Days to Graduation: 154

I submitted my job application. I solicited career advice from no fewer than three people who do what I want to do. I took the GRE. I aced it. I derived an absurd amount of self-worth from my scores. I had a massage. I co-cooked dinner. I ate baked goods. What didn't I do this week? Write a single word that will appear in my thesis.

Days to Graduation: 158

Today I decided to submit an application for a job that's due in a week. One week. So I have some writing to do before now and then. (On the bright side, I did submit a job application this past Saturday.) Adding this app to my docket, though, delays the things due on January 4 and 15, but the rate at which I'm churning out application materials when under stress has actually made me less anxious about those January deadlines.

That's what I'm telling myself, anyway.

I've also scheduled my GRE—the only time I could get was 8:30 in the morning EAST COAST TIME on the FIRST DAY after getting in from California. It will be painful. But I'm also secretly looking forward to exercising my trig muscles a bit. Now, about this new-fangled analytical writing section...

Grump.

Explain to me the logic behind GRE scores expiring after 5 years. I got less smart? Sheesh. I know it's my own fault for not reading the application materials closely enough, so my frustration that is currently directed elsewhere is really directed at myself. Why didn't I read this stuff two months ago? Why? Oh, right, I was trying to do science. And graduate.

Days to Graduation: 162

Oy. Not even a little of that bonus writing happened, and for that I am sad. I slept until noon, because I needed to catch up from the Keck observing. And it turns out when you only have twelve hours in a day it’s very difficult to get anything done. I have set my alarm tomorrow, however, out of firm resolve to let today be the only day I spend catching up on sleep. I have things to do, people, things to do.

This evening I found myself toying with the idea of waiting another year to graduate. (It’s possible to un-pull triggers, right? Stuff that bullet back in the barrel? Bounce that check?) I mean, in an economy where smart people I know can't find jobs, do I really want to be moving to New York, of all places, and trying to find work? Sounds just awful. On the other hand, trying to finish my dissertation from New York also sounds... no it sounds dreamy, I can’t type the word awful there. It’d be a lie. I love the idea of holing up in a tiny Manhattan apartment and writing a dissertation. But I need to be realistic about moving on with my life, bad economy or no. I just have to.

Don’t I?

Days to Graduation: 163

After six nights of observing, I subsist today on very little sleep, on a pretty cracked-out sleep schedule. I'm exhausted but will be utterly unable to fall asleep two hours from now. Plus, I'm flying back from the Big Island so a good fraction of my day has been on an airplane. All this is a recipe for feeling great: any work I accomplish today is bonus work, work I do because I like it and I'm choosing it. So the three paragraphs I added to my planets paper somewhere over the Pacific today are inspiring me to do more.

Tomorrow will be dedicated to BSR obligations so any progress on the planets paper will again be bonus. Score.

Now here's hopin' I can fall asleep soon.

Days to Graduation: 164

Graduation is coming. I’ve pulled the trigger on being done this May, and now my body needs to cash that check. Well, my brain, really, is the one cashing that check. The body is complicit only in that it needs to not have an RSI freakout between now and then. I have just the thing for that: more typing, in the form of this blog—an exercise in stream-of-consciousness productivity-raising.

Today, I spilled coffee on my sleeve. And I figured out why my planet period error bars were the same size as the planet period. So that’s a load off.

Tomorrow I need to finish the draft of this paper. Because it’s holding everything else up. (That’s a good thing, I definitely need to focus only on this for a while, but there are other deadlines looming. Like January 4.)