Anyone still there?

Hey!

What’s up?

How’s life going? What’s good? What’s bad? What’s crazy?

Things have been … just been….over here. Word on the street is that everyone goes through a major mental/motivation crisis on the PhD journey. I’m DEFINITELY in that stage.

I’m currently working on slides for my oral preliminary exam. And it’s awful. I feel as though I haven’t accomplished anything in the last year (due to controversy over math and writing papers) so it seems like I have nothing to show. I’m also pretty worried since I don’t have what one would call the stereotypical dissertation topic. Those tend to be very in depth on a specific topic in a specific field in a specific subject. <- Think, people who spend their entire career developing one equation

My topic is absolutely nothing like that. It’s a little mix of heat transfer and simulation with a dash of knit design and a sprinkle of electronics and biology. None of these are very in depth but I have a pretty good knowledge of how each one fits into the big picture. This makes it rather difficult to tell a story based on a research question and a hypothesis because everything is related and simultaneously unrelated. This is already rather stressful.

Because I am a mismash of fields I have a mismash of a committee with varying backgrounds in different departments. I’m very happy with who I’ve chosen! What’s not great is that each department on campus has different graduation requirements and no one can give me direction on which forms to fill out and what requirements I need to meet. <- Which results in stuff like today where I find out about a bunch of forms that are due tomorrow and they all need signatures and approvals. Frankly, I’m pissed.

I’m pissed that my advisor has been mostly absent in a semester when I needed extra advice. I’m pissed that no one can give me any direction. I’m pissed that the dog whines constantly when I’m home and trying to get work done. I’m pissed that the first vacation we took since Thanksgiving (yes we worked through most of Christmas) was less of a vacation and more of a frantic, scheduled sight-seeing expedition. (Yes it was fun and we had a great time but it was a stressful vacation). I’m pissed that we need to move again to find cheaper rent and the prices are higher and the places are less dog friendly.

Long story short…I’m tired, frustrated, and pissed off and I really need a vacation. Or a margarita 🙂