Two Weeks

I came to the realization today that due to my poor math skills, I actually only have two weeks until my dissertation goes out to my committee, not three like I thought. Apparently, I will never master that whole "counting" thing. Thankfully, I married a man who is able to do math and all sorts of things that I can't do. That's a plus or a division sign, honestly, I'm not sure how math works.

I think there is the possibility that I will actually finish the dissertation, turn it in, defend it, and graduate in May. It feels as though it could happen. It also feels as if I will fail miserably. I'm a woman of extremes. I want to put out to the universe that I will do well. But honestly, it's a lot of work and I'm just getting tired. So tired.

But I suppose that's life. We all make choices. Some of us choose to get a Ph.D. and then work at a McDonald's. That's fine though. I'm still going to make everyone call me Dr. Rose. They'll be yelling, "Dr. Rose, let's get a move on, I need two large fries over here!" And I'll be like, "Yeah, you do." Then I'll launch into a little discussion of cognitive dissonance - how the people who are ordering the fast food know it is bad for them, but are still eating it so there is a disparity between their beliefs and their behaviors which is uncomfortable for humans. So the choices are to either not eat the food or to somehow justify it, "I only do this once in awhile. I got the diet coke, etc." No one will be listening to me, but I'll feel good about putting some of my education to use. I really hope that the dishwashers have master's degrees and we can all go out on smoke breaks and talk about the glory days of graduate school. I don't envision making it to manager because I don't think I could handle the stress (and I'm actually not mocking McDonald's managers- I really don't think I could deal with it). So I'll probably just work the fry-a-lator and bide my time until I can work my way up to the cash register. Although, there are two things about that job that will likely prove to be obstacles. First, I don't like touching money (germs! everywhere!) and second, as previously mentioned, I can't do math. Either people would be very happy with the change they got back or very angry.

I guess there's a lesson to be learned in all this. I'm pretty sure that life is all about the teaching of lessons. But I'm not quite far enough away from all this yet to see the lesson. I'm hoping that with all that time working the fry machine, I'll be able to figure out the life lesson from these past 6 years.

Did You Miss Me?

Hi Internet,

It's been awhile. I'm trying to write my dissertation and let me just say this about that - it's just as fun as you've always thought it would be. Because I am writing (read: not writing and feeling guilty) the dissertation, I have very little brain power left to string together coherent thoughts. In fact, if you were to look at the dissertation you'd probably say I don't have enough power to string together coherent thoughts for that either, but I digress.

I decided that I need to practice writing something that I enjoy. And as many of you know, there is nothing I enjoy more than writing romantic comedies. No, just kidding. That's not true. I'm lying for the attention. But in the shower today I thought, "I'll write a nice entry a day or something to keep my on my toes (not literally)." As a side note about the shower, I had to get back into the shower after drying my hair and then realizing that I had shaved my right leg, but not my left leg. That's how well I'm doing lately. But don't worry, it's not visual neglect*, so there's the upside.

Anyway, I think we all know that my best work comes when I chose a topic and then write about it. Well, not a topic, a letter. So without further ado, today's blog entry is brought you by the letter A.

I have a couple choice words that start with A that I could string together, but my parents always told me that if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. So I'll choose different words.

A is for Abstract - an abstract is the beginning part of scientific paper in which the Author or Authors (look at me going for the bonus points) sum up what the paper is about. It's usually about 150 to 250 words and goes through each section of the paper in short order and lays it all out. This is done for anyone who is lazy and doesn't want to read the entire paper, and really, why would you? But the abstract can often be misleading. To use an Analogy, often the abstract is written as though by Cliff**. It's close to what goes on, but you probably should have read the book. Here's what the abstract to my dissertation should really look like:

Here lies the dissertation of Rose Danek. She began this research with a zest for research and a love of the topic. She ends this research with a desire to never do research again and a cynical view of the research process. The following experiments reported are the ones that worked. There were about 10 more that were run and didn't work. This is common in research. Anyone who says differently is lying. She wrote some things down and at this point can't really remember what they were. If you are still interested you should read the paper. This is the last hoop that I had to jump through and by God, if it didn't kill me, I think it made me stronger.

Tune in tomorrow when our Blog will be brought to you from the Letter B.

*That's a little joke for my neuroscience friends.

**That's a little joke about Cliff Notes.***

***That's a reference to my insecurity about people getting my subtle humor.