Post Punk Kitchen Forum

Procrastinating...

I have to present a paper next week and want to finish making my powerpoint TODAY, so I can spend the rest of the week actually working on my PhD. Since I'm having dinner with a friend tonight, that means finishing in the next two hours... It's a reworked version of a previous presentation, so it shouldn't be too hard.

I can do it!

4 page outline for a presentation is due at midnight. I haven't started. I'm gonna fail. I'm gonna fail. I hate my life.

I'm cracking under the stress of everything I have to do. I regret causing myself so much pain.

I don't even have enough time in my schedule to half-ass all the things I have to get done. Right now my head's above the water but I feel like it's just a matter of time until something drops off the end of the queue.

And this is my mood AFTER I got done an assignment I thought would take me 1.5 hrs in half that. I know I should keep pushing and work on some other stuff but I've been up since 5 a.m., spent a full day with my kids, etc, and I just feel like I am going to forking collapse. My head's not on straight enough to even think of what I should do next.

The thing I got done is the one thing that I absolutely needed to have done for tomorrow. And that is good.

HONOR THE ACHIEVABLE - that's my motto (and after all, tomorrow is another day)!

Next task: I need to defend this mini-project. There isn't much to it, but I'll just have to do my best I guess. Presentations will be sometime next week, and then I'll be done with this!

I've probably described my program before, but we have two ~6 month mini-projects before selecting our thesis project. They're specifically supposed to be in totally different fields with totally different supervisors - the aim is to try things out and determine, by trial through fire, whether an area you think is interesting is actually interesting and whether a supervisor you think you'd work well with actually works well with you.

This is the second mini-project, so after this I need to choose a supervisor and thesis project. I've pretty much already made that decision, though, so I'll be able to dive right in once I get this out of the way. My planned thesis project is a continuation of my first mini-project with the same supervisor, which I found extremely interesting. Additionally, I felt I worked very well with my first supervisor. For my current mini-project the opposite was true (less interesting than I thought it would be, and I'm not a fan of this supervisors style) so I'm really really looking forward to wrapping this up and moving on.

That said, even if I'm not happy with the outcome, I've learned so much while working on this. I'm definitely coming out better equipped than I went in and it is all applicable to my future work.

Since I dropped out of school (was doing pre-reqs for a program), I've felt good but also empty. I started looking at graduate programs today but there are none near me that entice me. There are a lot of 'professional' programs but I don't want a 'professional' degree.

For the first time in my life I just turned in an assignment that didn't have the minimum requirements. I just couldn't write because I was afraid of failing. fork it all.

Do they have any support services at your school? From personal experience I can say that talking to someone about school stress and angst can help limit performance anxiety and self sabotage. Being in school for years and years and basically being entirely reliant on professors to be decent in order ever get done is not good for mental health.

I need to keep my mouth shut and not complain about people/my dissertation to other students. It's not worth it in case something bites me in the asparagus later. I just need to keep my head down and work. Just a few more months and I'm done (knock on wood)!

So true. The picture looks totally different today... I had three big deadlines (a huge piece of writing and two exams) all on the same day next week, and the deadline for the writing got pushed back a week. It still has to get done, but having even just a couple more days to work on it without the additional burden of studying for exams is so amazing.

Also, the shouting man (as I call that one professor now) really liked the work I half-assed last night. Did I tell you guys I think I actually like him despite his brusque manner and insane email policies? He has grown on me.

I sat down and calculated my hours. I'll be finished with internship in 7 weeks. Then I get to take the qualifying exam and begin my final project.

Yes, but I'm scared of using support services because of past experiences. However, I think I'll try the service here.

I am officially failing a class. I've never failed a class before. I had a panic attack before my presentation. The teacher is willing to work with me, but I don't know what to do. Maybe I should drop out. I don't love studying Political Science the way I used to.

Do you have an assigned advisor you can talk things through with if you'd rather not use support services, finnophile?

I'm doing an MA in a field I have no academic background in. I really enjoy it so far but it's exhausting trying to keep up with classes that are based on assumed knowledge that I don't have.

Just got my first rejection. :(

I applied for a postdoc position in a field I'm not really an expert in so it's not a big surprise, but it's still depressing. I need to learn not to take it personally! But it was kind of the perfect job and it was close to my family. Sigh.

The shouting man again:

He gave us back the second individual assignment we did for him right before the exam today. (He still hasn't given back the first one, and I think it was kind of shitty to give us the second one back right before the exam so we could both get no useful information from it AND have to stress about it while taking a test.) I'm not complaining about my grade because I got a pretty good grade, which puts me in A+ range according to him.

What I am complaining about is that the grading makes no sense. He wrote nothing on the paper except some red marks and two numbers (-2 on two different sections). Yet my overall grade was -24. Um... based on what? As I was puzzling this out, he then announced that we're not allowed to come to him and ask about his grading. He says if you ask him about your grade/why you got that grade, he will take more points off.

This was right after he gave us a moving speech about how we need to exercise our basic student right to have minimal class sizes. Um, what about my basic student right to know why I got a particular grade/how I can improve in the future?

I am so love-hate with this guy.

C&S that guy sounds weird. It makes no sense to prohibit from students from inquiring why they got a score.

It's crepe like that that makes me want to GET OUT of the university system!

I submitted a paper today, have to finish another one that's due Thursday, did a take-home midterm on my lunch break today, am spending 8 hours tomorrow working on a group project, and am supposed to be reading hundreds of pages of research articles and putting in 25 clinical hours a week on top of all of this. And take care of my 4 month old baby. I have never been anywhere close to this stressed out in my entire life, but I'm feeling strangely calm. Am I going crazy? Am I still actually alive? I just don't know anymore! And I still manage to waste time on the PPK!

I know I will take every rejection personally, even the ones for positions I never even really wanted!

I submitted manuscript one of my dissertation. Yay! Now to figure out manscript two and to learn how to do a lit review without it taking a million years and making me want to slam my face into my desk.

I thought most schools required profs to explain rubrics to students so they have a better shot at understanding mistakes and making improvements. Can you talk to a dept. advisor (or dept. head!) or someone to find out? That prof.'s behavior sounds totally bizarre. Also, uncomfortable.

Tomorrow is the first session of the course I'm (co-)teaching!!!

Also, my big fun academic writing project is 33% done! And my current academic crush has posted new links to stuff that might be of use to me.

Life is good and will in all probability never get boring.

My supervisor sent me some criticisms about my presentation plan! Now to quickly implement them over the next few hours.

Managed to get stuff worked out.

Now I have to survive the week. I have a take home test (2 4 page essays), an 8-12 page paper, and a 2 page paper proposal due a week from tomorrow. And I have to turn in my MRP proposal a week from Friday (but my supervisor wants it Monday). Why is everything due the day after Halloween? Not cool.

Does anyone have advice for dealing with students that want stuff remarked? The prof said she would do it, but now she wants me to remark a students exam. I don't have the time and I'm worried I'll mark the student lower because he's being an annoying twit. The prof is no help at all.

Ugh, I finally dragged myself to the local public library this morning because I don't seem to get any work done at home. Turns out they installed a lunch/snack bar in the reading area. Half the library now smells like grilled ham/cheese sandwiches and beef broth.

I was almost ready to head back home when I found they also made some new study booths at the other end. It's kind of noisy in here since the tops of the booths are open and everything is made of metal, glass and tile (the building is an old cookie factory), but at least I can't smell the animal flesh being cooked at the other end of the place.

Hopefully the industrial environment will help me to work better. The growing autumn darkness and cold have been getting me down.

I keep procrastinating and not doing my assessment. I keep flitting between things and not really doing anything.

I'm trying to use language contact theory to explain some of the non-Germanic features of (Old) English, but instead I keep reading about the Celts and the Romans and the pre-Celtic peoples who lived on these fair isles and probably spoke something that wasn't Indo-European and might have been related to Basque or Finno-Ugric. Sadly, all of that has only minimal relevancy to my history of English module.