“Piled Higher and Deeper” by Jorge Cham (www.phdcomics.com)
So after a long week of work I’ve finally got the rough draft of my thesis in for comments. Although the actual document only took a week or two to write, it’s scary to think of all the work that went into the generation of the conclusions. I’ve been working on this project for almost three years. All of that has now been distilled down to one document. Granted, it’s a pretty big document, but still.
Now I await comments from my advisor, then the thesis committee. The revision process should run no longer than a week, then things get wrapped up and the final copy is due in on April 6.
I’ve been pretty focused the past few weeks getting this done, so I hope that I can return to a somewhat normal schedule after that.
Yet… I’m just working on my thesis. Which tends to be lonely work, making it a perfect thing to do when everyone else is gone on spring break. Perhaps it’s the lack of sleep/personal contact but I was thinking today of what a great bond I’ve formed with the computer programs I’ve been using religiously to complete my thesis over the past few days. They’ve even developed personalities of sorts:
Microsoft Word (the workhorse for all my writing needs)
EndNote (helpful organizing the considerable number of references)
Visio (figures)
Excel (tables and charts)
OneNote (my computerized brain where I can dump ideas to consider later whenever they pop up)
Adobe Acrobat (helpful for returning to reference material)
Internet Explorer (pandora radio classical to keep me from going insane, it does not appear to be working)
In addition, I feel that the painful work of thesis-writing is best offset with good food. Observe:
I’m getting close to being done, which is exciting. But there’s still a lot remaining to do. So until then…
Ok I lied, as I was driving home from the lab where I posted that last video and claimed that I didn’t have time or energy for proper writing I got to thinking and now I actually have something to write.
But before that. Apparently the left turn signal in the ol’ Rodeo has given out. Now instead of activating the signal there’s just this annoying buzzing. I’d fix it immediately, but the sound coming from the relay seems to be somewhere deep in the dashboard which probably means the fix won’t be easy or fast which means it probably won’t be happening anytime in the immediate future. I can sometimes finagle it to work (oh the joys of older cars) but for the most part the only legal direction I can turn is to the right… So clearly the conclusion here is that both in old cars and in politics you could say that going to the left too much causes things to break… har har.
Anyways, so as I drove home from yet another late night in the lab I was thinking of people (out of state friends and family and such) I had neglected to call/e-mail over the past few months, and mentally rehearsing what I would say to them to excuse the fact that I was so tardy in contacting them. The funny thing was that in almost every case this was not the first time that I had let a long time go between points of contact and that my excuse was the same one I always go to in that situation: “Sorry, but I’ve been totally slammed with work.” Which got me thinking…
When have I not been slammed with work?
The obvious implication here is that the amount of work I’m experiencing is uncharacteristically high, and that’s why I haven’t called. But it would seem that if the workload is constantly high then me being slammed is not all that abnormal, and should probably be expected. As I considered further I realized that I wasn’t all that busy and that I, along with many other people I know, just use that as an excuse to get out of the guilt of ignoring someone who we wanted to contact. After all, saying “Oh I’m sorry I haven’t called, I was just playing Halo and screwing around on Facebook all night” doesn’t have quite the same legitimacy as “I was studying cures for cancer in the lab all night.”
Not to say that I don’t have a lot of work to do sometimes. But I have this belief that college students (myself included) have awfully inefficient work habits and take weeks do to what could be done in days. This, coupled with high expectations for the amount of communication there will be will have with remote friends and family makes for constant “busy-ness” as an excuse for lack of quality conversation time.
So I have two conclusions from this:
Don’t expect to have more contact with remote friends and family than is reasonable. Stop making excuses for why you chose to go get shakes with the guys after the chapter meeting instead of calling that friend you’ve been meaning too.
Work harder and use profitablly the free time that hard work creates.
Now it’s time to make a wise choice with my time and go to sleep.
Sorry for all of the videos as of late. I just don’t seem to have the time/energy for real writing these days outside of the massive amount of work I’m having to put into the thesis. However it should be over soon. However something I do have time for is youtube, especially when it’s making fun of things:
The birthday one is priceless. Especially the part about responding to them. FYI, I will no longer be sending those. No offense.
“Piled Higher and Deeper” by Jorge Cham (www.phdcomics.com)