I have not posted anything of substance lately, I know.
Substance? HA! Like dirty monkey sex stories? pft. you’ve NEVER had anything with substance here.
Shut up.
Anyway…it’s because, as many of you know, I am in the final throes of graduate school. This is the most painful phase, called “writing.” After collecting and incubating years and years worth of data, I now must give birth to an elegantly written explanation, summary, and defense of all that data.
Folks, I think this is a breach birth. or this sucker is coming out sideways. It’s pretty painful.
Actually, I’m not solely working on my thesis, I am working on a paper of my main project in the lab that will be submitted to a journal for publication . the nice thing is, with a few edits and additions of some “eh” data, this paper will also be the bulk of my thesis. Copy. Paste. Print.
The thing that is making this so difficult is that word that can either bring tears to the eyes, or send shivers down the spine of any graduate student: collaboration
A collaboration means that you take your data and someone else’s data (often from another lab, at another school), both of which might be slightly weak on their own, but together make for a stronger paper. You both get 1st author on the paper, and everyone is happy.
Except I’M the one writing this paper. The girl I collaborated with wrote her thesis and is GONE. I have her thesis to work from, and now I must mesh her data and mine into a beautiful tapestry that tells a story and has an easy to follow ending.
Oh, and while our projects are similar (how else could we combine them?), our…research focus is different. Without giving too much away, and to totally confuse those of you who can’t remember 9th grade biology, she worked with a meiosis assay, while mine is mitotic.
Not such a big deal, especially when you’re just writing up the methods, and then describing the data. Everything can be kept separately. here is my stuff, here is her stuff.
BUT…
the discussion section. OH MY GOD, THE DISCUSSION! Where everything has to be wrapped up neatly in a little bundle! Where I find the intersection of my data and hers, and come up with some universal model that explains them both! Genius! Neat! Elegant!
I
.
.
.
CAN’T
.
.
.
DO IT!!!
I’m trying. I really am. But I feel like every time I try to type something scholarly and succinct, what I’m really doing is just barfing all over the screen. Yep, here you go, Dr. Adviser…barf paper! Mind the chunks, they’re nasty!
So that, dear friends, is the reason for my crap posts that are half pictures, and my general absence in commentsville. I do still read you, I promise. But only a few at a time, stolen pieces of time while I eat lunch, or to calm me down and keep me from hurling my laptop at the wall (i’ve come close, believe me).
I remember a talk I had with Brenda, a previous graduate student in the lab and occasional reader here (HI BRENDA!), after she had finished writing her thesis. She said, and I’m paraphrasing here, “You know when Jenny was writing hers and having all those problems, I remember thinking ‘I’m a good writer, this is not going to be so difficult for me.’ But ESC, it IS hard. So very hard. It’s the hardest thing and most painful thing I’ve ever had to write. you might think it will be easy but IT WON’T. IT WILL BE VERY DIFFICULT.”
Brenda, I miss our little pep talks. You always knew how to cheer me up.
So yeah, it’s hard. Vomit inducing hard. And OH MY GOD thank JESUS for pills, because without my happy pills, none of this would be working out for me AT ALL. I just turned in draft #5 (a day late. oops. did I mention how hard the discussion section is?), which is PROGRESS people. PROGRESS!
Now I’m going to go over the draft again and fix all the little typos I made and missed during the 20 reads of the paper before I turned it in, which she will find and mark and send back to me. Because I always do stupid shit like that. I also need more references. Just how many references does one sentence need? 2? 8? I MUST REFERENCE EVERYONE IN HISTORY WHO MENTIONS THIS GENE IN ANY CONTEXT!
No.
Alright, I need food - I think my blood sugar MIGHT be a touch low…ya think?
You focus on what you need to accomplish, dear. We cyber folks will be here waiting for you. Well, A cyber folk will do that, at least.
Let me tell you a little story about my thesis. I did my thesis project, and my advisor was such a total COW that I couldn’t work with her anymore. I set the damn thing aside and didn’t do it rather than work with that bitch-whore from hell. Then she got fired (she later sued the school to get back in, which should tell you a little about her). And then there was a new Dramaturgy advisor. And I began to write my thesis. And I wrote wrote wrote wrote wrote about Arthur Miller, and the socio-political context that A View From The Bridge was written in, and Brooklyn of that era, and then my new advisor? He fucking bled all over my thesis because…
…his real job at the time? Theater Editor/Head Critic for The Village Voice. I eventually got the fucking thing written, and by God it was good because hello, a professional critic was overseeing it, but Holy Hera, it was painful. And my thesis advisor is now the Theater Critic for the LA Times.
All theses are painful. That’s why they sound so much like “feces.”
My thesis mantra: Just keep breathing….
Hang in there!!!
And, I truely believe that barf on a page is better than a blank page–at least it has something of substance on it. And yes, you may quote me!
Hang in there! We are all sending you some good thesis writing energy.
You can do it! We have faith in you… barf chunks and all
*holds nose* The smell of barf makes me barf, holding my nose also makes me talk funny but not type funny, so imagine if you were in my brain. Good luck, ESC, you can do it!
(And that is Why I Never Went To Grad School.)
Happy Writing!
Why do I have a picture of a goat as my Gravatar? I like goats, mind you, but I’m curious.
Good luck. I remember when my mom was writing her dissertation. I didn’t get a home-cooked meal for a year, but there were snarls a-plenty.
But she got her PhD and her dissertation was published, too. Inspired?
You have my deepest sympathy. Though I’ve not had to write a thesis, I also find collaboration with writing to be a pain in the ass. Especially as it seems you’re doing most of the work and now have to share the credit. But I have every confidence that it will be brilliant once you’re done. How could it not be? It is you doing the writing, after all.
Now that I’ve given you the pep talk, hurry up and finish so we can get stories about hot monkey sex. Or hot monkeys having sex. Or sex with hot monkeys. Or whatever. Those of us with boring sex lives must live vicariously though you! We’re dying here!
You should get a hold of some Ritalin for a minute. Finish that bitch right up.
Pills solve everything.
Also: help!! Check in! Check in!