The master plan of hard work and deep misery

Sunday ended up wasted after all. I watched some Olympics, stumbled around the Internet, and went home after over 5 hours of unproductiveness.

My major goal for tonight is to write a schedule for the next 3 months. It is crucial that I do that since I have several key events, the most important being my oral exam. Other events include two trips abroad and a grant proposal.

I've been postponing my oral exam for awhile now. I think I got both of my advisors to the point where passing the exam is more of a formality than a necessity. Having said that, my major advisor is a tough cookie and he will not lose sleep over failing me. At least he got me to strongly believe in this possibility. Thus I must prepare and study an undefined amount of subjects in an undetermined depth as he doesn't believe in telling me what I should know for the exam either.

Postponing the exam beyond 2008 is not an option for several reasons:

1. I am sick and tired of having it hanging over my head.
2. It is a definite step toward my PhD, with the length of step > 0.
3. My husband and I are buying a house in 3-4 months. I need time and energy for searching for our perfect home, making financial arrangements and moving! And I want to enjoy the process as much as possible.
4. I will lose tuition benefit from work if I don't take thesis credits. And I can't take them until I've passed the oral exam.

So this what I'm going to do (before going home tonight!) and report back:

• Identify all big projects for the fall. DONE!
  
• Bird's view of deadlines (with some vague idea of whether it is possible to achieve) DONE and it looks awful! I have to write THREE BIG things in ONE TINY month: a paper, a research proposal and my portion of our grant. Good luck to me. As I said before, there is no postponing. If September going to be hell, at least it will be over soon.
  
• Email to my advisors for their approvals. DONE! Let's see what they say...
  

I also got to read this paper which is very close to what I was planning to do. Fortunately for me, the authors are basing their work on a faulty assumption, which means my discovery is still "unscooped". However, fixing their work might not be so difficult once I "come out", so I need to reflect on how to proceed. In any case it is clear that I must publish as soon as I can. Ahhh, another major item for this list. Yeah... Not happening today... I obviously worked too hard to write a plan for the fall. And now I'm trying to soothe myself with some candy because seriously how am I going to make it through September?

Ok, off I go.