Final lap

Okay, I'm starting to spaz. I have a week, maybe a week and a half to finish my diss. I have a lot left to do. That means I'm in dissertation jail this week. Here's the status.

• Introduction: written, in the last 2.5 days. Still pretty rough, but I think everything's in there. Except most of the references. Emailed to Advisors today, because one of them expressed interest in providing guidance/feedback. Any bets on if it will actually get read before I have to distribute the diss to my committee?
  
• Chapter 1: written, needs revision. This is the Poopsicle, which was meant to be Chapter 2 but we decided to put it the first position to deal with the data issues (the conclusion will be: this method sucks, other methods are way better, I used the better methods in the rest of the chapters - see?). Thus, I had to revamp the intro to the chapter, which I did today. I also redid some of the stats, and I still have to incorporate those results in the results and discussion sections. Plus fill in some more references and some general editing for style.
• Chapter 2: totally done. This is the one that is already accepted for publication, so it won't change other than formatting.
  
• Chapter 3: written. First draft went to Advisors in July. One never read it. One gave me really general comments in September. I revised it and sent it back. No reply. I do, however, have comments from a friend to help me polish it.
• Chapter 4: written. Emailed to Advisors on Saturday afternoon. Hopefully at least one of them will at least skim it before I have to distribute the diss. Still need to fill in a few last references.
  
• Conclusions: not started. But this part will be short.
• Formatting: not done. Started last night, then Word crashed and took my formatted chapter with it. Gah! I will have lots of time after my defense to get it just right for the Graduate College, so for now it just has to be formatted well enough for my committee to navigate it.
  
• Abstract, acknowledgments, table of contents, references: not done. Although each chapter has it's own reference list that I will have to fold into one. Did I mention that I'm a jackass who doesn't use reference managing software? I will be doing this manually.
  

On top of that, there is some distracting post-doc drama going on, and I got the proofs for the in-press paper. It's going to be an intense week. I best stop blogging!

Something is better than nothing

Yesterday I stayed home and failed to work, so today I went to my office. I was there for about 6 hours, and I got maybe 2 hours of real work done. It's tempting to feel really shitty about that, but I'm trying to have the mindset that something is better than nothing.

I remember the Dissertation Coach commenting that she has clients who avoid work all week, and then finally get motivated by her impending phone call (she has weekly phone meetings with her clients, who report their progress and then work with her to make a new plan for the next week). So they work for only a few hours in total all week, but still they get more done than they otherwise would without the accountability of the scheduled phone calls. Today when I sensed I was straying too much, I called EGM and we agreed to write for 30 minutes and then call back. It worked. Then we did it again. I still ended up reading a bunch of crap on wikipedia, but at the end of the day I had the introduction to my last chapter fleshed out, made the realization that I needed to report some addition results, calculated said results, and made a table to display them. So I could have done a lot more, but it was better than nothing.

Um, thanks?

EGM and I sometimes discuss how positive feedback can be hard to come by in science. A case in point: EGM's close colleague passed around a manuscript for friendly review before submitting it for publication. The response of the most senior person who read the paper? The manuscript looks fine.

Fine? It looks fine? Not, this will make a nice contribution, or good work? At least we know it's not personal.

Countdown relief

So, things have gotten better for me lately, stress-wise. The change happened as soon as I got my defense lined up. This strikes me as a little paradoxical, since you'd think that once the clock was officially ticking, I'd be freaking out about finishing. I think the crux on my anxiety was that grad school was starting to feel interminable.

I had a committee meeting in May 2008, and at that point we all thought I'd finish in about a year. Actually, I thought I might be able to defend in March 2009. When it became clear that wouldn't happen, I thought I could do it in June. Then October. Finally I put my foot down with December.

I had sort of a low point mid-summer. The proximate reason was my frustration with the slow pace of paper revisions. The ultimate reason, however, was that I just could not see the light at the end of the tunnel. It seemed like I should be wrapping up, but there was so much left to do and no one seemed to be thinking I should be nearing completion except me.

I was adamant that my defense had to be done this year. There's not a good reason for that, though, except for the psychological cost of waiting longer -- I've completely missed the graduation deadline for fall semester. I simply could not handle pushing it off any more.

Fortunately, I feel like the tension broke over the last few weeks/months for several reasons: 1) I got my advisors' blessings to schedule the defense in December; 2) my out-of-state committee member agreed to come and scheduled his travel; 3) I finished a draft of the pile-o-shit paper (aka poopsicle); and 4) I have all my data in hand.

Now all I have to do is finish the mother fucker.

The value of network

I have been resisting the desire to blog about my post-doc search. I think it might be interesting material, but I don't want to do anything that might hurt my chances. Still, I thought I'd post a few of my current thoughts.

I'm not conducting the search I envisioned. I had imagined keeping up with ads on various listservs, then applying for relevant positions. I figured EGM would do the same. In order to reconcile our options and fully explore the potential post-doc landscape, we'd contact interesting PIs ourselves to uncover unadvertised positions. I figured this last bit would help us solve our two-body problem. Instead, EGM is not quite ready for a full-on job hunt, and I'm relying heavily on my network. Thus I'm looking, but not applying as widely as I might because he's not ready to deal with it and it seems like I don't have to. The upshot is that I will probably land something first, and EGM will be in the position to follow (but that's a topic for anther post!).

What I really want to share today is that I'm starting to see how very, very important a good network is. I'm clearly getting the benefit of the doubt because people already know me. Plus, I have good options available without spending lots of time on heaps of cold applications. It's also becoming evident how far some sincere enthusiasm can take you.

I'll close with advice to those a little behind me on the career journey:

• Go to as many meetings as you can, and talk to people, even if it's scary. Make a point to introduce yourself to new people, introduce people you know to one another, and expect your friends to introduce you to their friends and colleagues.
  
• Be professional, every single day. You don't know how the seemingly unrelated PI down the hall might become important to you later.
• Don't discount the importance of the peer component of your network. Your peers can introduce you to people they know, which can expand your network fast. What's more, your peers can be influential to their PIs, who might become your PI one day. For example, it can't hurt if a student comments to her advisor that she saw you give a great talk.
  
• Keep up with how things work in your subfield. Be a little nosy so you can learn how the politics work, who the big players are, and who can make a call that might help you out.
• Be positive about your work so that others will think it's cool too. On that note, be positive about others' work too!
• Go to departmental seminars, and go with a good attitude. You might want to shift focus down the road, and it will help to have some exposure to related fields whose literature you don't regularly read.
  

When I finally get a job, I'll let you know how all this worked out for me. So far the process is scary, nerve-wracking, and exciting all at once. I wish I didn't have worry about this while writing my diss, but I guess that's life, and that's how it is for everyone.

Redemption

He brought a piece of chocolate cake home for me. love.

Sympathy FAIL

I've been complaining to EGM that I haven't felt like myself the past couple of days. Maybe I'm getting sick or something.

It was raining today and I knew the traffic would suck, so I left work a little early to try to beat the worst of it. Rather than having me pick him up on my way, EGM decided to work later and take public home.

My leaving-work-early plan was not effective. EGM called me while I was sitting in a horrible traffic jam. An excerpt:

Him: how are you feeling now?
Me: meh. Not sick, but I'm just so irritable. I'm even grouchy with myself! And I can't figure out why. I mean, I started my period today, but that doesn't usually affect my mood. [actually, my mood is disrupted about 5 days in advance]
Him: oh, well that's probably the reason.
Me: I don't think so. I never have problems the day I start.
Him: well, you are getting older...
Me: What?
Him: well, maybe things are changing as you age...you are getting older.
Me: that's fucking not the fucking reason.

Honestly, he usually knows better!