Welcome to My Life

It has been far too long since I have blogged. I apologize for those of you, well the two of you, who actually check my blog regularly for updates. I have been so busy working on my thesis and trying to keep up with life that any sort of self reflection has been put on hold for far too long. I’ve recently decided to try to keep blogging in order to decompress at the end of a long day. And, indeed, it has been another long day. I’ve been in Brooks Hall (WVU Main Campus) for about 12.5 hours now. Nice, right. It wouldn’t be so bad if every day weren’t like this.
It is crunch time for my thesis (the body of work that defines the past two years of my life academically). My advisor is in Malawi completing research for one of his grants (less guidance than normal), and I’m always behind my master plan. Well, isn’t that the story of my life being behind the master plan. To put it into perspective I have about two and half good weeks to finish my thesis. I am 40% complete with writing. I have half of my literature review, which might take me to 50% but right now it’s kind of crap. I somehow have to get what will shortly be about 35 or 40 pages down to 25 maximum. This will require the work of several talented people, not least of which is my advisor if he does indeed return from Africa. I do think that I have a relatively solid Methods, Data Analysis, and Study Area chapters completed. We shall see what BM (Brent McCusker, aka Boss Man) thinks about the whole thing. At this point you may want to consider adding me to your daily prayer list. Seriously.

I have just spent the past 5 weeks knee deep in Marxist political economy/social theory. Yes, it is as painful as it sounds and I’m ready to rip out my hair one by one with tweezers. It’s so frustrating, intimidating, and frightening to know that the past two years of my life could mean nothing in a matter of weeks all depending on the opinion of three important people: My Committee. I will not name them though they know who they are and would discredit their influence, but really. If you examine the academic system—this is how it works!

I currently have two fortunes from fortune cookies on my board to remind me of those things important in life.
“Good luck is the result of good planning.” –let’s hope so!
“All your hard work will soon pay off.”—One can only hope!

All of this isn’t really what keeps me up at night—the problem is the never ending fear that it won’t pay off, that I haven’t planned well enough, and that I will fail in ways unknowable to me previously. Corey keeps saying, “You’ll get it done, you’ll be fine, it will be okay.” But what if it’s not, what if what I have done in these past few months isn’t up to par, what if there are huge conceptual gaps that I just don’t get. I keep telling myself that BM never would have let me get to this point if that were the case, but that is not necessarily true. He could have more faith in me than I have in myself (which is probably true). This is something I have never suffered from before, but I’m working to prepare myself for the bitter disappointment of failure at this. Why this, why now? I’m not really sure. Maybe because the deadline is so important. The rest of my life is contingent upon this, NOW. I know the graduate committee wants me to finish for my benefit and I do too, but the amount of pressure and stress is incredible. I’ve never been more miserable in school in my life. BM would say that “an unhappy graduate student is a very productive graduate student.” Well that is probably true but I really am stressed to the limit. Today I thought, as I was heading into the bathroom alone at 8:30pm in a largely deserted building, “I’d like to see someone try to attack me. I’d freaking kill them and not think twice about it. I don’t have time for some crazy person’s crap right now. “Then I formulated a plan about how I would go about killing them in the bathroom and TEACHING THEM A LESSON. We were just talking today about that grad student who went postal in Illinois and shot all of those poor kids. It was awful and may the rest in peace, but I’m beginning to feel the stress of graduate life.
NEWS FLASH TO SELF AND FRIENDS: I haven’t even started my PhD yet. I’m going to need a large amount of drugs to get through that. Does anyone have any connections?
All of this for a lousy 2008 Honda Accord in green (and an iphone but I might talk my husband into one of those as a finished master’s thesis present, which depends on me actually finishing my master’s thesis. CRAP)
So you are actually beginning to see the level of insanity that I’m currently undergoing. Good.

Did I also mention that I am working 30 hours a week at the WV GIS Technical Center? We are digitizing sewer lines for Jefferson County, WV. It’s fun—almost—not. It’s frustrating and monotonous, but it’s a job that pays well and is very flexible. For example, last week when I was about to have a mental breakdown, I said to my sort of boss, “I’m sorry but I can’t really be here anymore because my brain is momentarily worthless and I’ll see you in the morning.” This was at 3 p.m. This is what working 36 hours in two days will do to your brain.

I have about 5 other things that I want to blog about but don’t really have the time or energy. Look for more blogs as I freak out more and as DOOM’s Day arrives (somewhere between June 29 and July 25th my fate will be decided).