My Plans

Productivity is notsogood.  Going to just take a minute and remember that sometimes crazy expectations from foolish overconfidence can turn out in a surprising way...


Last summer I went to Cres, an island in Croatia, with a few athletic friends.  I knew we were going to "bike around an island" but I had this picture of biking around one of the islands by Charleston while sipping an iced tea, basically.  Wrongo.  About me:  I do not bike.  I sometimes would bike a mile to my office, but that's mostly it.  And we have 40 miles planned on THIS island? Lolz for all.

Our bike path home looks innocent from here...

So, did I turn into a super biker that day and conquer all with sheer willpower?  No.  I sweat my ass off, I embarrassed myself, I walked up tons of hills because I couldn't ride them. I had to get 1 person to break off with me and cover a mere 23 miles so that the others could go be hardcore.  It was NOT how I saw that day going.  Sometimes you just can't make your original plan stick.  I guess it's a failure, technically.

Biking route!

Aaaand?  And it was AWESOME.  It was secluded and beautiful.  We rode down to a stone beach and swam in the Adriatic Sea.  We took a hike/bike path back instead of the paved road, and that turned out to be super rocky and loose, so welcome to my first sort of mountain bike experience.  I spent pretty much all day being intensely bad at what I was doing and it was still a fantastic experience in great company.

Colors of the Adriatic Sea

You know, I bet there's a ton to be enjoyed and learned during most embarrassing failures.  I feel like a lot of them could be fantastic despite themselves, if only I'd let them.  I want to let go and be willing to see the vistas in my current bike ride.  This whole PhD business.. man.. this was NOT how I saw my tenure here going.  But my plans don't get more real just because I insist on them.  And if I could stop worrying and start PEDALING (or you know, getting off and walking, because that had to happen a lot a lot), then I'd be going places.  And eventually I'd arrive back home.  And it would be a fantastic experience with so much learned and seen, so much more accomplished than I thought could be done given how outmatched I felt partway through.  I hope I can learn to let go and trust God, because He'll pull me through this one way or another, I know, but I hate to miss all the amazing things I pass along the way!

Leaving... sort of...

Well I am finally going to leave the City de la Graduate School and move to City de la Medical School.  From summer 2011 til now I've managed to propose phd work (not in the way I wanted, all shiny and polished, but it got done, I guess) and apply to 20 and interview at 12 or so schools.  Now it's time to move on to med school but of course I'm not done with my research work so I'll be doing that as I get started in medicine, which is great because I hear finishing a thesis and medical school are both super easy on their own so combining them should be a real party.

Graduate school is like a vortex of neverendingness.  I'm sure it's built character and I don't know why it's been such a monster for me because I really do think science and medicine are interesting so you'd think I'd just spring out of bed every day to go do it, but for whatever reason it has just beat me up and I really pray it's in the cards for me to manage to get through it.  Because I signed on to do it so I should finish it.  I hope starting a new leg of the journey will help, since it's what I think I want to really do day to day in life.  Really really hope.

See, grad starts fresh out of college, where you took classes like you'd done your whole life.  You're good at that.  At figuring out how to succeed in that setting.  And you're excited about doing new things, discovering, changing the face of your research area.  Older students just smile (or weep) inwardly at your naivete.


Because the way you think of science progressing is in fact not at all what the path of research is going to look like.  It is going to be... something else...

It takes awhile for that realization to hit, though, because at first you do take some classes (which you've been doing your whole life).  Then classes wind down, (hopefully) you get to hop off the TA wagon, and only one more big hurdle is in your way that is not immediately related to your narrow area of research.  And that hurdle is referred to as quals at many schools.  And it is a giant, hours long exam that decides if you are acceptable enough to even try to stay for your PhD.


After that, it's all "just" research!  So simple!  Then how amorphous and... intangible... your project can seem suddenly looms close.  How in the world do I do XYZ?  How do I even begin to break this down, to decide what skills it requires so I can go figure out how to acquire them?  Everything takes longer than you plan.  You can go quite far down the rabbit hole with information you think you need but that you somehow still don't know how to apply.  You want to get all the information so you can make a perfect solution to execute, but that just delays and delays.  And in the meantime you have no PRODUCT to show!

The panicked need to get things done can work for you in college when you have a tractable project or an exam coming up because then you have a definite end.  In grad school it just spirals, dragging out until your stress hormones have been elevated for so long that you think your baseline is probably permanently shifted.  Productivity goes down (even farther!?), and the desire to sleep forever and ever pads behind you wherever you go.


This is an excellent time to go ahead and name your existential crisis.  I think mine should be Harvey, a la giant rabbit that is always there but other people don't notice.  The guy who does PhD comics actually spoke at my school.  I remember at the beginning of his talk he cited some stats about the percentage of grad students who were depressed, and it was not a small number.  Not too surprising.  And any time you give to life balance, or trying to figure out your crisis, or trying to figure out how to do your work better/more efficiently... guess what, those are hours you're not progressing in a concrete way on your work, soooo more panic!  It really does feel like if you could just shake it all off and do things RIGHT this actually shouldn't be that difficult.


But it is, and here I am, a number (thou shalt NOT ask how many) of years in to this gig.

I was ok-ish til after quals, and after that crash I have never come back feeling like I GOT IT, like I had taken some knocks but now I had this game figured out and I was going to get it done.  It's very hard to get out of a slump, because unfortunately telling yourself to just suck it up and be hardcore doesn't work as well as you wish it would.  Allie has a good way of injecting humor into what it's like with her comic here. 


And in the end I'm now one of those ancient graduate students who avoids the new and prospective students so I don't infect them with my jaded outlook (you're welcome, kids).  I spend my time trying to do the simplest things, like hold on to some semblance of a normal schedule.  That does not typically pan out well. 

All the while realizing that I have ALL THE THINGS still to do (see another great hyperbole and a half post about trying to be an adult and failing here) and time is running OUT.  Need code to take data to process data to analyze data to draw sweet conclusions to write up in a magical, magical thesis.  OK then.  Need code.  I was going to go for good code but I should have learned my lesson with my master's that, particularly when one is not a coder, this is what is going to happen with regard to that effort:

OK then let's settle for just 'code with output.'

....And that is graduate school....

I just want to finish.  Nothing in this experience has made me turn into a Researcher who is now capable and ready to McGyver a prototype out of paperclips and flash drives.  I don't expect to get done with accolades and pat myself on the back.  I just want to fulfill the contract - I showed up, I used resources from others, and the expectation is that I get a degree and some publications for this school.  I just want to not quit.  You never know what will happen in the next phase but I consulted my most inner parts as honestly as I could in deciding on medicine, and I prayed a great deal for help in that decision and for redirection if I was not making my decision for the right reasons.  Grad school is still a mess but I have the acceptance for phase II so I am hoping I can still do things right.  I wonder if someday I'll actually feel that I'm caught up or that I'm at the level where I expected to be.  That would be the definition of relief :)