Thursday, November 01, 2007

A swfit kick in the pants

I keep looking at other people's blogs and wondering why they haven't posted anything since their last post and then I looked at my own and realized it had been even longer! Man, the time goes by fast.

Late last week, my advisor emailed me and asked for a schedule of when I would send him draft chapters. He was "very concerned" about whether I would be able to defend this semester. Well, I'd been meaning to work on that schedule for a while now, but just hadn't done it. When I started counting back when I would need to defend, when I needed to have the draft to my committee in order to defend by then, when I needed to have all my chapters in to my advisor in order to get said draft to my committee, I realized all of a sudden that I had to have all my chapters in by the end of next week!! No more playing around. So now I have a really tight schedule and ABSOLUTELY FIRM deadlines, which means that I am finally getting some work done and making progress! Woohoo! I have 2 chapters in, have a third scheduled to go in today, then a few more to get in next week. So, while this means that I'm doing little else besides work on my thesis (and, not so occasionally, read blogs and play sudoku online), it also means that I will be done soon. I can do ANYTHING for a few weeks. When we went grocery shopping this weekend, I bought a number of things to be able to make easy, quick meals, and also got myself a few treats, (popcorn, chips and salsa and cashews) to munch on while I'm working. I also found this great website with PhD comics that remind me that I really am still a graduate student, which also makes me more motivated to keep working.

In other news, we had about 30 trick or treaters come to our house last night, including 10 or so from the adult group home down the street. We have just a few pieces of candy left over, which makes a nice treat, but doesn't give me too much temptation.

Today is a new month, so it means Dave switches from surgery to nights. He will spend most nights this month at the hospital from 7pm to 7am. He has this weekend off, though, so he will work tonight and then be off until Sunday night, which is when he will really shift into working nights mode. One of our activities this weekend will be to come up with some strategies for this new schedule, including making sure we actually see each other. It will also affect how I work and schedule my time. I had been getting up with Dave at 5ish, working out and getting to work, but there is no way I can (nor do I have any desire to) continue getting up at that unreasonable hour on my own. (Although I'm thinking of getting a part time job at Starbucks once my thesis is done, so I might soon eat - or drink - those words!)

Well, it's time to get back to work now...

3 comments:

Julie said...

You're funny :) I do the same thing. I check everyone's blog and patiently wait for an update while, at the same time, don't update my own. Oh, well.

Hope the new schedule works out for both of you. That sounds really crazy! At least it's only for a month.

Anonymous said...

Well Andrea and I keep writing you guys and not getting any sort of response. How should I take that? Huh? Is that our own little swift kick in the pants? Huh? Is it?

What kind of candy did you distribute?

Rebekah said...

Go, Sarah! You're almost done. Whoo-hoo! I also told myself that I could do anything for a few weeks when I was finishing my master's paper and taking two classes...the few weeks ended up being about 5, but that's okay--it was over at the end. I'm afraid the dissertation is not going to work out quite so nicely in a short time.... :)