I got another birthday wish fulfilled! Well, I’ve been telling friends I would love to see snow on my birthday. Given the mild winter that we’ve had so far, I wanted to have some “closure” with the season. I needed a snowstorm. It didn’t come exactly on the birthday itself,but I think it is all for the best, as I wouldn’t want to spoil the weekend plans with a snowstorm. Hopefully the snow accumulation sticks around until Sunday, although I doubt it. Anyways,I feel like it was my first time to see snow – getting giddy with excitement and marveling at how pretty the winter landscape is with a dash of white goodness. I guess February 29, 2012 wants to be remembered as that day when winter made a comeback.
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If my original plan had pushed through, today would have been my defense day. But it’s pushed back further to April 3rd. Thinking about it right now, I can feel the pressure – from family, from friends, but most of all from me. My written dissertation is still not solid, I am at a loss as to how I am going to spin it off. I am not feeling confident about my work, my data. Up till now, the hypotheses we have come up for the project are not really addressed by the data that I have and I’m really scared that my examination committee will rip me apart. I want to send out a draft to my P.I. for him to read, but I don’t want to give him a crappy draft. According to my schedule, I should have been done with the Introduction chapter by now. Actually, I have stuff written for all of my chapters, they are just incomplete at different levels. I tell myself to focus on one chapter, but I end up staring at the screen for quite some time, I feel I’m wasting time. Add to that the unplanned experiments that had to be done for the manuscript that is under revision. And I didn’t factor in the time I have to allot for the undergrad who is still doing volunteer work in our lab. I don’t think extra time would make a difference. What I need is a change of mindset and a thorough convincing of the self that I can do this, that I need not worry about the other stuff for now.
Let the job hunting lie low for the next couple of days, you’ve sent out a couple of applications. Let them go through your CV. You will hear from them eventually. Press pause for your personal life for now, although this doesn’t mean you shun the world entirely. You know what I mean. Don’t worry about being “penniless” in the coming months. What you need to do right now, at this moment, is to finish your draft. That’s all there is to this. For now.
So get back to your word document and just write. Write, as if your life depend on it – well, my life as it will be and as it unfolds in the coming days, will really depend on it.
Life's Ebb and Flow 