Could you tell me a time you hit a wall?

In the year of 2016, I entered what would ultimately be an unsuccessful year of education but from which I learned some valuable lessons about myself and my approach towards other people. It was to be a victory lap on what had been a vastly enjoyable experience at university where I studied the field of Physics. I had glided through my penultimate year with relative ease and I was comfortably swimming in safe familiar waters with a final year ahead that was a stage set up for its final act, a predictable but happy conclusion. I entered my Honors year brimming with confidence and a keen interest to explore new territory. All through life I’ve maintained an awareness of the issues that our planet's environment is facing and like many others I’ve experienced frustration for my incapability as an individual to influence change on a large scale. In the brainstorming for my thesis proposal, I was presented with a rare opportunity to do just that and it was an easy choice. I was offered the opportunity to study the intake of microplastics in marine life; an issue that was rapidly becoming more prevalent and headline-worthy as people become aware of the damage that their favourite facial scrub was doing (another topic for writing in itself, but in short… the oceans are a mess). I recklessly bowled into it like an electrician attempting heart surgery, so eager to help without fully assessing my suitability. As you may have realised (unlike me) there is little overlap between a physics degree and the study of plastics in fish and it was already a stretch but my mind had been lit up with possibility at the prospect and after meetings where the possibility of having results published there was no question of me not choosing it.

Ironically with the field of marine biology, I found my self stranded in deep water. I was placed in a new building away from all the students and colleagues I’d been working with from the beginning with a laboratory I had no familiarity with.The apparatus was all new and I would have to repeatedly ask strangers for the simplest of advice. I’m sure in retrospect they were all welcoming of a newcomer in their departmentbut from my perspective I could feel eyes rolling back behind closed eyelids and imaginary disdain in their every tone. I hit my first stride a week or so in, finally being able to produce some results I could show to my supervisor. When presented, however, I was told of the irrelevancy of the results and lambasted for wasting valuable time with inconsequential research. I felt a significant knock to my confidence that day, but I still felt driven to correct my mistake. I would wake up with determination, pack my bag for the day, lunches prepped and all, and walk to university with the intent of spending the whole day making drastic breakthroughs and uncovering newground-breaking results. But I’d reach the front door and I’d pause, hesitant to step in from the cold. I’d do a small lap of the block maybe picking up a coffee as if that was the answer to everything and head back only to slow down again outside and be hit with a sudden overwhelming urge to just go home. Try again tomorrow! Something’s just not right today. I conceded and fell into this awful pattern, only rarely making it across threshold only to be met with further frustration and perplexity and every day I’d return to bed another rung down the ladder. Numerous times this frustration reduced me to the verge of tears and I’d make a hushed exit stage left so I could be alone before I had a breakdown in public. After a while, this solidified connection was formed between the work I was expected to complete and being unhappy. I knew every morning looking up at the modern architecture of the department building that if I was to put myself in that small dark optics room on the third floor I’d just feel like a failure. I’d have more ease scaling the side of the building than overcoming this unsurmountable wall I’d constructed in my mind.

Eventually, after weeks of repeating this awful pattern and dodging emails, I met with my head of year (after the previous experience of meeting my supervisor I’d rather avoid a repeat of that). I explained my situation and was greeted with welcome sympathy but rather than accepting the unfeasibility I was told to endure it and keep going. I am very fortunate in life to of had my mental wellbeing in good health for most of my life, never having to experience to horrible realities of clinical depression or anxiety but I feel like I understand a little more the extent of this inability from this experience. Stories of people who suffer depression and struggle to get out of bed in the morning are not to be dismissed. Whenever somewhere, someone is suffering from a resistance that their own brain can pose when faced with the simplest of tasks you should treat it like you would a physical illness. I’d like to emphasise that my experience doesn’t fall in this category but to the senior staff in my department, it was probably like asking a primary kid to learn his times tables. They may have understood the difficulties but its far from an insurmountable problem, just a learning curve to be overcome. What’s far harder to fathom is the pure impossibility of a task. For me this was impossible. Nothing was going to change that. I didn’t care about trying again. I didn’t care about graduating. I just didn’t want to step in that laboratory every again and I feared that forcing it would only jeopardize my wellbeing. Forcing out of idle is almost never the answer. It only exacerbates the feeling of failure.

I firmly believe that a far more consoling and productive reaction is to try a new avenue. One from which you can gain just the same sense of achievement. Criticising a person’sinabilities can often feel for them like they’re just digging a bigger hole for themselves. For me, I took the following summer for myself and returned with a project that played to my strengths. I don’t mean to dissuade from exploring outside your comfort zone but going in with the understanding that sometimes it just might not work out and that’s okay is very important. Realise that you can still learn and grow from such experiences. I returned to blue shores where I completed my degree with a superb final result that I will always be extremely proud of and attended my graduation ceremony that had felt light-years away only a year prior.