeless.

If you are able, perhaps you should lighten your courseload--and get the doctorate, say, in four years instead of three.

If you were able to respond to a secretary as a de facto therapist, I would say your problems aren't really deep-seated.

I also realized that many of my peers, NT or not, would let their own mental health problems fester to the point of rendering them unable to function, while I decided to take action before things reached that point.

But there is no guarantee as to when, or even if, I will actually return.

I used the secretary in an attempt to stabilize my condition between early November and late November because I couldn't see an actual therapist at school before then (overflow of students using mental health services). But I saw her a lot more often than I had seen therapists after I started seeing actual therapists; I perceived her as a supplement to actual therapy, never as a substitute.

But the real reason why I could actually respond to her was that she had access to information that would help me heal. However, I realized that she had her limitations by now.

Your avatar indicates you don't like a hockey team (I think it's the symbol of the Philadelphia Flyers crossed out). Are you a hockey fan?

I would bet that a less-demanding schedule might do the trick.

My take on your situation is that you are stressing out over the GPA issue, when you really should not. (This is much different than if you were stressing about failing out of the PhD program.) My advice is to continue with the PhD as soon as you are ready to. If you wait a few years, it becomes much harder to do as your life becomes more complicated. The important thing is keeping your eyes focused on the end goal: earning a PhD. You do not have to have a 4.0 GPA to graduate with a PhD. You just need to make sure that you do the best that you can. In my area of science, some companies simply will not hire a 4.0 GPA PhD because they have not struggled with failure enough to know how to handle it when it does happen. I was told that by two different representatives who came to the chemistry department looking for qualified candidates to hire.

Research has a different set of issues altogether. One valuable piece of advice that I can give you in grad school is this: Make sure you pick the right research adviser to work under. Spend some quality time on this particular issue. In a way, it is much like the choice of goblets in Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade movie. If you pick the wrong one, your chances of graduating goes down. I know that one by experience the hard way, but I did survive it. Plan ahead and be adaptable to every change that happens to go your way. Good luck on your studies.

That, unfortunately, is an indication of mental health problems.

It is entirely possible that addressing all the mental health problems to satisfaction actually requires years, and not just a few months. If it only really takes a few months, then, fine, I will resume where I left off as soon as I can.



GPA alone does not allow one to judge how much one struggled with failure in the lab, unless, somehow, graduate coursework in your department is a lot more lab-based (or lab rotations are graded) than I would normally think is the case. Especially, like you said, research has a different set of issues. For this reason I would not discount a 4.0 grad GPA just because of some perceived inability to handle research failures.

If anything, someone with a 4.0 grad GPA that was utterly unable to handle failure would be unlikely to graduate with a PhD in the first place unless that person was also an expert at delegating tasks. Plus a lack of mastery of the fundamentals would increase the likelihood of failure.

As I mentioned earlier, I would be OK with a 3.8-3.9... but I have so little room to maneuver between 3.8 and 4.0 that I may as well aim for a 4.0 anyway. That, knowing that coursework taken at a later stage would be chosen based on the literature review of my possible future research topics.



I knew that the process of picking a research advisor required one to know what areas of specialty interest the student. And also what would prospective advisors look for in a student.

To get a better feel for a prospective advisor, one should also ask his/her current students.

I hope you return soon.

You are right that GPA alone does not indicate how a person struggles with the PhD. However, the companies that I talked with had multiple cases where they hired a 4.0 GPA PhD graduate chemist that then failed at their job and did not handle the situation well. Sub-4.0 GPA PhD graduates usually did not have that issue.

As for the research side, I have witnessed a few chemistry 4.0 GPA PhD candidates that were "helped along" in that area because their laboratory skills were so very weak. They basically finished a PhD with a bare minimum amount of real actual lab time. They also did not "think outside the box" well when they had to, which is critical in my field. (My research committee would have barbecued me if I did not have that ability.)

Chemistry is a laboratory intensive field of study and you have to have certain skills to make it past the Bachelor's degree stage. Yet, I saw some of these PhD candidates that could not even do things that they should have learned in first semester organic chemistry. I had to teach one of them how to spot a TLC plate properly and that was in their field of study. It is these type of skills that the chemical companies are looking for, not just the book knowledge that the person has. Physics is probably much different in that aspect, but you have to be able to do both parts (academic and research) well to earn the PhD.

As for the research adviser, you really have to be careful on so many levels. My former research adviser hid his true personality until you joined his group. Research group members were not allowed to speak bad about him to potential group members as he had a spy within the group that watched everyone for this. (This particular member was one that did not have good lab skills, but great spying skills.) If you did tell the truth about him, it really cost you dearly for years. He ended up breaking a few graduate school rules, got caught by me and got kicked off of my committee because of it. It pays to know all of the rules of the game before you start to play it.

Sorry you're struggling just now - persevere though! Others have offered excellent advice as well. Maybe you could find a mentor at your university?

Finding your niche is priority. Focusing your attention onto your PhD project is imperative to your success, and such focus automatically deflects your insecurities (which are unfounded anyway). You need not defend or justify yourself - you've earned your place. The trick is transcending those inevitable roadblocks, instead approaching them with creativity. I promise you will encounter resistance from outsiders, so always be outwardly confident or they'll eat you alive.

If you didn't perform as well on something (like your class exam) &/or make a mistake (yes, it happens!), just pick-up where you left off and don't look back. I promise you're not alone.

During my PhD, our confocal microscope was out-of-service for 5 months - drastically bad news for me. During this down-time, I devised a novel methodology that actually distinguished me after I finished my PhD. So don't look down, A350XWB. In confidence to you, my supervisor was really disengaged (& virtually absent) and thought nothing of me at all. While that hurt me, moving onwards is critically important to success.

Enjoy your holiday break, and come back refreshed and ready to go!

btw, there's a Highly Educated Aspies forum in the Members Only discussion: viewtopic.php?t=200144

There must be a way you could work under a less strenuous course-load. Most universities are flexible in that sense--especially as you "go up the ladder" academically.

I know somebody who took 15 years to get her doctorate. I'm not advocating you take that long, of course.....maybe try to do 3 years' work in 4 years.

It's not exactly a rare thing.

I would continue in the program, retake the two courses next year, and find a good research adviser.
Research advisers usually don't care about grades, they want someone who is self-starting and capable for research.

As of right now I am on medical leave... at least the professors (DGS included) understand that my mental health is more important than physics coursework.

That's assuming my mental health is back in condition after just one semester; however, I know that the therapy I need is a rather protracted process. Nevertheless it's entirely possible that would be the case; all the information I have on my mental health condition is that my mental health problems appear curable.

I know that a lightened course load would reduce the risk of relapse upon return. Speaking of which I have two windows for return in 2016: in June (in which case I would spend a summer in some lab on the department's dime) or in September (that would mean no research during that summer).



On the one hand, it is unfortunate such cases of people who excel in coursework but are mediocre in research exist. I know a few that ended up "mastering out" due to an utter lack of research skills. And they ended up going on to law school, med school or otherwise doing something that did not involve research as much.

On the other hand, perhaps your department was unlucky enough to be unable to get even just a few people with both perfect grades and decent (although not superb by any means) lab skills... I understand that there isn't that many people that can actually do both.

But why it seems that only people with a 4.0 in grad school are horrible in the lab? I would have thought possible that a non-4.0 student could also turn out to be as horrible in the lab as a 4.0 student, even one with a 3.8-3.9. I would not expect such a discrete jump in lab skills between a 4.0 student and a 3.9 student... or is there a wide gulf in grad-school GPAs between the 4.0 guys and the non-4.0 guys? (The only programs I can think about where that would be the case have very few courses and no letter grades with +/-s attached)

The sub 4.0 GPAs who did not have good lab skills were quickly removed from the program, as their research advisers would not help them to stay past a certain point. Many of them were culled before the Masters point. The reason why I mention the 4.0s specifically has to do with certain advisers would keep them on if they like them, even though they did not have the research skills required to actually earn a PhD. Favoritism can play a part in getting though some parts of grad school for some people.

At my PhD university, the success rate of starting graduate school and finishing there with a PhD in chemistry was about 15-20% (some years closer to 25%). Of those who did not get a PhD, probably 40-50% earned Masters degrees. We had a time limit of eight years maximum on the PhD that was non-negotiable. If you went past that point, no PhD could be awarded for your work, even if it was Nobel Prize winning. That was in the contract we had to sign. Many times, a research adviser would hold onto his/her graduate students until right near the time limit point on purpose to get the most out of them.

There are plenty of students who are good at both classes and research. In grad school, research is much emphasized over classes, so it is only necessary to get decent grades like A or B in a few classes like 4-6 total during first to second year, while focusing on research. I think its better to go back in june and get some research going before school starts and you have to take classes again.

I'm certainly not in an engineering field, but I've known a lot of engineers and I think this applies everywhere. There's a healthy mix of idiots and brilliant people in grad school. And of lazy and hard workers. And it seems to me that the brilliant people are usually also the hard workers, and are always about half-mad while they're finishing school. The idiots breeze through and either give up and do something else or finish up and teach.

You're just going to have to find a way to be kinder to yourself. Relax on this break and then when you're ready, try to remember why you're in this in the first place. It's not for grades or to be the highest goal jumper. There's something you loved about your field. Remember why it's interesting and try to immerse yourself in THAT again. Like, enjoy it.

The last time I was actively taking classes I got to obsessively thinking about numbers. I was folding them in my mind for one (which was weird) and thinking about how abstract concepts cause us to measure things that shouldn't be measured. I had to take a break and remember what the hell I was doing.

The main thing I loved most about physics was about asking and answering fundamental questions about the universe. Hence research making sense for me to do, and my choice of an area of research, particle cosmology.

Also the main reason why I seemingly cared so much about grades, beyond access to the research advisors or external funding while in grad school (got 2 papers from work done in a masters, which renders the entire operation of getting external funding doable) was that I planned for the possibility of some career-changing move at some point that required taking an education in another direction. There are times where, unfortunately, any workplace achievement may seemingly be discounted when carrying out such a move (like law school back home).