i hate it, i don't want to do it, how bout you?

[banana k]

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writing thesis, don't care anymore, can't sleep, getting ulcers, have stopped believing that my results mean anything... has this happened to anyone else? and then when you get the little diploma at the end, it doesn't even wash your socks or cook you dinner or pay your taxes!

 

[Science_Guy]

writing thesis, don't care anymore, can't sleep, getting ulcers, have stopped believing that my results mean anything... has this happened to anyone else? and then when you get the little diploma at the end, it doesn't even wash your socks or cook you dinner or pay your taxes!

LOL....keep pushing...there IS light at the end of the tunnel. I remember those days.....little sleep....writing the disseration AND trying to complete some final experiments. To top it off, preparing for the final defense was also going on....but compared to all that writing and getting the grad school to accept the final draft, the final defense was CAKE. The stress eventually subsides after graduation, but you definitely feel burned-out after the experience.

As far as the degree at the end....make the most of it. You will have destroyed enough neurons in the process, so make it count.

 

[EvoDevo]

Agreed. Writing the thesis is the absolute worst thing about graduate school. But keep pushing. A little bit every day and before you know it you'll be done. And so will your ulcers. 🙂

Good luck.

 

[QofQuimica]

I'm starting to feel anxious too because I am planning to start writing in six months and I'm still trying to finish both of my projects! I was hoping that I'd get one done within the next month or two but the step I'm working on now is not cooperating, and I might have to start all over....yet again. Also I have a summer student who is coming in two weeks and she's never worked in a lab before. Plus now I am starting my medical school applications on top of everything else. 😱

 

[banana k]

i don't like writing, man. i like sitting down with three colleagues over a beer and arguing about which protein fractions are biologically relevant. conferences. i like conferences. screw theses. it doesn't help that the english language is the most CONSTRAINING, OBNOXIOUS form of communication ever invented, and i'm starting to think i should go back to latin even though i don't remember any of it. who the hell thought up the rule of not using the same word twice consecutively? i mean, in science writing, how many synonyms for "membrane transporter" are there really? or "venom"? or any species' latin names? oh man. two more weeks. ach, aye.

 

[Hoberto]

I'm having trouble getting fired up my research let alone the thesis! I'd gladly write up the results if only someone would do all my experiments.

 

[QofQuimica]

I like editing. I could sit and edit all day long (and since until recently I was the only native English speaker in my group, I do sit and edit for my lab mates quite frequently). But it's hard to edit if you don't have some kind of draft that requires editing. 😛

 

[banana k]

hoberto, you can have my results. interpret them till the cows come home. write p values around the moon. i'll take the lab any day! (or the field, maybe once a month or so, just for the sake of some bloody fresh air and sunshine.) i think i'm getting a computer screen tan. it's gross. i have no life and i live on cup-a-soup. but, i think i've learned when to tell my supervisor to stuff it.

 

[jennifermov]

this is the best thread ever! a place to whine about writing where you don't have to feel guilty b/c everyone else is whinning too! yes, writing sucks my balls....if i had any! 🙂 hehehe - don't mind me -- i just got back from happy hour.....

 

[QofQuimica]

this is the best thread ever! a place to whine about writing where you don't have to feel guilty b/c everyone else is whinning too! yes, writing sucks my balls....if i had any! 🙂 hehehe - don't mind me -- i just got back from happy hour.....

You know what's ironic about this? We're whining about writing....by writing about it.

 

[banana k]

yeah, but here we're free not to have you use language like "though the two were substantially different, the heteroscedasticity of the data precluded meaningful analysis by the available methods; as a result, only tentative conclusions can be drawn from the aforementioned trials" and other such nonsense. and i don't have a supervisor leaning over my shoulder telling me that i'm too freaking blunt by not using although/however/previously alluded to/as mentioned above/nonetheless CRAP NONSENSE! rrrgh! so since i started this thread, i have written the same freaking publication twice more... and it's still bad and i'm starting FROM SCRATCH! it was sort of cos my PI came home from hawaii and read my thing in person and not from a memory stick and was like, oh hey... you still suck. TROUBLE.

 

[banana k]

latest friendly guidance from the PI: "you look the wrong kind of stressed. you look slit your wrists stressed. but don't worry, after this year you'll have enough scar tissue to last you for the next decade."

yay. so glad. bring it on.

 

[QofQuimica]

lmao, he sounds like the guy from "Office Space." Hang in there, banana. You'll make it. 👍 😍

 

[banana k]

lol... which office space guy? that's the best movie ever but no one has seen it in australia! very disappointing.

just handed in the first complete manuscript draft 😱 only a week and a half left to go...

 

[QofQuimica]

just handed in the first complete manuscript draft 😱 only a week and a half left to go...

Wow, WTG! 👍 I have been editing a paper that was written by two other people and myself. The whole experimental section was in the wrong format and it took me hours to correct them all. 🙄 🙁

 

[banana k]

update, becaues i hate it and i don't want to do it, so i'm procrastinating again...

now there's about six thousand arguments raging upstairs in the faculty offices about correct thesis format: do you do it word for word as a journal article (as per the thesis guide), which is sort of anti- traditional thesis style, or can you bodgy it a little bit to make it more traditional? half the faculty hates the idea of seeing supervisors listed as co-authors in a thesis, but the other half are of the mind that well they're sure as hell going to be published as co-authors so they'd better be on there.

being the ****-stirrer that i am, i finished writing early and went to check on that with my supervisor AND the program coordinator. and since they're both stressed as all hell too and now mad at each other for taking different views of such a useless problem, they both bit my head off. what a stupid thing to yell at a student for.

 

[QofQuimica]

lol, sorry to hear that. I know how you feel. I submitted a draft for a paper to one of the two professors with whom I am collaborating. That was six months ago. I had the NERVE to ask him a few weeks ago how he was coming along with his revisions, and he almost bit my head off. 🙄

On the bright side, I finally succeeded in synthesizing a compound that I have been trying to make for almost a year now. I called my mom this morning to tell her, and she was excited, but she kind of burst my bubble when she next asked, "So, what does this mean?" I told her that it meant I was going to graduate, b/c my prof had said that I couldn't graduate until I made it, and now I have made it. 😀

 

[banana k]

hah, sucked in!

 

[QofQuimica]

hah, sucked in!

Sigh, don't you know it. I made a suggestion to him for one other compound that I could make, and he said, "great idea....while you're at it, why don't you also.....(long list of things)"

 

[housecleaning]

I called my mom this morning to tell her, and she was excited, but she kind of burst my bubble when she next asked, "So, what does this mean?" I told her that it meant I was going to graduate, b/c my prof had said that I couldn't graduate until I made it, and now I have made it. 😀

really? your mom didn't know what you were talking about? please tell me you're kidding.

 

[housecleaning]

I called my mom this morning to tell her, and she was excited, but she kind of burst my bubble when she next asked, "So, what does this mean?" I told her that it meant I was going to graduate, b/c my prof had said that I couldn't graduate until I made it, and now I have made it. 😀

really? your mom didn't know what you were talking about? please tell me you're kidding.

 

[QofQuimica]

really? your mom didn't know what you were talking about? please tell me you're kidding.

lol, lots of people don't know what I'm talking about. Telling people who ask what I do that I am getting my PhD in chemistry is about the best conversation stopper in the history of poor social graces. My mom has never studied a day of chemistry in her whole life; she didn't go to college. But she has really been a trooper for all these years of listening to my alternating episodes of lab-induced mania and depression in spite of her having no clue of what I'm talking about. 😀