Proud 'O Me
This title is an attempt at sounding Irish, in honor of the fact that I forgot about St. Paddy's Day...although don't you agree that having a green straw in my Starbuck's coffee counts for something?!?! (O.K. mom, sorry, don't read this and disown me for not fully celebrating.)
You're probably hoping I'm done complaining about Life Being Hectic, but I am not. Please indulge me and allow me to describe the Happenings of Last Week, starting from Last Sunday. After we returned from L.A., panic mode kicked in - as usual - because I am a huge (huge!!!) procrastinator. The AEFA conference was a mere four days away, my presentation was in five days, and I had yet to get my paper to my discussant (which is supposed to happen a full two weeks before the presentation). Not only wasn't the paper done, but some of the major analyses needed to be re-run and written up. Oh, and my PowerPoint deck? Hahaha! I'm sure you can see a pattern here: also Not Done. So...major stress ensued...and sleeplessness...especially because Susanna - my former adviser and coauthor - was going to be installed as the new AEFA president, so I had to make a good impression.
Susanna and Eileen asked me to practice my presentation on Monday...when I still hadn't completed my results. So I made a long, rambling train-wrecky presentation (whoops!) and then dedicated the next two days to cranking out results and making revisions. I still hadn't unpacked from the prior weekend when Wednesday morning arrived, and I had to do laundry, pack up and head to the airport for our flight to Nashville (by this point, I had at least managed to submit a preliminary draft to the discussant, with a promise of sending updated tables soon).
The point of this long boring story is that I managed to re-do all my analyses, results and tables, completely re-do my PowerPoint deck, and get my new tables to the discussant the day before my presentation. I practiced my presentation and it turned out really well! And now this woman from Israel wants me to work with her on implementing weighted student funding across Israel - because she's in charge of how funding goes to schools, across the entire country. Cool! I also schmoozed my patootie off, met some of my research idols, and convinced one of them to coauthor a grant proposal with me. So, even though I am mad at myself for not getting things done sooner, I am proud of myself for pulling everything together in a pinch.
Now I'm on a bigger work kick. I finished reading How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing, and it is the best! Daphna, I know you have a dissertation to write, but buy this book - and read it. It is seriously motivational and SO WORTH IT! The basic premise is to make writing more of a mundane task by scheduling it every day. That way, you chip away a little bit every day without getting overwhelmed, or feeling guilty for procrastinating. I took its advice to heart - especially the part about doing writing first thing in the morning. So I got up this morning at 5 a.m. and had two uninterrupted, glorious hours of writing done by the time Saya woke up. I haven't felt this good about getting stuff done in so long! No late afternoon guilt after wasting the whole day...it was awesome! I'm planning to go to bed at 10 p.m. from now on so I can continue this. And I'm writing this to you so you can keep me accountable.
Are you nodding off with boredom yet? Sorry about that, but the point of this blog is not only to entertain you (yes, you!) but to provide an outlet for yours truly, which I hear is important for something called "mental health" (what's that?!).
If you're wondering where the fun part of this post is, I'll throw you a little nugget. A salacious little nugget. Some of you know that this happened to me, which resulted in this and this in my this, so I finally went and did this today for the first time. Sigh. See? My goal is to make your day seem just a little bit better by comparison.
You're probably hoping I'm done complaining about Life Being Hectic, but I am not. Please indulge me and allow me to describe the Happenings of Last Week, starting from Last Sunday. After we returned from L.A., panic mode kicked in - as usual - because I am a huge (huge!!!) procrastinator. The AEFA conference was a mere four days away, my presentation was in five days, and I had yet to get my paper to my discussant (which is supposed to happen a full two weeks before the presentation). Not only wasn't the paper done, but some of the major analyses needed to be re-run and written up. Oh, and my PowerPoint deck? Hahaha! I'm sure you can see a pattern here: also Not Done. So...major stress ensued...and sleeplessness...especially because Susanna - my former adviser and coauthor - was going to be installed as the new AEFA president, so I had to make a good impression.
Susanna and Eileen asked me to practice my presentation on Monday...when I still hadn't completed my results. So I made a long, rambling train-wrecky presentation (whoops!) and then dedicated the next two days to cranking out results and making revisions. I still hadn't unpacked from the prior weekend when Wednesday morning arrived, and I had to do laundry, pack up and head to the airport for our flight to Nashville (by this point, I had at least managed to submit a preliminary draft to the discussant, with a promise of sending updated tables soon).
The point of this long boring story is that I managed to re-do all my analyses, results and tables, completely re-do my PowerPoint deck, and get my new tables to the discussant the day before my presentation. I practiced my presentation and it turned out really well! And now this woman from Israel wants me to work with her on implementing weighted student funding across Israel - because she's in charge of how funding goes to schools, across the entire country. Cool! I also schmoozed my patootie off, met some of my research idols, and convinced one of them to coauthor a grant proposal with me. So, even though I am mad at myself for not getting things done sooner, I am proud of myself for pulling everything together in a pinch.
Now I'm on a bigger work kick. I finished reading How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing, and it is the best! Daphna, I know you have a dissertation to write, but buy this book - and read it. It is seriously motivational and SO WORTH IT! The basic premise is to make writing more of a mundane task by scheduling it every day. That way, you chip away a little bit every day without getting overwhelmed, or feeling guilty for procrastinating. I took its advice to heart - especially the part about doing writing first thing in the morning. So I got up this morning at 5 a.m. and had two uninterrupted, glorious hours of writing done by the time Saya woke up. I haven't felt this good about getting stuff done in so long! No late afternoon guilt after wasting the whole day...it was awesome! I'm planning to go to bed at 10 p.m. from now on so I can continue this. And I'm writing this to you so you can keep me accountable.
Are you nodding off with boredom yet? Sorry about that, but the point of this blog is not only to entertain you (yes, you!) but to provide an outlet for yours truly, which I hear is important for something called "mental health" (what's that?!).
If you're wondering where the fun part of this post is, I'll throw you a little nugget. A salacious little nugget. Some of you know that this happened to me, which resulted in this and this in my this, so I finally went and did this today for the first time. Sigh. See? My goal is to make your day seem just a little bit better by comparison.
I had no idea "this" was so bad! You poor thing! My OB fixed my "this" when I had Trajan. And congrats on the successful presentation! YOU ROCK!
Posted by
Mishy |
March 24, 2009 at 9:36 AM
Reading this blog, is anyone else surprised that Ashlyn had to read a book called "How to Write A Lot"?
Posted by
Kris |
March 24, 2009 at 6:57 PM