Wednesday, August 18, 2004

Man, do I ever need a chair massage.

Feel guilty taking even five minutes here to post an update about where the heck I've been. Home! That's where I've been, home doing work. A lot of work.

It turns out that writing 10 pages of that exam is simply too much for a weekend, unlike normal work where I might be able to pound out four pages of something an hour. I have had to revise my schedule so I am now doing two pages a day. Every day, no matter what.

Even so, it has been taking about 4 or 5 hours to do so, and this is just the cruddy rough draft. Jakers! Unfortunately, this is not the only thing I have to do, either.

I've been freaking out a whole lot about deadlines (usually about 2:30am nightly), because I also have to do my thesis revisions (AKA redoing the entire freakin' thing), give it to my committee members, give them two weeks in advance to schedule a defense, and then do the defense--all before I can turn in this giant exam paper. Which has to be turned in by September 15, preferably much earlier but I can see there's simply no way that will happen. I don't know how I am going to be able to accomplish this!

Also have been increasingly miserable because Simon and I haven't seen each other for what is now nearly a month due to our conflicting busy-ness and travel schedules. However, I did get my APA presentation done, and he did get his certification in being a Microsoft - solution -grand- vizier- thingy, or whatever it's called.

Well, I tried to comment on my own site the other day about things people had written, but there was some kind of Blogger disorder happening. The long and short of it was that I am glad to have a laugh about some only tangentially school-related thing. Thanks!

Okay, now must go try to change my internal circumstances (attitude), since my external circumstance (time frame) isn't going to change.

Instead of saying "Yaaahhhh! I have no time to get everything done! I am insane and freaking out and will never meet these deadlines!" must tell self: "I am relaxed and I have plenty of time to get this stuff done." (Kind of like fooling yourself into feeling okay so you actually can get your stuff done.)

I'll let you know if this technique works.

4 comments:

argotnaut said...

I believe that would be an MSCGP -- Microsoft-Certified Grand Poobah.

liz said...

Maybe that's the first one of the two he received. But I'm telling you, the word "solution" is in that second one! (Not so sure about the "vizier" part.)

liz said...

Oh, look: here it is!

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/mcsd/default.asp

Wow, he's even more of a geek than I realized (or should I say "dared hope"?).

Youse better count your scientific supplies after we visit.

liz said...

I'm assuming you have scientific supplies, nicht wahr?