>>8215960
been there. the trick is to make a simple goal and fucking stick to it no matter what. it doesn't even have to be related to your work/life goals, just think of something productive to do and do it every. single. goddamn. day.

take a walk through your neighborhood. cook a new meal. do 20 pushups. write a shitty poem. literally anything.

buy a wall calendar, put that shit right by your desk, and mark down days you do your thing and days you don't.

just the brute ritual of performing a task every day will help you re-acclimate to your major goals.

good luck OP. it sucks to be where you are but it's not permanent.

>>8215960
I am you. Just I stopped fapping as well largely. Most crippling is the realization that my degrees are worthless and I'll have to study Engineering after I'm done with the MA. By then I'll be rather old for a guy applying for an entry level job.

I wish I just would stop to wake up.

>>8215981

I just wanted to know others have been here and made it through.

Thanks man, brings a tear to my eye. I'm sorry you had to go through it too. I'm glad you're out.

What kind of work are you doing?

I hit my Master's like a brick wall after three years of undergrad, because I was expecting it to be different from undergrad and it was more of the same fucking busywork bullshit. It was really hard to maintain my enthusiasm for the five GRAD9001 courses I had to take when they all had the exact same idiots from undergrad and the exact same feeling of deforming my passion for the subject into a shitty chore. But then I realised that I was actually doing shit I hated for my thesis, and overhauled it to be something I would actually be excited to pursue every time I woke up.

So for me it was academic exhaustion. If you are still loving what you're doing, it sounds like you might just be outright depressed. The number one thing to do in that scenario is to hang in there and get some outside help. Depression will tinge your judgment with negativity and defeatism, and make you make bullshit decisions that will cease to make sense once the depression lifts. That isn't to say you should stay there and suffer indefinitely, or just soldier ahead no matter what, but don't do anything drastic.

>>8215960
"They say that it get's better / all I know is / it fucking better"

Been there man. And sometimes still am. I know it will sound like insane bullshit, but Critique of Pure Reason followed by Phenomenology of Spirit coincident with Ulysses (and Campbell's lectures about them) as well as some Indian philosophy really helped me out.

Deep thinking about what Joyce means for / represents in man as universal, not Joyce as genius individual.

Nietzsche is probably the short cut. But I can't comment much on it.

>>8215981
This is also correct. Starting Critique of Pure Reason was one of those "I'mma finish this motherfucker" goals that help people break bad spirals.

>>8216084

OP here, what you describe, the disappointment of finding the Masters isn't that new, invigorating deep-dive into academia I hoped for is very familiar to me. That isn't to be arrogant - I don't think I've done brilliantly this year - first this mood has affected me and then I had a medical emergency that now, when everyone else is done, I'm still on extension to make up for time lost in hospital.

I did a 4 year undergrad, the last year in essence being what a 1 year taught masters is like. That's why I signed up for a 2 year research masters, but the first year has been the same grind. I feel like rather than progressing I've just stood still. It definitely doesn't help. I have wished over and over that I took a year out between BA and masters because I worked my utter bollocks off at undergrad to get a top mark. And now I can barely find the will to sit at a desk for an hour and read about things I used to love. It has all seemed so pointless this year.

>>8215960
ive had/ am having a similar problem. it will sound like a paradox, and it's because it's like a vicious circle, but for me once i stopped reading it threw me off my rhythm. it was crucial to force myself to read because i realized the necessity for it to keep me stable. i know, shitty advice, but maybe you haven't realized the emphasis and importance reading has in your own life, and having this as your motivation might help? dont need to read a shit tonne, just make what you do read count. thats how i bounced back, just a little bit each day and gradually increase time spent reading. quality over quantity first though

>>8216147
I know exactly what you mean. PhD will have a bit more of the same in the first year or two, as well - hopefully with your MA you can skip one or both years, but just keep that in mind so you don't become disillusioned.

The slog really killed it for me in the early part. I wanted to chase all these neat bizarre research leads and sidetracks to really make my thesis a unique project, but I had to work 30hrs+ weekly (with an absolutely fucking horrid three-bus-changes-in-rush-hour 3~hr daily commute), ON TOP of taking five junky classes I gave less than a shit about, with a bunch of students who had no grasp of their field but still wanted to masturbate themselves constantly over being INTELLECTUALS. I hated any aspect of my BA or MA that forced me to interact with the 99.9% of students who seem to be directionless dilettantes who assume a priori that they are brilliant awesome dudes. I feel sick even remembering it. But I got through it.

I don't know what else to say except that the only thing that saved me is focusing on my own shit. The light at the end of the tunnel. Tolerate the garbage so you can get back to your unique project(s).

Slumps are very common in postgrad. At the PhD level especially, there a notorious slump right after you finish comps and, naturally, immediately squander a year or two because you FINALLY don't have arbitrary strictures anymore. That post-comps slump is a natural result of running a gauntlet of thankless qualifications and endless makework horseshit for several years straight. Now, for most students, this will be their first time undertaking that kind of thing. But you seem to be one of the few who approached undergrad the way most PhD students approach comps, one of the few who really cared about his vocation and who treated it like a life's work instead of a leisurely excuse not to get a job. If that's the case, you're probably getting hammered with the same thing that those PhD students get.

Why do you love what you do? I have very specific reasons that I want to claw my way angrily into "actual academic work," and frankly I will eat any shit sandwich necessary to get there. Do you have anything like that? Trust me, if you followed a passion for Late Antique history through undergrad with singular determination, you're already better off than the vast majority of my graduating MA class who are only there, again, because it means they don't have to get a job.

File: 1435498755036.jpg (155 KB, 960x850) Image search: [Google]

155 KB, 960x850

>>8216519

Thank you for taking the time to reply - I address that to everyone in the thread.

Your peers sound dispiritingly familiar. I'm grateful for the compliment, but I'd be lying if I said I had approached my BA like a DPhil student - I spent my fair share of time in pyjamas watching shitty television with friends, or drinking. But I also never missed a lecture.

I was one of those classic cases at school - a bright child who during his teens, allowed himself to coast. When I wasn't slacking though, I knew that I enjoyed studying history and Latin, so I applied to read ancient and medieval history at college. But when I applied I had only THE vaguest notions of what studying history actually meant.

I left school with good results, but not as good as I could have had I bothered to apply myself. By the skin of my teeth, I got into a very good college abroad. I discovered late antiquity during my year out between school. I was working a shitty job as an insurance broker, and during my lunch breaks would visit the bookshop, mostly as a way to avoid spending lunch in the break room with my 'colleagues'. One afternoon I found John Julius Norwich's 'A Short History of Byzantium'. I had heard the word Byzantium but couldn't have told you what the Byzantine Empire was.

And that was it - I found out that the Roman empire in the east had survived beyond 476 and that there was an entire 'late antiquity'/'early middle ages' I had been entirely ignorant of, an inbetween where - to use an old cliche - the light hadn't quite died. If I had read something more scholarly I don't know if the effect would have been the same, but I was hooked.

So when I finally got to college, I was determined to stop squandering my potential, and to actually work my arse off rather than to rely on being able to coast through. I was surprised to find there were no Byzantinists nor Late Antiquarians. Almost all my four years were spent studying either high classical civilization, or the high middle ages. The inbetween never figured - except on those few occasions when I got to propose an essay title, and could wrangle something from my own reading in.

I got hooked on that inbetween space that I had to study on my own time, and that's why I applied for a master's course where I finally got to concentrate on it.

Until this year, I was very much the same - I was willing to put up with anything to have a chance at studying this stuff for a living. I worked my ass off, but it now feels like it hasn't been worth it. I feel like I'm stuck in the same 'place' in my 'career', the 'real' world is increasingly knocking at my door and despite excelling as an undergraduate, and all the encouragement of tutors and lecturers to the contrary, it now feels like I'm not actually good enough to do this for a living.

I can't really explain it. This is one of those few times when I wish we had identities here - because the replies in this thread feel like a reassuring hand on the shoulder.

>>8216766

Cont.

I just feel like I have lost that drive - between the intellectual masturbatathon that have been tutorials this year - with both fellow students and big names in the field teaching taking part - the sense of pointless arbitrary undergraduate 2.0 structure and work, the strict instruction to AVOID our chosen research specialisms until the second year, and a hospital visit - I've been sapped of my energy and sense of self-worth, as well as of the sense that what I am doing is worthwhile or fulfilling.

Bumping in the vain hope of reconnecting with the anons from earlier.

>>8215960
Just stop reading and chill. Reading isn't all there is to life, bruh. The majority of people live just chillin.

>>8217592
Thanks bruh

>>8216766

>my horse dressed better than you

damn noblman bants are savage

>>8219428
I know right? Fucking lads.