Eureka!

I am excited! Today I have finished a patent disclosure on a really-really cool idea. I thought of it all by myself. And when I shared it with senior scientists, they liked it. Liked it so much, that they came to me with other applications for the idea which we can file as separate disclosures. This is a true testament that my idea is good - others want in on it.

Who knows, maybe in 10 years from now there will be patients whose life is better because of my invention. They will feel better, sleep better, and live longer. Wouldn't that be wonderful?

I (naturally?) think that this idea is huge and has a ton of potential. But simply the fact that it is mine, is enough. All this time I've been watching others saying smart things, doing interesting experiments, proposing new ideas. And all of a sudden I am a member of the club! Now others ask my opinion and listen to (and agree with) what I have to say.

Thanks be to Lord, who granted me an insight into how He intended things to be and a joy of discovery which will continue as I study this idea further!

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As the work day is wrapping up and the dissertation shift begins, my excitement is quickly fading away and the little girl inside of me is wailing "I don't want to work! I've been such a good girl today! Please let me go home!" It's almost 7pm. My goodness, how can I make my workday end at 5pm, so I actually have time for dissertation?!

And where do I find motivation? Oy. Well, let's start with something easy, like opening the file with the draft. Sigh. SIGH.

Saturday - 1, School - 0

This Saturday has been a total waste. Although it's quite a regular occurrence, I still fail to prepare for it. Absence of must-do things like drive to work usually throw me for a loop and I end up wasting my whole day regretting every wasted minute at the same time.

I did some stuff around the house: did five loads of laundry, cleaned our bathtub and shower curtains (long overdue project!), cleaned up our kitchen, vacuumed and that's about it.

Even though I've done a lot of house chores, I still feel like a total failure because I did not do anything school-wise, watched way too much TV and ate too much too often.

I kept thinking to myself to just take it easy, take the day as it comes, without planning out every single step. Just do something that makes you happy, I told myself. But you know what, I just couldn't think of anything that would make me happy! I think grad school has killed my ability to be happy...

It's not really about smoking

After being hit by an invisible ton of bricks around 6pm, I once again found myself unable to start studying tonight. Oh well, at least I'll get a blogpost out.

Work was busy today in all sorts of ways. Meetings and deadlines is nothing new. I also had a lot of draining social (work-related :)) interactions, where several people were pulling my attention in three different directions. I had made some new exciting hypotheses for my grant proposal (which will hopefully be approved in the next few days!) and spent time discussing them with co-workers.

Although I love interacting with people at work, I also find it very tiring. Yet somehow I still complain about not having enough of it (see my previous post). Go figure.

But I digress.

What I really wanted to post about is a strange mental image I've been getting recently after a stressful and tiring day. As I'm thinking of ways to relax and switch gears, I persistently get an image of me sitting on the stair steps and... smoking! Smoking! I never smoked! Never wanted to. Plus smoking actually excites sympathetic system, not soothes it, so why, why would my subconsciousness offer me this image?

Just for fun, I tried to look for reasons why I get such a strong association for smoking relieving high stress. Lo and behold, it is from my childhood!

My Dad had a very-very stressful job, which became even more so during post-Soviet-Union-collapse times, when many were losing jobs, salaries were low or not paid for months on end, and there was not much food to buy whether you had money or not. My Dad used to come home after 12-13 hour workday and simply collapse on the couch and sleep for an hour. He slept no matter the noise. Then he'd get up and help me with my physics homework... I never knew how hard it must have been for him until a couple of years ago when he confessed that his lowest time of all was when his (and Mom's) monthly pay was worth about 4 pounds of strawberries. Try feed a family of four with that! They never once mentioned it back then. I never knew!

I digress again... So my Dad never smoked inside of our apartment and especially in my presence. Over many years I have glimpsed him smoking only a few times. And in all of those memories he sat on a step in our garden, looking serene, relaxed, happy. I'm sure it wasn't so much smoking (which he does a lot more at work) but being in our garden, surrounded by home-grown fruits and vegetables which could support us through the winter, away from work worries and confinement of an apartment.

Oh, I miss my Dad now.

Suddenly I see

"Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."
E.L. Doctorow

I am discovering that this might also be true about both dissertation writing and studying for an exam. Remember how I was complaining about not following my advisor's comments on my draft? Well, yesterday I wrote up a brief summary of most of his comments and somehow they made more sense to me! I guess they just sunk in and I'm calm enough now to see how to proceed.

Going even at a painstakingly slow speed through my book is giving me confidence that I will be able to understand harder topics because I'm not jumping to them but preparing the foundation to build upon. Our brains are truly a wonder!

In fact, I'm happy that my "headlights" are not too strong to lit up a whole lot of surface in front of me. I tend to reach for the farthest thing I can see without taking proper care of my steps. So I trip and fall and roll back to where I started. Going step by step has its benefits.

Slooooow progress

Today I spent 3 hours on reading 20 pages from the book my advisor gave me to study for the oral exam. The frustrating part is that these are FIRST 20 pages of the book. It should be an easy read. Alas, I've forgotten a lot of stuff thus I'm moving at a turtle pace here.

In my defense, this is not a novel-type book. It is a dense scientific book with lots of equations and terminology. So, one is not supposed to blow through it.

Nevertheless, 20 pages a day is a minimum I need to read every day for the next 2.5 months in order to cover most of the material for the oral exam. Not to mention other things I need to do... How is it possible to find 3 hours of extra time every day, on top of 8 hours of work?

Well, what a girl to do? Give up? No, I'm not giving this pleasure to my advisor. He will have to fail me first. And I plan on making it as difficult for him as I can.

So, although I am entirely fed up with writing plans I am off to write one again. Many priorities have changes over the past few days, so I have to figure out what is the most urgent thing to do now.

What are YOU complaining about?

To all grad students who have passed their oral exams, have finished (or close to finishing) their dissertation and are now looking for a job: Would you please stop complaining about how busy you are?

You work 20 hours a week. You can sleep for more than 8 hours a night. Your advisor wants you to graduate. Be happy!

Yes, looking for a job is daunting. But it does not take insane amounts of extra time. Your nerves, maybe. Time? Puhleeze.

Ugh, I am cranky. I just realized how much time I spend at work. It amounts to about 70-80 hours a week. This is insane and depressing. Especially given how little I've progressed in my dissertation. Which my advisor reminds me of often. But then, I will never be good enough for him.

I have to admit, reading other people complain makes me feel better somehow. So go on folks, never mind my self-pity party here, keep on complaining!

Another (un)scheduled freakout

I'm freaking out all over again. I met with my advisor to go over his comments on our paper. His comments were ok for the most part. Some were very good indeed. Some were way out of the league for this paper, but good for my research proposal. And some... Well some just freaked me out. Because I should be good at this. This is my major. I should be able to understand what he is saying and what he wants, but I don't! And I'm certain that's the kind of stuff he will be asking about at the oral exam. Plus somehow we ended up mentioning additional stuff for me to get done before my oral exam. Just in case I have some free time, I guess.

By writing his comments on a paper version of the draft he is making a lot of additional work for me. First, I had to leave work early and come to campus to meet with him. With driving (during rush hour) and parking that took me 2 extra hours. Second, his comments were brief, so I must remember the gist of it and write it all up myself. He is a co-author on this paper, so he could potentially actually WRITE a paragraph, you know. Third, I have to somehow communicate his comments to the two other co-authors and this feels very weird. I'm afraid of misinterpreting him. And I feel like telling on him in a way. Oh, and it will also take me a great deal of time to write it up. Maybe this is just an old-school approach.

The rest of the day was good but very busy with meetings, emails, making decisions. I had about 5 or 6 different things started at the same time and requests were just pouring in one after another. Emails, people stopping by, phone calls, reminders... Aaaaaa! Weird day, really. Usually my work is not that crazy.

My stomach hurts. I wonder whether it is the stress of the day or the brownies that I made.

Innocent names? Not in my head!

Everyone has been talking and writing about Large Hadron Collider experiment since a few days ago. I've been following the news about it, mainly because I want some kind of assurance that these scientists know enough not to create a black hole of some sort and doom the Earth.

But you know what I just realized 2 minutes ago? All this time, I've been reading Hadron as "Hardon"! Hahaha! I even wondered in my head how bold those scientists who named the collider must be to so use such a highly suggestive name. Yeah. No. Just me.

If you were ever to talk to my husband, he would share with you my strange ability to recognize sexually suggestive meanings in regular American titles and names. He says I ruined a great deal of them for him. Examples? Hmm... Let's see... Well, there was this ice-cream place called Hot Licks... Arby's sign (seriously, am I the only one?)... Florida...

My draft is back... I can barely recognize it :)

Ahhh! I got my draft back from one of the co-authors. You know how in Word you can keep track of changes? So my original text is in black, his corrections are in red. Guess how much red is there? About twice as much as on my progress calendar!! A ton! It is stressing me out to even look at it! Although I am very grateful that he was so incredibly thorough with it.

I also feel a little tinge of hurt pride because he didn't appreciate my favorite paragraph. He thought it wasn't phrased very well and was kind of misleading. And I thought it was my sharpest thought in the whole draft! Moreover, he thought that the order of the sections was incorrect, and I thought I found a nice way to explain things in a linear order. Hahaha! Oh well. This guy is very smart and thoughtful, and I respect him a great deal. So his opinion matters a lot to me. Back to the drawing board I go.

On the work front... I spent the whole day today working on the data analysis report. It looks like our intern did not do a very thorough job after all, so I ended up rerunning all of her codes and plots. I also had to fix some small blunders. So now I'm cross-eyed from staring at Matlab and Excel and Word all day.

I got to close all of them except for Word and stare now at my dissected, bleeding all over the screen, draft.

I really-really-really want to take some of the items of my planning lists (either for school or work), but it takes such a long time to get my top items done! I will regroup tomorrow focusing on making smaller, more doable (=fast!) goals and managing my time (because there are always more ways to plot and analyze data!).

* Image credit: http://www.assassinrecords.net

The second wind for planning

Oy, it's Monday after 6 pm. I got to start working on my diss. But I so. Don't. Want. To.

I was so energetic all day! I got started on important and urgent projects at work. The ones I'd be putting off for another 2-3 weeks, if I didn't have a super-duper shiny new planning technique. Which I learned yesterday. While avoiding my dissertation at all costs.

Now, I'm tired. What the heck?

I also felt noxious for most of the day. I think it's the office coffee that makes me queezy. I bet it's all this advisor-induced stress that apparently is causing some kind of heartburn. Great! The last thing I need is an ulcer!

I went to the gym. Again. It makes it 5 times in the last 7 days! That, my friends, is a personal record.

Are you wondering about the planning technique I mentioned above? No? Well, I'm telling you anyway. I found it Hyrum Smith's book. The idea is to prioritize your to-do list. First, you assess how much time you've got (minus meetings, interruptions, etc and also half your leftover estimate for good measure). Second, you write what you want to get done today. Third, label each task with A, B, or C, depending on the urgency of the task: A = Absolutely needs to be done, B = Better be done, C = Could be done. Then number tasks in each category according to the priority. Now you've got a linearly organized task list. Start from the top. Do not skip, do not move on to the next task, unless you are done with a more important one first.

So obviously I now have two lists: one for work, one for school. Except that I got no steam left for the school tasks. Shoot. And why is it that the most unpleasant task is ALWAYS at the top of the list. I mean a task which seemed so desirable when it was at the bottom of the list, becomes more and more repellent as it moves up. Why is it?

I got to tell you, my progress calendar looks downright depressing. True fall colors though!

Ahh, Saturday...

Saturday was good for non-scholarly things.

I got an awesome haircut which I promised myself for submitting the first draft to my co-authors. This is the first US haircut that I actually like! I've always asked for the same haircut, yet the results were always pitiful. At first I blamed it on my poor explanation, but lately I've decided that it is really the hairdressers who are bad, not me. For the first time, the hairdresser actually touched my hair and asked questions BEFORE taking me to wash and shampoo it! Anyways, I really like the result, although it was a bit pricey.

In the evening I met with my two friends from the department. I haven't seen them for a really long time, especially since I almost never show up at the department or departmental gatherings. We had good time eating, drinking and talking about our research, dissertations and advisors.

We all have different problems and different successes. One of the girls' advisor is quite sick, to the point that he is rushing her to finish within next few months because he is not sure he will make it for much longer. Given how much all grad students suffer it could almost be seen as a good thing (if we distract ourselves from the human tragedy of this sickness), yet many grad students do need their advisor's support and recommendations to get a postdoc or faculty position. This relationship is not designed to end abruptly.

Both of the girls are doing quite well. They attend conferences and workshops around the world, apply for fancy prestigious grants and chat with ubersmart people. I'm proud of them and somehow dumbfounded as to how they got so smart almost all of a sudden. I remember us studying religously for the written exams (and yet failing some of them), sweating over tough problems and topics while some other students in the department blasted through the exams with no apparent difficulty. We didn't seem that smart then. Yet somehow, today we are?

Well, at least they are. I'm not sure about me. I'm yet to convince myself that I do know the stuff that can make me a PhD candidate.

For some reason, I am not feeling well today. I'm noxious and have a splitting, light-sensitive headache. I'm sitting at work. Not working. Not studying. Maybe I should.

Thank you Jesus!

That's what I've been saying all evening long.

I've met with my advisor today and addressed the issue of the oral exam head on. I pressed for answers and did not quit until I got a sufficiently clear answer. And the outcome was quite great!

First of all, I've got a good idea of what to study. It is still a lot, but the majority of the stuff is directly relevant to my research, which is what I wanted. There is some tangential stuff that really will not be THAT relevant, but I have to admit I got to know those basics for my own confidence.

Second of all, I've got a couple of nice questions I haven't thought of before, and addressing them might make my research proposal more solid.

Third, I got some books and arranged semi-regular future meetings with the advisor to discuss questions and such. Both of these will make my study more focused. Ahh, I have not felt that good about studying something for quite awhile. I'm sure I'll have plenty of lows in the months ahead but tonight I'm celebrating and thanking God! I've been praying about this meeting and I'm so thankful that God has listened!

The oral exam did get postponed till end of November. My advisor (note to self: think of a nickname for the guy!) insisted on it because he wants me not to just get by but pass it with excellence. Well, I don't see anything wrong with barely passing an exam, but hey let's just take this as him wanting to see me succeed.

Even though this ordeal has been stressful and painful, I realized that I've accomplished a huge to-do item on my list for this week: figure out topics to study!

Thank you Jesus!

Smile

Hahaha! Well, I needed a good laugh :)

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Fighting negativity

7:42 pm. Haven't even started working on my school stuff. Too much work, too many meetings today. This is not good. I really can't afford doing this.

There was no email from my advisor today. I sent him three emails yesterday. He is probably annoyed at getting so much correspondence from me and needs to take a break. No. Wait. He doesn't care THAT much. So anyways, I will have to write something to him tomorrow and continue forcing him to meet so we can discuss the darn topics for the oral exam.

I wrote a preliminary list of topics to study yesterday. There is no way I'm showing that list to him. It is overwhelming as is and he will probably gladly add a generous portion of other stuff to it. I got myself very stressed out though.

I woke up this morning feeling cold trembling of stress in my chest. I'm stressed as if my exam is tomorrow. The enormity of the task is weighing on me to the point of paralysis. I got to relax! I got to put one tiny little goal in front of me and ignore the noise of all other thoughts swarming in my head. Plug fingers in my ears, lalalala I can't hear you!

Here are some of my negative thoughts and positive spins that I've come up with to battle the negativity (I need to preach them to myself so here I go):

1. Negative thought: I will fail the exam. Positive thought: You will never know unless you try. And if you fail, you will either be closer to your goal (they will tell you what area you need to improve) or there will be one less trouble in your life (don't have to work 80-hour weeks anymore!).
   
2. Negative thought: I forgot all my major subjects. Actually much of the stuff I never understood in the first place. Positive thought: First, you got good grades in all of the classes. Second, there is a lot of overlap between the subjects. Third, you can ask questions to your advisor. This might even benefit you, because he'll know you are studying. (or he will know how stupid you really are... Shut up! Shut up!)
3. Negative thought: I don't have enough time to study everything I need to know. Positive thought: You have some time, so study something. You will not pass if you don't know anything, but you might pass if you know something. And who knows, maybe the exam will be postponed even more.

Fool me twice

Even though no one is reading this blog, venting is still helping.

Despite yesterday's lesson I fell for my advisor's trap again today. The funny thing is that I don't think he is misleading me on purpose. It just seems to me that he is so disjoint from the reality that the interpretations of his actions and intentions require a very heavy dose of pessimism. He really truly does not care. Wow... I'm learning though.

So today I got an email from him, which almost sounded positive to me. Positive! Hello?! What kind of idiot am I? Didn't I just say yesterday, that he never ever sends me anything positive? Why am I so easily fooled? Sigh. So anyways, all he asked was a list of all the courses I've taken. Quite a reasonable request. Except that he doesn't need to ask me to send it to him, since he has access to that information. But ok, I get it. My time is not as important as his. Fine.

He also said that we will "go from there". I thought, hey that means that we will look over the courses, choose some, go into details about specific topics and everything will be hunky-dory. Right? Wrooong, because you know what he asks in the next email? "Are you sure you've taken enough classes?" Now you can see that I'm an idiot. Optimistic one at that.

You don't understand what it means? Well it sounds like he is checking if I am even eligible to take the oral exam. I thought he was making a tiny step forward, but it turns out to be a step back. Ha, why oh why am I still surprised by these turnarounds? I should expect them. See them coming two emails ahead. Yet I never do.

If you are still not shocked, please be. I'll explain. I've been done with my coursework for almost 2 years now. That's right. I have not taken one class in the last 3 semesters, because I'm done with my coursework and surprise-surprise I need to take my oral exam. If he had any inkling that I needed more classes and he knew I'm not taking any, why didn't he suggest I do something about it? A reasonable person would assume it means he agrees that the required coursework was in fact completed. But the truth is he simply doesn't care and he will only care when it suits him.

Oh. It gets better. Last year he signed all of the paperwork which grad school requires to confirm that what? right. that I've completed the required coursework. Haha. Well, at least I have a proof now in case he wants to back out. Whew. Actually I should send him a reminder before he starts going in that direction.

Anyways. It is the end of workday and I'm all worked up again about this whole oral exam shenanigan. Got to get something done though today. My plan did not count in things like "fall apart for 24 hours, because your advisor does not care about you".

Interpreting my advisor

The one thing I’ve learned today is to never again take my main advisor seriously. Here are some examples, based on what he did or said before and how it is actually turning out now:

He said: “I don’t suggest PhD topics to my new students. Go figure out what you want to do and come back.”
What I should have heard: “Go wait for a week and I will send you a topic you should work on.”
Just for the records, I did not accept his topic and instead chose my own, which I will never regret, even if I don’t get a PhD.

He said: “Postpone your oral exam because if you publish your paper first it will make it much easier to pass the oral exam.”
What I should have heard: “You won’t pass the exam until I tell you to take it. You might not even pass then. I don’t give a damn if you publish anything.”

He said: “I have a lower passing bar for you because you already have a job and are not interested in career in academia.”
What I should have heard: “Because you are making a lot more money then I could ever pay you, I will make you as miserable as I can. That includes setting high expectations for the oral exam, postponing it till you are blue in the face, and giving you no advice on your research.”

He said: “Just because your job title is research scientist, doesn’t mean you can do independent research.”
What I should have heard: That + “I will make sure that you do a very independent research by not helping you at all and make you stay in grad school for a very long time to make it stick.”

He said: “You will decide on and write our joint portion for the (big important expensive) grant.”
What I should have heard: “You can come up with a proposal that can be accepted by the best scientists in this country, but don’t for one minute think that it will mean you are capable of passing your oral exam or that I will think any higher of you.”

I am off to buy some ice-cream and go home. I'm giving myself a big red splash on the progress calendar, because I did nothing today and the whole day feels like a bloody mess. Thus red is quite appropriate.

Where all I can do is to stare at my Outlook's inbox

This stupid stuff has paralyzed me. All I can think about now is that I am a failure and it will be quite evident whenever my exam ends up being scheduled for. I am beating myself up for not starting earlier on this studying thing. Did I really think I can recall and restudy so many topics in one month while working full-time? I am an idiot.

So I just sit here paralyzed. I know I have to move on. Start doing something. Little step at a time. Whatever. But I just have this cold feeling of despair washing over me time and time again. I feel like I'm standing on a slippery ice, I can't make a step in any direction because I won't move anywhere anyways so why waste a breath.

I sent him an email back. And now I dread and look forward to his response at the same time. Until it comes my life seems to be stuck in this drudgingly cold shower of despair . And after it comes my life might take a turn into a direction I really don't want it to go. Or maybe it won't come for awhile or his response will be about something entirely unrelated and as vague and subtly hostile as always. Or what if he is mad now, like openly mad at me? What do I do then?

I don't even feel like going home where I could curl on the couch and submerge into TV-induced coma. I'm afraid I'll feel guilty for wasting a perfectly nice evening to get more work done.

The one thing that did help today is exercise. I was so hyper and lost that I somehow forgot all my excuses for not exercising and went to the gym as if they promised Jesus there. I ran a whole mile without stopping. I don't remember the last time I could do that. And the exercise did help to take the edge off a little bit. But it is building back up now.

Still no email from him. Darn.

How much is enough?

I feel like crying. Maybe braking a few things. Maybe I'll just go sit in a dark corner and pretend nothing exists. Why, you ask? Well, I got an email from my main adviser. Yeah, one of those emails which compact a world of stress and despair in a few neat sentences. I knew it was trouble before I opened it. This adviser never sends me anything positive, so the odds of that happening now were slim to none.

So what does he write to me? "Oh, well you know that oral exam date that you set up with four committee members and I agreed to a week ago? I now think that since you have so much to write and study all of your coursework, you won't have enough time, so let's postpone for another month. You do want to pass, right?" (i'm paraphrasing obviously)

...

Like someone said in the "Wedding Singer" movie, that information would have been useful to me YESTERDAY! I'm yelling so you know. Just like in the movie.

Oh, and by the "coursework" he means ALL of it. Every class I ever took in grad school. Let me tell you, no one to my knowledge, not one grad student was told to do that! Everyone was given a specific list of topics to study. Me? I guess, I'm not good enough for that. I don't even deserve a list of subjects to study, let alone specific topics and God forbid book titles.

I'm mad and upset! And I'm on the verge of starting a procedure for switching to another adviser. It will be very difficult to do, given that we are intertwined with my other (and favorite) adviser who is heading a grant proposal and already arranged both of us on it. Lots of political mayhem is about to ensue. But what are my other options? To continue being jerked around like this and continually used as a door mat? I'm done with this. I'm not an expendable useless labor and my time should not be treated as if it comes at no price.

I'm scared of what I might have to do, but hey that too shall pass.

Meanwhile, my husband and I are crafting an email to my main adviser, prodding him to provide me with his specific expectations for the exam. It took both of us the whole morning to do this. Just to get what any normal adviser is supposed to provide voluntarily, if not willingly. It is called an advice. It is part of mentoring.

Well, let's see how this unfolds.

The first splash on the progress calendar is...

Yellow! If Paint had greenish yellow, it'd be that. Out of three things I needed to get done by today (hmm, yesterday actually, but let's pretend that since today is a holiday it kind of doesn't count. Lame. I know.)... so out of three things I did two: settled the oral exam date (not too time-consuming to do, but oh the psychological barriers it takes to overcome to set it up!) and sent out the first draft of my paper! The third item (figuring out chapters for my research proposal) was not that crucial anyways, but it still has to rollover to the next week's plan.

Somehow I don't feel the relief of sending out the draft. I've been slaving over it and over the last two days it turned into something half-decent. Something that I am not embarrassed to show to my co-authors. Sometimes it even felt that I nailed some ideas quite nicely and some sentences might actually be so good they might make it to the final draft. Seriously. This draft is a little victory for me, since all these thoughts have been gathering in my head for over a year now. It is time they come out in the open.

I'm giving my co-authors to get back to me by Friday. This Friday. Is it too soon? I find that revising someone else's draft is always easy and fast, as they have already laid the foundation and flushed out boring issues. Let's hope my co-authors feel the same way.

My eyes are tired again. Got to go home and (not) watch TV.

About the progress calendar

It's past noon and I'm yet to start working today. All I did so far is to draw my own personal progress calendar (see sidebar) with my faithful Paint where I plan to color days based on the progress made that day. Green will signify that everything planned was accomplished. Yellow will mean most of the planned items are done. Blue will mean I'm blue :) because nothing or little got down.

Let's see the color of my September!

If everything goes well, there will be fireworks on September 30 as this is the planned date of my paper submission.