It seems no matter how hard I work, my research takes a back seat. This week I am going to get up extra early (5 am) and go straight to school. I want to see if I get more done. I want to see if my focus can return to my research. If it can then I might have a chance to graduate before my kids enter college.
I guess I spend a lot of my time thinking about things that aren't directly related to my research. The rest of my time is spent helping others actually. I spend a lot of the week working on the laboratory, homeworks, and answering peoples questions in the lab. Perhaps if I come in early enough I can avoid getting caught up in all of that and get something done. Lets see how it goes...I will try to report back in a few days...now I just need to get an alarm clock that will get me up, without excuses. Steve Pavlina says that I should have a no arguing policy about waking up. When I hear the alarm I should stretch and wake up and not even allow myself to discuss my options. Otherwise I will argue myself back into bed. Honestly I want to go back to bed, even now, but I should be working. So tomorrow I begin the battle with myself and discipline. I will let you know who wins.
Sunday, March 19, 2006
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
New Mandolin
My mom sent me new mandolin on Friday! It sounds funny but it is the nicest gift she ever gave me I think...next to life...I don't mean to belittle life, but this thing is awesome! It has an amplifier so I can bother the kids and neighbors with my playing. She also sent a tuner, which makes tuning 8 strings a lot easier. I have been playing the fiddle for a couple of months now and maybe she just thought I sounded crappy... or maybe Julie begged her to change my instrument!hahaha, actully I am pretty sure she just wanted to give me something nice. I am really please and have already learned a couple of songs. Nothing to fancy, and I am not really that good (of course), but I am having a lot of fun. I hope that I can take lessons soon. I don't really even know if I am playing it right. Anyway it was just the thing I needed. I have been a little down lately. Research seems to be taking a backseat these days and I don't like that because it means I am no closer to graduation and no closer to solutions. Hopefully with the second half of the semester coming up I will gain some momentum and get in a grove...being a TA isn't as easy as I thought it would be, but I am enjoying it.
Saturday, March 04, 2006
Posting from a widget
I am posting from a new macintosh widget that posts blog entries to blogspot.com. Once again the ease of using a free blogging tool is awesome. I am very excited about this tool. Perhaps I will be able to blog more often. For those of you who don't know what a widget is: a widget is a sort of small application that runs on an alternate window. When I am working under normal conditions on my desktop or whatever I click on f12 and a transparent window appears over my work. On the window are a couple of very small at a glance applications for instance: a calendar at a glance, a clock, a calculator, a conversion tool, the weather, a dictionary. I can use them and then return to my work with just one button click. They look cool and track small pieces of information all day. I like them and so do many Mac users. If you use windows you are out of luck, but you probably have some excuse why you are still using a PC and probably don't feel bad. Let us all strive to be more productive. I hope this helps me do so.
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
T-Minus ? To graduation
I don't really know how long it is going to take for me to graduate. I read this article today and some of the comments. It was an interesting article about the need for schools to help doctoral students graduate sooner. The average time it takes to graduate from a BS to PhD is 7.6 years, on the rise over the past 30 years! How can I shorten that time frame? I will definitely have to move faster than I am now!
The study sites a couple of suggestions, but overall I see a problem that isn't mentioned, as it applies to science related PhD's. Many scientific disciplines have become so complex that students must learn much more before they can make a contribution. Students must understand everything about the past before they can look into the future. This requires time and therefore makes PhD completion times rise. Although many students have a head start over students 30 years ago (many high school students can take calculus, whereas 30 years ago it was only taught in college) the distance to make a contribution is increasing rapidly. Scientific discovery has become very competitive and complex. Discovering new and interesting contributions to ones discipline is often more difficult than in the past because so much must be learned and studied before one can attempt to formulate anything new.
I can't be sure that this is the reason why people don't graduate sooner. Perhaps it is the comforts of grad school that keep people here (free pizza, exhaustive dead ends, late nights, and a decline in social life). Aren't those three great reasons to go to graduate school? Perhaps it's an aversion to moving on to something outside of the academy. At some point people tire of it. That is when they either decide to leave or get serious about finishing. And that brings me back to...Well me. Honestly, I am not always this self centered but I have one goal as of late... And that is to get my PhD as quickly as possible. Oh sure I probably have 3 more years... But that doesn't change my goal. I am told that if I write my goals down they will happen a lot sooner. So there you are I wrote them down and maybe I can help move the time to graduate statistic back to 7.599 years!
Once again I think that if you want to graduate sooner it is really up to you. Are you asking the right questions? Are you reading and writing each day? Are you taking courses that will lead you to a solution? Have you found a good mentor? Are you meeting regularly with your advisor? In almost everyway it is up to the graduate student to graduate. So how can we shorten the timeframe? I will be on the look out for solutions. I am getting tired of reading about the problem. I know what the problem is, I have the problem, I am the problem. So lets find some solutions, proactive solutions. Solutions I can actually DO something about.
The study sites a couple of suggestions, but overall I see a problem that isn't mentioned, as it applies to science related PhD's. Many scientific disciplines have become so complex that students must learn much more before they can make a contribution. Students must understand everything about the past before they can look into the future. This requires time and therefore makes PhD completion times rise. Although many students have a head start over students 30 years ago (many high school students can take calculus, whereas 30 years ago it was only taught in college) the distance to make a contribution is increasing rapidly. Scientific discovery has become very competitive and complex. Discovering new and interesting contributions to ones discipline is often more difficult than in the past because so much must be learned and studied before one can attempt to formulate anything new.
I can't be sure that this is the reason why people don't graduate sooner. Perhaps it is the comforts of grad school that keep people here (free pizza, exhaustive dead ends, late nights, and a decline in social life). Aren't those three great reasons to go to graduate school? Perhaps it's an aversion to moving on to something outside of the academy. At some point people tire of it. That is when they either decide to leave or get serious about finishing. And that brings me back to...Well me. Honestly, I am not always this self centered but I have one goal as of late... And that is to get my PhD as quickly as possible. Oh sure I probably have 3 more years... But that doesn't change my goal. I am told that if I write my goals down they will happen a lot sooner. So there you are I wrote them down and maybe I can help move the time to graduate statistic back to 7.599 years!
Once again I think that if you want to graduate sooner it is really up to you. Are you asking the right questions? Are you reading and writing each day? Are you taking courses that will lead you to a solution? Have you found a good mentor? Are you meeting regularly with your advisor? In almost everyway it is up to the graduate student to graduate. So how can we shorten the timeframe? I will be on the look out for solutions. I am getting tired of reading about the problem. I know what the problem is, I have the problem, I am the problem. So lets find some solutions, proactive solutions. Solutions I can actually DO something about.
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