I am a slave to the internet and I am known to check my email account (which updates automatically – go Gmail!) a lot of times per day. Checking emails and sending emails is not a problem at all. But sending emails to intimidating email recipients…is very nerve-wracking and it consumes so much of my time to just compose the letter and gather the courage to shakily hit that “send” button! (Whereafter I get uber jittery and unnecessarily wish there was an undo button for my school email account.)

I recently sent emails out inquiring about research opportunities at my university. It must have taken me a couple of hours to finish forming one email that I was confident (uhh, scratch that, barely comfortable is more like it. I mean, I re-read it like 10 times, copy and pasted it into Microsoft Word to check for any stupid errors I might have missed, and STILL felt reluctant to send it) enough in sending off.

When I got a few responses from a professor and a few graduate students, it probably took me half an hour to form a short responding email back to them. *sweatdrop*

A lot of the time, writing is my favorite medium to communicate with people. But with people like professors and grad students (whom I would like to work for), I get so nervous about my writing. What if I write something stupid? What if I don’t come across as intellectual enough? Blah blah blah????

Anyway, I’m going to meet one of the grad students tomorrow to talk more about her project opening and the work she does. Nervous as heck, since this is the first time I’m really taking initiative to get involved in research. I need to brace myself for rejection, too. Ugh, been really busy with school lately. Been pretty good at finishing everything, but now my next goal is to be on top of things ahead of time so I can stop being so damn stressed all the time. T_T