Countdown

I am now entering the 7 week period in which I have a major deadline (exam, paper, presentation) every week, except for the weeks when it's two or three deadlines. And yet I am expected to continue with all the things that have been keeping me busy on a weekly basis up til now. Sigh.

It's kind of a bad sign when my thoughts about Robert coming to W-S this weekend are:
(1) Oh god, I have no time to have a life,
but then:
(2) Oh good, I can get him to go grocery shopping for me while I work on this paper / study for this exam / beat my head against this wall (wait, scratch that last one).

And there's this sucky synchronicity between the intensity of my own work schedule and that of the students in my research methods class, most of whom (but not all!) insist on writing papers and taking exams that need to be graded. (But thankfully, unlike my dad's unfortunate experience one year, not big book-report mobiles that have to be transferred by the hundreds from classroom to home for grading.) As many a grad student has observed (or, worse, experienced but not observed), teaching can have a high level of immediate gratification, so it gets easy to mis-allocate time to teaching-related work that should be used for research and (possibly) classwork. I am trying to resist the urge to be Totally Awesome instead of just Good.

Fortunately, I am starting to get into the big paper I'm working on now for one of my seminars, but I wish I had about four days to dedicate to doing no other work but this project. Oh wait, I had that; it was called Spring Break and I used it up feeling wimpy and reading paperback novels I recently purchased from a good, cheap used bookstore nearby and thinking vague thoughts about my first year research project. (How sweet it is to live somewhere that has not been utterly taken over by that spawn of satan called Half Price Books. Or at least not yet.)

Quote of the Day: Do Not Try This at Home Category
"It would make her twitch like a bunny on crystal meth." - House, M.D.

I'm loving that program, by the way (I'm part way through season 1). 50 British Actor Hugh Laurie brings the awesome. And for me, it's about 85% entertainment, 15% desensitization therapy. (No, he's not sticking that needle in the kid's eye.... oh god that's a lot of blood... don't tell me that's an image of an actual beating heart...ahhhhhhhh!)