3/28/2006

I never said I'd stop whining about school

Since it seems that I have completely abandoned - and by completely abandoned, I mean completely taken leave of - my sense, I started a PhD program. But you already knew that. What you didn't know (or might not have surmised) is that I am now paying people for the privilege of never having any free time.

In the next eight days I have four papers due. That's 4. Four. All at the same time. (Well, ok, not all at the same time, 1 is due Sunday, the other 3 are due next Tuesday.) What genius planned this?

However, in an attempt to be true to my college self (this is the college self that was generally despised by my roommates because I had stuff done way ahead of time and would try to convince people to go out the night before big papers were due cause, hey, I was finished, why weren't they?) I have two of the four complete. Still, that's only half. Half, I tell you. Of the remaning papers, there is one that's only a 1 page idea paper and maybe I will try to chunk it out tonight because the other paper is now being retitled to "The Paper that Ate the Universe."

It's not that it's large, it's only 5 pages. It's just that it's on a mandated topic and the topic is a retarded one that is in no way interesting to actual human beings. It might be interesting to carpet lint, but even that is suspect. There is a possibility that small chinchillas might also find it interesting, but who want to take the time to survey chinchillas? (Course, Oprah may be hard up for material these days, so maybe I should shoot her an email.) I have now spent close to eight hours scouring the various databases of journals and other coagulations of reference materials that are the bane of the graduate student trying desperately to find five papers on this topic that are remotely interesting. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Nada. Nothing doing. So last night I randomly printed five papers that revealed, after a quick search, at least six reference each to the topic. They are now my research. I've given up on them being interesting and am now striving to just be able to make a coherent paper out of them. We'll see what happens.

If nothing else, I can always go for random word generation. Right?

Someone remind me why I thought going back to school was a good idea. Please?

3 comments:

  1. Someone remind me why I thought going back to school was a good idea.

    Because if anyone can write a coherent (and funny) paper about "nothing," it is you. ;-)

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  2. Anonymous5:51 PM

    Because the chinchillas are ITCHING for a new paper to read. Or perhaps lemmings. No wait, those are the ones who commit suicide, right? Yeah, probably a bad choice there. *grins* You can do it, Beth! Rah, rah, rah!nh

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  3. You're going back to school so that you can have mail arrive at your home addresssed to "Mr. and Dr. you-know-who"

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