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.