Reminding the Passengers that I'm not a special snowflake

The last two days didn't go so well. I got stuff done, but not as much as I wanted. My normal emotional stability vanished, and I was a bit of a mess. The passengers on my bus were screaming at me, and it really distracted me from my work. They were saying things like your dissertation is going to be a mess; your defense is going to be awful because Difficult Committee Member isn't going to understand this train wreck of a dissertation; you'll be wasting Out-of-State Committee Member's time with your shitty diss.; and so on.

But then today I was venting to Awesome Technician, as usual, and she reminded me that I'm not the first person to feel this way, which of course I know, and that I'm not the first person to have a diss. that's not perfectly polished, which I also know. But somehow her reminder kicked me out of my self-pitying state so I could work again. There's a reason I call her Awesome.

Another helpful thing happened today as well. Academic Advisor had indicated he wanted to review the main introduction to my diss., so I sent him a rough draft of it on Saturday. I ran into him yesterday morning when he was on his way out the door. He he said he had been reading it, had found some issues, and would finish with it and send me comments in the afternoon. Then I never heard anything else. So late this morning I sent him an email saying, basically, that it was shitty to tell me he had problems with my intro but to not tell me what they were. I got comments within an hour. They were super helpful, and really pushed me through the remaining work on that part.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I now have a finished introduction.