In some ways, it’s as though I am mourning my loss; having a big goal gave me a purpose, and for all that it was periodically painfully stressful it also provided some structure and context to my life.  It’s not like there aren’t things I need to be doing now:

• Revise stats class for next semester, including reviewing homework that didn’t work this year
• Convert psych 101 class to an online format for next semester
• Turn my dissertation into a journal article
• Learn enough about missing data analysis techniques to determine whether I can use them to fill in some of the problematic blanks in my dissertation and get another article out of that
• Renovate my master bathroom (paint cabinets, replace countertop with tiled countertop and vessel sinks, tile shower)
• Renovate my guest bathroom (paint cabinets, replace countertop)
• Paint master bedroom
• Re-paint living room and probably kitchen

None of those are short projects.  Yet none have the overarching purpose that finishing the PhD had.

Maybe that’s good.  I appear to need to learn how to live in-the-moment rather than constantly focused on the future.  Perhaps that’s the answer to the question: Learning how to be happy with now instead of always looking forward.  That would be a new experience.

Seriously.  After some troubleshooting, it turned out that the raid controller built into my motherboard had committed suicide, making none of my 3 internal drives visible.

Now, a month and a half before graduation (knowing there would be at least one more round of revisions), this should have caused a panic.  It didn’t.  Why?

1. I have copies of all the key dissertation files in dropbox
2. I have copies of my entire Documents folder on the external backup drive, along with my itunes library
3. I have copies of my entire Documents folder backed up using crashplan

This morning, over breakfast, he finally got a couple of really good points through my stubborn, thick skull.

First, this seminar is a WORKING SESSION, not a dissertation defense.  They don’t expect it to be done.
Second, everyone is human and is good about forgiving others for their humanness, especially when you are upfront about it.

So, revised plan:
- I am still working on a presentation/poster (basically it will all be the same thing).  My plan is to do what I can between now and then, but not kill myself.
- I will start my presentation by explaining that life has intervened in the last few months and set my progress back, but that any help or pointers would still be gratefully accepted.
- Rather than trying to ANSWER the questions I had in my earlier post (and a million others), I will put them into the presentation as areas in which I need guidance.

I have 13 good slides so far, with the intention of adding a few more (no more than 20 total) before I am done.  I have a couple of articles I want to reread (one specifically on my methodology) before I formulate all my questions.  And I want to make my poor, put-upon writing group look at it.  If I have to print the poster/presentation out Friday morning in the hotel business center on the way to the first session, that isn’t bad. 

And mostly, I will not stress about this any more.  I will do what I can, I will admit to my failings and I will try to leave everyone with the impression that I am an honest, sincere person with a great deal of potential.  Worst case is that they clarify their language for how far along people should be next year.  I will be prepared to the extent I can prepare well and cognizant of the areas that need work so that I can ask for help.

I really think that perfectionism is a disease, rampant among academics and wannabe’s like me.  I see it in adviser’s neurotic corrections/changes to the paper (we had so many changes tracked in that paper that we broke Word; seriously.), I see it in my reaction to this whole situation, and I see it in the faculty and students I regularly interact with. 

It’s not healthy.  Not for any of us.

• I fell off the exercise and diet wagon, leading to
• I gained back about half of the weight I had lost in 2006
• I didn’t do as well as I wanted in my multilevel modeling class, which is an issue since that is the technique I will be using for my dissertation
• My job situation took a turn for the worst
• I got nowhere near as much reading done this summer as I needed to get done

I’m sure there was more.

All wasn’t bad, and it worked itself out in many ways, but for now I need to focus forward, on 2008.  Making resolutions seems overwhelming since I have so much to do between now and July when I stop working and focus on my dissertation, but here are some goals:

• Exercise 4 or 5 days per week, either at home or at the gym.  More Bike time would be good.
• Improve my eating, although I don’t think I can go back to the strict calorie counting I was doing until July.  (I eat to deal with stress, and my schedule for the next few months will be highly stressful.  I can try to improve over that timeframe but I don’t want to set myself up for failure by committing to the strict counting I’ve done in the past.)
• Live frugally; like a grad student; that means no shopping trips, no big gifts, etc.  We need to pay off those credit cards and get a chunk of money in the bank before I stop working, and that means living frugally.
• Comps completed by August 2008
• ABD by the end of 2008 so that, if we can’t find money to pay me for a post doc here I can at least go into spring job interviews with a straight face and say I’ll be done before starting a job in fall 2009.
• Get something published under just my own name.
• Keep up with work for all 3 classes; the graded one, the ungraded one on funding on which my future somewhat depends, and the ungraded one that I will be teaching as an adjunct starting next summer.
• Find more adjunct slots for next summer/fall so that I can take my time on everything else

What that all means is that I have to FOCUS.  Watch less TV, goof off less (not that I do much of that now), get up earlier (ugg) and struggle through the next 6 months. 

I can do this.  I WILL do this.  And it will be worth it.

My day job for the past 20 years has involved taking big databases and turning the contents into useful reports, so I figured it would be a snore to do so for a local school district in order to earn money to buy a slick new fridge.  And it was.  Until they told me to change one thing (based on the draft report).  And of course I have enough experience to know that if I just slapped in what they asked for it wouldn’t answer their question.  So I am essentially redoing the whole thing.  Before 8am monday.  This sucks because I have a LOT of other stuff to do that is unlikely to get done this weekend while I do this…..

My day job for the past 20 years has involved taking big databases and turning the contents into useful reports, so I figured it would be a snore to do so for a local school district in order to earn money to buy a slick new fridge.  And it was.  Until they told me to change one thing (based on the draft report).  And of course I have enough experience to know that if I just slapped in what they asked for it wouldn’t answer their question.  So I am essentially redoing the whole thing.  Before 8am monday.  This sucks because I have a LOT of other stuff to do that is unlikely to get done this weekend while I do this…..