It wasn’t that bad

I had horrible fears about my defense.  Visions of my prelim exam flashed through my head.  Of course, that happened on 9/11/01 so as long as there was no national disaster/tragedy/unthinkable horror  happening on the same day as my defense it couldn’t possibly be as bad as my prelim.  However, I still feared it like it would be this impossibly difficult thing to pass.  No matter that everyone else passes their defense.  I was sure I would be the only one who didn’t.

The truth is, it wasn’t that bad.  Imagine if you were very interested in a particular topic, you read a good paper about it, and now the first author was standing in front of you and you could ask any question you want.  That’s what it was like.  Not every committee is the same of course, and maybe others take this whole “private grilling” thing much more seriously.  But on the whole, I see why people told me not to worry.  Not that there was any way I could believe them beforehand.  And, I don’t expect other grad students to believe me right before their defense.  But, there was really no point to worrying.

Now, I have a whole bunch of changes to make to my thesis and they need to be done in the next two weeks.  But, if I can get through my defense without having a nervous breakdown, I can get through anything.

Dr. Whatsit

Whoopee!

Today’s the day

I feel a little sick.

Practice talk

My lab said my practice talk was very good.  And they wouldn’t just say that so I know that it was.  Plus they only suggested minor changes.  My lab spends a lot of time helping people with their talks.  After the practice talk, we go through every slide in the talk and people give their comments on what can be improved.  So, it took about 2 hours for me to give a talk and get feedback.

I’m so glad I came here ahead of time!  I feel more confident in my ability to talk science now that I’m immersed in that environment again.  In a lot of ways, it feels like coming home.  I spent 16 years in grad. school city with most of that time at the university either teching or in grad. school.  I have felt like a fish out of water in the suburbs of San Francisco.  So, this time has been good for me.

On my way

Well, I’m on my way back to grad school city for my defense.  I want to crawl in a hole and hide.  Seriously.  I can’t shake the feeling I’m not going to pass and that’s really going to be embarassing since everyone keeps telling me that everyone passes.  Nothing anyone says helps.  I know it’s illogical, but I can’t stop thinking it.

I sent my thesis to my committee and already they have comments.  The intro is not broad enough, they say.  And they want more in the future directions.  Oy.  I feel as though this is not a good sign.  I think the problem is that they are thinking about this thiesis in terms of me having about a year to write it.  But, what they are not considering is that I spent a lot of that time curled up in a ball on my bed.  Depression will do that to you.

So, here I am, nervous, thinking about what to add to my thesis, hoping my defense talk doesn’t suck too much (though I’m going to have a practice talk tomorrow which will hopefully help the talk).  All this last week, I’ve been on the verge of calling up my committee and saying, “Never mind, I can’t do this, sorry.”  I don’t really feel a sense of anxiety, just dread.

Oh, and I just realized I forgot to pack the DNA scarf for my advisor.  Fortunately, Husband is arriving later in the week so I can ask him to bring it!

Non-white powerpoint backgrounds

Discuss.

Twitter

I’m trying to get into Twitter.  It seems like all the cool kids are doing it.  I got an account (mrs_abbywhatsit), but I really haven’t been active on it.  Then it occurred to me today that it might be a good place to put all of those random thoughts that occur to me throughout the day that I have no one to tell because I’m home by myself.  So, I’m going to try it.  We’ll see how it goes!

Gift for Advisor

I wanted to give something to my advisor to thank him for all of his years of putting up with my shit, not throwing me out when I had horrible depression, being such a great guy.  I decided to make this:

This very cleverly designed DNA scarf (notice the base pairing between the helices) seemed like the perfect gift.  I found it here.  It’s about halfway done.  It’s not the easiest pattern in the world, you really need to pay attention to what you are doing, but I think a fearless beginner could tackle it.

Indeed

About writing a draft of her thesis, R said, “It was like braiding a sasquatch.”

Now what?

Done:

• Title page and copyright
• Abstract
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 3
• Appendix B
• References

Waiting on Advisor comments:

• Chapter 2
• Appendix A

Waiting on complete compilation of thesis:

• Table of Contents
• List of Figures

Only thing left to write:

• Acknowledgements (Note:  “acknowledgments” is correct for the wordpress spell check and “acknowledgEments” is correct for the MSWord spell check.  Both are correct according to the dictionary.)

Today, I spent a great deal of time on formatting.  I’ve got everything in one big document now except for the stuff that I’m waiting for Advisor to send me.  I figured out how to make MSWord automatically generate a Table of Contents and a List of Figures which took WAAAYYY longer than it should have.  Since the page  numbers won’t be right until I get every chapter and appendix in there, I’m waiting on those for the end.  Which means, there’s nothing I can do except write the acknowledg(e)ments.

I should feel good about this, but I’m just anxious about the stuff I haven’t gotten back from Advisor yet.