Friday, October 12, 2018

Day 39

I had an interesting realization today when I finished my statistics midterm and went to meet with my advisor for our monthly meeting: I haven’t planned for much of the “middle” of my doctoral journey. My idea of this program went something like this:

  1. 2018: apply, get in, get a GA job, move, start work, start classes, study
  2. Early/Middle. Take some more classes and get ready for the dissertation 
  3. Middle/Late: dissertation, dissertation, dissertation
  4. 2022 or 2023 (wow, that seems really far away): crush the dissertation, defend it, win, graduate, win some more
All of that is great, and none of it is necessarily wrong, but I'm starting to zoom in on individual semesters and look at which classes are prerequisites for other courses I want to take. I'm beginning to make decisions about classes I want to take, classes that look interesting but aren't necessarily related to my interests, and classes that I don't have to take and don't want to take anyway. Of course, much of the information about the classes I would take was shared with me during the application process, but now it's actually relevant to my life. I am doing the work, doing the thing, and keeping it together (most of the time...but don’t look at the piles on my desk), and it feels good! Having a study buddy for two of my classes will hopefully keep us accountable so we don't have to replay the game of catching up before finals as we did before midterms. Fortunately, we made it this far, and that is worth celebrating. 


Something that made today great: I treated myself to lunch for good work on my midterms. Few people love me more than I love me. 
Time I woke up: 7:30 am

No comments:

Post a Comment