The journey to the final semester at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa has been a long and complicated one. I’ve jumped from idea to idea, been told to stop halfway through an idea, and have had to figure out being a human in Hawaiʻi through it all.

Fortunately, I’ve made it through all the obstacles so that I can now see graduation in the distance. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t more troubles ahead. While I’ve ticked off IRB approval, literature review edits (on edits, on edits, on edits) and laying out the design of my study, actual implementation still remains.

So, to start off 2019, I discovered that my list of people interested in participating was no longer on my phone. I tried calling up Samsung to see if I could find it in the cloud and combing through various resources to find the names of people I can’t remember. After moping about for a couple days in shocked anxiety, I’ve realized there’s nothing to lose in reaching out for help. Asking people to help me form a new list on short notice isn’t a knock on my skills. Hiccups happen in research all the time, and after hearing about a PhD student who lost notebooks worth of data, I don’t feel so bad about my situation. And it’s ok to take a breather when things get a bit overwhelming.

Just make sure to get back up.