Aaaaaaaagh

Email from the grad school:Send your revised thesis back to the readers so they can evaluate it again. You know what would have been nice? Being informed of any of this stuff in ADVANCE. Having guidelines. Or revising the correct version of my thesis.

This is part of why I left lab science- or at least academia- for the world of industry. At least in industry, people mostly tell me what I need to do, how, and under what conditions. Nobody tries to belittle my intelligence or get revenge on my work out of jealousy or ambition. And I'm not expected to work 70 hours a week or else I must not be committed.

For sure there are places in industry that are like that. I don't work at one.

I'm beginning to be frustrated at my inability to get anything done: even dishes are a challenge (though I can manage 'turn on dishwasher'). Of course, the fact that I'm holding a baby 20 hours a day has something to do with it, as does the fact that I get about 90 minutes a day where I can use both hands- mainly in 10-minute intervals. I can't tell if the anxiety and overwhelmed feelings are incipient PPD, or grad-school-made-me-miserable flashbacks. Or both, plus sleep deprivation.

In Which I Am Furious, But Then (Somewhat) Pleasantly Surprised

We have the good fortune to be within the delivery radius of a diaper service. It being economical and (more or less) environmentally friendly, we use it.

I went out yesterday afternoon to pick up our diapers, which they leave outside our building's door. Dirty diapers gone, one lonely deodorizer disk, no clean diapers.

After stamping about my apartment swearing in incoherent rage, I checked everywhere (dumpsters, other buildings), and then called the diaper service. Yes, they delivered them, really. Yes, to the normal place.

So I left a note on the door that if I found the jerk who stole my baby's diapers, I would prosecute their sorry ass. And if anyone saw the jerk who stole them, please tell me. And then I called the cops and made a police report. And then I swore some more.

This morning, outside our door... our bag of diapers, with my nasty note on top.

Semi-amazing.

Irony

My (highly annoying thesis) went through about 5 rounds of revisions.

The spouse and I revised Version 4 by accident. And then Fedexed it to the grad school.

The permanent-archives version still contains 10 typographical errors, one egregious factual error, and three incorrect references- and is missing two lines. Also, about 30 sentences are missing periods after the citation. Good thing nobody ever reads the print copies of science theses.

Oops.

Spirit Writing

I have now revised my !@#$!! thesis. By which I mean, I sat and nursed the Pumpkin, while the spouse took dictation. ("The reader wants me to what? Fine. Write 'Group X reports that they did That Thing. In our hands, we obtained a completely different result. I have no bloody idea why.' Next comment." "I don't care, just delete the entire paragraph; there, there's nothing to complain about now!" "No, I'm leaving that in so that no other poor sod tries to do the experiment. Of course it didn't work, that's the POINT." "People in HELL want ICE WATER. We're done.")

Thank heavens the grad school doesn't really, you know, check.

P.S.

Is 11 AM too early to start drinking???

(Just kidding. Really. I wait until noon at least.)

One-Handed Makes It Harder

Thesis! I had one of those.

Snooty U requires two readers in one's department and an outside reader.

My two departmental readers checked off the 'pass' box and signed the damn form.

My advisor wanted a former-postdoc-now-faculty from our lab to be the outside reader. I didn't, because:

1) it's supposed to be someone unconnected to the thesis, not someone who trained me
and
2) Dr. Former tried to steal my project and now is getting scooped and I didn't think would be especially happy about it.

Dr. Former wrote three pages trashing my thesis- okay, some of it's fair, but part is malicious, and a quarter is wrong (inaccurate citation of someone else's results, and no, that's not what it meant, either!) but... at least checked the 'pass' box too.

I have until Monday to make the changes and resubmit the whole damn thing. The baby is nursing continuously and wailing in between, and I no longer have access to the S.U. library, so cannot read articles. The fun never stops.

Drowning In A Tide Of Diapers

The baby has now packed on 2 pounds in 2.5 weeks. He eats every hour. I'm exhausted.

Also, tell me how you all handle night-time diaper changing. My sweet spouse usually goes and sleeps elsewhere while I feed the baby (and after)... so should I wake him up and hand him the baby, or deal with it? And he's working, and I'm not, and I'm awake anyways, y'know...

Happy face!


Sad face.