I knew today would be a bad day. I knew it in my body even last night as I lay in bed, attempting to sleep and fighting the insomnia that has become a frequent but always unwelcome visitor. As soon as it occurred to me that I was getting rest prior to a day at work (somehow it was one of those good weekends where I completely forgot about my ( Read more... )

Here's the blog I intended to put on the graduate school blog. As it was going through the committee, they decided not to put it up ultimately with worries that it would jeopardize my career. So it's going here instead.

Sigh. Silencing the victim is such a powerful thing.

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Unfortunately I don't remember the contents of this dream, but I was having a really pleasant dream (or at least I remember it being pleasant), and it was one of those situations where as soon as my alarm went off and I realized it was a dream, I immediately resumed sleeping with the very vivid thought: "Oh shit it's only a dream, better go back to ( Read more... )

I take a lot of pictures. Always have. It correlates strongly with my desire to have memories of a time and place ( Read more... )

Some days I'm just really tired of chasing after the American Dream. And it's not necessarily that I just want to give up on everything (though I do feel this way sometimes). It's just that I feel unsettled by the idea that this is all I will contribute to the world. Isn't there something more meaningful I could be doing right now? I could be ( Read more... )

It's a little early, but a head-start never hurt anyone.

• One resolution last year was to never write a negative facebook status, since I feel like they just make me sound like an attention whore and let people who don't need to know what's going terribly in my life. I think I'm going to follow that resolution up with finding the correct outlet for ( Read more... )

I was going to wait until the end of the year to do this, but I'm already in the reflective mood now and might as well get my thoughts out so I don't have to keep thinking about them.

2011.

I was almost going to say that this was the worst year of my life. And it was, until the end of the year brought many surprises. I passed my candidacy exam ( Read more... )

I've been riding this wave all day that escalates to a level just below panic and then drops back down to exhaustion. I could barely sleep last night because I was so nervous/worried, and when I woke up this morning I was pretty swamped with my usual anxiety-induced nausea ( Read more... )

I have never feared approaching my professor as much as I do now, and yet, I have never needed his help more than I do now.

I feel like I'm wedged between a rock and a hard place.

This is what I wrote for the grad school blog for my December post. I was gonna wait until it came out to show you guys, but I thought y'all could ride on my wave of confidence with me if you need it :).

Author’s note: Most Ph.D. students have to go through a candidacy examination sometime during their second year. In science, this means writing a ( Read more... )