Sunday, August 22, 2010

The radio silence around these parts can be easily accounted for: I’m writing my dissertation. Prior to this time, I always laughed at people who said that this was the most painful part of the graduate school process. I mean, how painful could it be? All you were doing was writing up what you had done over the past N years. It couldn’t be as bad as trying-- and failing-- to get good experimental results. Writing was guaranteed results. Unlike experimenting, you knew at the end of the day you would have something to show for all your work. So, from my previous outsider’s perspective, it seemed like it would be a wonderful time of graduate school.

I’ll pause to let you all stop laughing.

As you might of guessed by now, I was wrong. Horribly, awfully, terribly wrong. It’s painful. I spend hours each day writing. I could spend hours more. I could write from now until Christmas and still have more to write (Ok, that might be a bit of hyperbole). What’s even worse is that there are days that I could have just not written anything and still be at the same place. I get pages returned to me from my Advisor that are dripping in red ink (they’re good edits, but still). It’s all horribly demoralizing.

Still, I’m making progress. Slowly, but surely. I have one chapter written in its final draft (until Advisor decides there’s something else to change), another chapter that’s just undergoing edits, and I’ve recently started on my last data chapter.

With all that writing, blogging has fallen by the wayside. I can’t guarantee that I’m going to post more often, but I’ll try. I need to do something to remind myself that writing, in general, isn’t all that bad. Also, I’ve really, really missed being around here!