Elena Yee

It’s hard to believe that I completed my last fall semester of my graduate program. It was the fullest semester thus far with three courses, a full-time internship and a full-time graduate assistantship. Here are my thoughts about the courses:

It’s the start of a new year and many have proclaimed that this past year of 2016 was the.worst.year.ever. Others insist that we get perspective and stop proclaiming that it was “the worst.” In particular, much of what made this year “the worst” was the election process leading up to the current president-elect.

I confess that I’m enjoying the fact that I’m now finished with my second year of graduate school and that my summer classes are finally over. Last summer, I took four courses so this summer with only two courses it felt like a breeze.

Since last semester I’ve been working with a faculty member in my program on a research article about suicide assessment. More accurately, she invited me to be one of the co-writers for the article, which was a surprise and has been a remarkable learning experience thus far. It was also timely since I was taking the two required courses for research that included quantitative statistics. For most of my classmates, learning about statistics in the context of research was daunting and dispiriting.

One of my favorite bloggers is Eric Barker and this past week he had a good one about the truth of self-esteem. The truth being that it's more about self-compassion and I agree. Check out his posting here.