Chronicles of a PhD candidate: part IV

The week stared off in a horrible way. Monday I was forced to take the day off. There were some problems in the family I don’t want to talk about (done that enough in the last couple of days) which forced us to take care of some stuff. But the whole situation added up with the tiredness of last week plus sleep deprivation from my girls night out left me feeling like a ghost for the first half of the week. At first I was feeling guilty but later I decided that it was no use. What’s happened, has happened. So, I just tried to catch a little sleep and just take it from there. Luckily I worked from home Tuesday and Wednesday so that helped me to take it easy and recuperate.

Thursday it was off to the U. again. I spend most of the remaining two days alone, all my room mates seem to have vanished. But that was ok. I decided to divide my todo-list up into a whole lot of mini-tasks. I really felt sort of defeated the whole week and even though the mini-task list was 4 pages long, it gave me the courage to get started and keep going because I would be able to cross something off the list real soon.

The weather was gorgeous, so I spend several of my breaks outside, enjoying the sun. It is actually part of new game, but more about that later.

I ended up doing more than expected this week, including starting with most of the acquisition for my new, and last, study. Yay! Acquisition meant sending many e-mails that all said: Dear mr/mrs X. I am doing a study and would you please please please participate? It would be great because I really just need someone, anyone, I don’t care think you are very awesome and have a lot of useful stuff to say about the subject. Pretty please again? Daisy.

So, it wasn’t such an interesting week. I’ll try to make it sound better next week, haha.

Chronicles of a PhD candidate: part III

Another week passed. Wow, did that go fast! Unfortunately I didn’t have such a good week as last week, but that was ok. I could afford to take it a little easier even though I would have liked to get some more stuff done.

I felt sleep deprived and demotivated all week. So, on Friday I bought myself this:

That’s right, a Havenly Hazel! It is a capuccino with some kind of syrup in it, topped with lots of whipped cream and sprinkled with hazelnut pieces. De-li-ci-ous. It’s like giving myself a little present and always makes me feel better. It’s good to be nice to yourself every once in a while. And the fact that it has caffeine AND lots of sugar helps too. Good thing I don’t do calorie counting because this thing would probably get me worried haha.

The week ended like it should: going out dancing with a friend. We went to a 70’s, 80’s, 90’s party and danced our asses off! Had a blast.

Chronicles of a PhD candidate: part II

29 weeks to go:

Meet Paul and Paul. This cute gayish couple is my new mascotte. The boyfriend shot them for me at the fair. Ok, he shot something else and then I could pick a prize. They had name tags which looked like not all the bears would have the same name. So I was like, hey this one is called Paul! And the other one is called, let’s see….Paul!

Anyway, they now sit in front of my screen all day, encouraging me to keep going. It helped because I had a greatly productive week! I had a meeting with my Prof and he acted less scary than usual. I even managed to interrogate him a little about his private life. It was cool to find out that he is exactly like other guys and turns into a bright-eyed little boy when you bring up their favorite subject. The rest of the week was uneventful and ended in me finishing several projects and sending some of them in for feedback. I had been working on them forever and thought I was never going to finish, but I did!

For next week I don’t have any urgent, must-be-completed-yesterday projects! Woohoo! Now I can finally try to catch up on some other stuff.