on a dime

Forcing myself to finally update.

Still having mixed feelings about my work. It doesn’t help that the girl I share my bay with is a patronizing little cunt. That word’s never phased me, incidentally.  I remember hanging out in the Barnes and Noble at my undergrad while waiting for the shuttle one day. I came across this book: http://www.amazon.com/Cunt-Declaration-Independence-Expanded-Updated/dp/1580050751/ref=sr_1_1.  I only flipped through it for a minute, so I can’t guarantee it doesn’t devolve into extreme feminist ranting, but I appreciated the overall sentiment.  One of these days I’ll read it in its entirety.

At any rate, girl from work has a way of driving me batshit crazy. She’s going to be one of those doctors who gives doctors a bad rep of being condescending, self-important, entitled pricks.

Last week I outlined the proposal for my PhD qualification exam, which involves writing and orally defending a short grant with a slightly heavier emphasis on the background section vs. the experimental one. I was feeling good about it, right up until my committee chair let me know just how underwhelmed he was by the whole thing. He was nice enough about it, but definitely used the phrases "not very exciting," and "insufficient as is."  Fuck me. What makes it worse is that my proposed experiments were meant to make up a good chunk of my thesis work. I know this is just part of the process – feedback is important; the earlier I address potential flaws the better, but man, my confidence is totally shot now. I’m seriously concerned about not passing. Which isn’t the end of the world – plenty of grad students fail one section of the quals their first time around, but I’d be the first MSTP to do so in a while. I’ve been in the lab longer than most grad students at this phase in training. I should have my shit together by now. It’s concerning that this doesn’t seem to be the case. I think my advisor and I need to have a talk :/

So overall, feeling a bit down. I should be used to this by now, but it still throws me every time things turn to shit on dime.