The Benefits of Going Back to School When You're Deeply Grieving and Traumatized

Wow, it's been over two weeks since I've posted. That's way too long! I miss the community.

Can you tell my summer semester started? It's even more insane than the regular fall and spring semesters. During the summer we cram 16 weeks worth of material into 10 weeks. And did I mention I'm taking 5 classes? Yeah... I was going to spend the weekend catching up on work but ended up spending the weekend catching up on sleep.

Anyway, that's all pretty boring to talk about...

Wait. No. I apologize, I think I'll make school the topic of this post hahaha.

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The Benefits of Going Back to School When You're Deeply Grieving and Traumatized:


1. It's a good distraction.

I thought nothing could take my mind off of infertility. I thought about it all day, every day. And how could I not, especially at the end when my days were spent going to the doctor's office for blood draws and ultrasounds? My life felt like it was on hold while everyone around me was moving on. Then when we decided to end treatments my mind was still 100% hoping for a miracle pregnancy. I could never give myself a break. And considering how primal the desire for offspring is, I don't blame myself one bit. I'm glad I gave it all I had. And now I'm very glad to be distracted by school. Now I have assignments and projects and deadlines. Every class is so different in terms of its content and requirements, so just keeping everything straight in my head takes a lot of energy. I went from sitting in my recliner all day, drinking multiple cups of coffee, reading TTC boards, and then surfing the internet when I ran out of new posts to read. It didn't make me feel good, but I was stuck in a rut. Now I wake up, shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, drink one cup of coffee, and then I'm out the door to campus. It's so good for me. I'm so thankful.


2. I'm learning stuff!

School is exhausting and learning medical information doesn't come easily for me. The lectures are pretty bad and the reading load is insurmountable. There's not a lot of direct instruction which I miss from the good old days. I'm so old school in my teaching/learning styles. I was complaining to my mom sometime during the middle of last semester and she said to me, "But you seem to be learning a lot." Good point, mom! I am learning a lot, more than I realized. More than I thought I could. And everything I'm learning will help my future patients.

(I feel like I should add a P.S. here. P.S. Going back to school while grieving is one of the hardest things I've ever done. It's really hard to learn and to take in new information when you're grieving. But people who have been through infertility have basically just earned an honorary Ph.D. in Human Reproduction, so people like us have already learned how to learn under extreme stress. So going back to school is hard, but it's something to consider anyway.)


3. It's good practice for the real world.

If you haven't already been able to tell, I was able to isolate myself pretty successfully during my years of trying to get pregnant. Going back to school put me around people again. It put me back in the real world and the real world is real fertile. Most people my age or older have kids. Some of them go to school with me. A lot of people younger than me have kids. Some of them also go to school with me. My professors have kids. My clinical instructors have kids. Patients have kids. I'm able to test out whether or not I want to disclose to different people- colleagues, teachers, bosses- and if so, how. I've tried different ways of having conversations with people with my new self. My new self is a woman who doesn't have any children (everyone knows that) but it wasn't my choice and it was incredibly hard, traumatic, and painful for me (not many people know that). Going back to school, I have experienced meeting new people, making new friends, networking, and working in professional settings. And it has been good practice. I was a little rusty. Haha.

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So I'm sure there's more I could elaborate on with this topic. Just wanted to jot a few ideas down.

If anyone is thinking about going back to school but you're thinking it'll take too long or it's too much work, remember you just do it all one step at a time. I remember getting the idea to go back to school a year before trying IVF, but I didn't want to take the prerequisites. I thought taking Anatomy & Physiology I and II would be too hard and maybe even too boring. So I didn't do it. And you know what, another year passed. The next year came around, none of my fertility treatments resulted in pregnancy, and I could've already had the A & P courses out of the way if I'd taken them when I first had the idea. My point being- time is gonna pass anyway. School sucks, but, if there's a job or a career that you think you will enjoy and be good at, it's worth it. School is temporary. It ends. The job/career can be forever.

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On that note, I have to go write a paper... 😬