Saturday, January 01, 2005

Just sent the draft of my proposal to my committee members. I hope they are extremely tolerant and will still schedule for January 15th or before, in order that I might meet my deadline and be allowed to go on internship next year!!

Am irrationally angry right now. Or I guess I should say, diffusely angry, because I'm angry at everything in general, but it makes sense. I was very excited this morning (I even put on music and was dancing!) and thought I was all done, but then when I got to the clinic to email the draft, I realized I had forgotten to do the references section!

Yes, blah blah [rolling eyes exasperatedly], I normally do the references as I go (as not one but several people have now very helpfully mentioned) but this document was a real bitch as far as continuity. It was all I could do to make the arguments flow in an understandable fashion, without stopping every five seconds to go to the bottom of the document and write some giant arcane reference. I'm telling you, it was too hard to do it this time.

I kept thinking I would do the references at home one "free" evening and then paste the section in. Well, guess who never has free nights?

I initially thought, "Oh, it's okay--this will only take maybe an hour, and then I can actually take the afternoon off for once and relax, or clean my apartment, before I start doing all the other work I need to do tomorrow." So ... here I still am NINE freakin' hours later. Who was I kidding? I've done this kind of writing before! (Apparently before, I always did the references as I went, so I guess I didn't notice the 9 extra hours.)

I guess that makes sense when I chance to notice that I have an 11-page reference section. It didn't seem that big when I was writing the text! (And of course it will grow when I actually do the study.) So with references, I sent off a 47-page proposal.

Haven't heard from my advisor all week (she's probably even more sick of this than I am), so I just sent the darn thing off to all my committee members anyway. If I get in trouble, then so be it.

So, anyway, that diffuse anger... yep, a nice change from diffuse weeping and sobbing, I guess. (That was earlier in the day, when I still imagined I could leave the clinic while it was light out.) Now merely a light hate, modest animosity, or extreme irritation towards everything in sight. (Damn this piece of dust on my fingertip!!)

Luckily for me, some kindly friends stopped by and brought me some food in the middle of the day. (A turkey burger, if you must know, which is coincidentally a term TheLimey is very fond of repeating out loud, for some reason.)

So...pay some bills online, if I can think straight long enough to do that, then maybe I can go home and watch Tron on Clu. (Finally!)

4 comments:

liz said...

Maybe I'll simultaneously watch Bladerunner on the VHS, just to create dissonance on several levels.

MadNorthman said...

Nine hours for the reference section? Ouch!! And people wonder why I skipped a "Higher Education".
Well good luck with this and the inertview. Just remember Fate will give you what you need, not allways what you want.

Andrew said...

Remember, you go to the committee with the proposal you have, not the proposal you wish you had.

brainhell said...

Congratulations.