I'm in semester 1 of a Master's degree in Mathematics. I have always wanted to be a math professor. It's my dream to do that with my life.

And I adore my current professors. I love the material I'm learning from them, and I feel privileged to be here. But I have to work 2 jobs on top of being a student, just to stay afloat.

I took off work for my second job in order to make time for me to grade a stack of exams for my first job. However, when I arrived back home, I collapsed on my bed from exhaustion and slept through the entire time I'd set aside for grading.

I don't know what to do. I'm on track to doing the one thing I've ever wanted to do, but I don't know if I can make it.

I had a double major in math and comp sci for my undergrad. I could always just find a job at a tech company writing software, but it really would fucking suck to give up on my dreams because rent is too high for me to pursue them.

I was given an amazing opportunity to work for the University, and part of that involves me never having to pay them tuition. But even with tuition being a complete non issue (save for the predatory undergrad loans I have), I still feel like I'm drowning.

I'm beginning to feel like chasing my dreams was a mistake.

I was doing some online training for a new job, and one of them was of course Diversity and Inclusion training. Part of the course was about harassment, and the way they were talking about it was honestly disgusting. I transcribed a particularly egregious portion below:

Harassment is considered illegal if it's so frequent or severe that it creates a hostile work environment. A hostile work environment is unwelcome behaviors that unreasonably interfere with an employee's ability to work and/or create an intimidating, aggression-filled or offensive work environment. Hostile work environments can make employees not look forward to coming to work, which affects the quality of their performance, and can lead to increased absentee rates and decreased productivity.

Are we joking right now? This can't be serious. Are we saying you couldn't think of a single other reason that harassment might be bad, outside of profit producing productivity?

Really didn't expect to be made sick by this training course, of all things, and yet here we are.