4 posts tagged “thesis”

My thesis is due in less than a week. It's crazy how quickly the time has passed. I swear that just the other day I still had a full month left.

Yes, it's crunch time, and I sometimes wonder if I'm going to make it. I get to the point where I feel like I am either going to laugh or cry, but I couldn't tell you which one until it actually started.

The other night I found myself standing in front of the library in tears from laughing so hard because not only had I forgotten the words for "revolving door" ("rotating thing behind me" is what I think I used), but I also could not seem to get my act together to actually exit the building. I found myself in front of the door, my rhythm gone, circling my hands to get my timing synched with the people entering. Circling my hands in the way that I did as a kid when I was entering any sort of double-dutch jump rope game. The best part was, that all I had to do was circle my hands, and my friend S was right there with me. I didn't even have to say jump-rope or double-dutch -- she knew both what the motion meant, and that I had just used it to exit the building. We both relished the moment of comic relief, cackling until our bellies hurt and we'd lost control of our facial muscles.

It's these moments when I realize that I have a tenuous grasp on my sanity. Then I tell myself, "only one more week," and plod along. As S pointed out when she brought me daffodils after lunch, "we just have to outlive the flowers, and our theses will be done." She's right ... six more days of breathing and I'll have just four 150-minute class sessions on social netoworking left in my post-graduate career.

Then I'll have a master's degree from NYU. Then I will have my evenings back. Then I will have more quality time for friends. All of those things are pretty damn cool.

Today is just not my day. After hitting the snooze a few times, I got up to get ready for my day -- a 10 a.m. appointment followed by more time in the lovely NYU meat locker aka Bobst Library.

I was getting things together when I noticed my iPod battery was low, so I plug it into my computer to sync/charge. Error message: "Attempting to copy to the disk Katie's iPod failed. The disk could not be read from or written to." I wasn't too surprised ... these things happen. I decided to restore my iPod, which meant getting the updated software, wiping it clean, and reloading my chosen music. No problem, except I forgot how freaking long this process takes. It was only about 1/3 of the way through putting my music back on when I had to leave for my appointment. I can go one day without the soundtrack to my life ... it won't kill me. Yet, somehow there is just something missing.

I get to the subway station to find the platform pretty full and no train in site. Great, I love Mondays! The first train blows through the station honking, and you can feel the collective energy of the crowd rise a notch. We all sigh and mutter under our breath knowing that the next train to stop will be that much more crowded. It is. I get on and find a seat next to some a**hole reading a comic book and taking up twice the room necessary. He won't budge, so I sit squished against the man on my right. When we get to my stop, the comic book guy is stepping on my backpack strap and is completely oblivious to the world ...

I fight my way off the train, and get to my appointment only to find out that my orthodontist is stuck in Puerto Rico, and will not be in that day. I'm shocked as no one called me to tell me this. I'm trying to talk to the receptionists to make a new appointment, but they keep answering the phone and lifting their acrylic nails signaling that it will just be a minute. Hello, I am the one STANDING, IN PERSON, IN FRONT OF YOU. It never ceases to amaze me just how lame customer service has gotten. I make a new appointment saying, "It's fine, but I'm just surprised I didn't get a phone call."

Next stop: cafe to pick up breakfast. I put my order in and wait while the man who ordered a few minutes after me gets his order first. I grab some fresh-squeezed OJ and a straw. New York is the land of straws; you get them with everything including bottles of soda. I usually refuse, but since the OJ is in a lidded cup, I figure I need a straw. Much to my surprise, the lid of the OJ glass does not have a straw slot. In fact, the entire restaurant does not have any lids with straw slots. Instead of drinking my juice on my way to the library (like normal cups with lids would allow you to do) I have to wait until I get to the library for my beverage ...

On my way to the library from the subway, a man says hi to me in such a way that I can tell he is looking to engage in conversation. Usually, I will chat with anyone. Today though, my annoyance threshold has almost been met and it is only 10:30 a.m. I look him up and down, trying to figure out what kind of crazy he is. There must have been something in my look, or the half-hearted "hello" I said back because he doesn't pursue the conversation and I am left alone to elbow my way through the throngs of NYU students.

Finally at the library I assess that it is STILL FREEZING and I am sorry that I dressed like a normal person, and not like some arctic explorer … so much for my wishful thinking of normal temperatures.

*Sigh* it's time to get back to my thesis. Two weeks and one day, and then I will no longer need to live at the library.

P.S. My coffee is now cold from the frigidness of the library AND it tastes inexplicably like bananas (gross). I really don't like today!

I'm spending a lot of time at NYU's Bobst Library these days. I come here because it is less distracting than my apartment -- in the fact that here I cannot waste time doing the dishes, cleaning my room, or watching TV. Yet, I still find plenty of ways to distract myself ... surfing the 'Net, blogging, taking random quizzes, listening to music via musicovery.com or pandora.com, composing emails, keeping up on March Madness (and I am not even really a sports fan). Oh yes, I am the queen of procrastination.

Somehow procrastinating in the library makes me feel a little better about life.

Last night I spent a little over 4 hours in the library working on the financials and industry background for my thesis. It was a gross spring night in NYC ... we had a nor'easter come through and it was blowing ice chunks sideways. The sidewalks were covered with inches of slush and it was just plain nasty out. I figured if they were going to close the office early due to the weather, I had better go to the library early to study. Little did I know the library would be freezing. After four hours I was chilled to the bone and elected to go home before I froze to death in study room 621.

Today I decided to come prepared ... I'm wearing non-cotton clothing, tank top, long underwear top, t-shirt, fleece, wool hat, fingerless mittens, jeans, wool socks and yet I am still cold. I had to take the mittens off so that I could type, and my fingers are barely functioning due to the heat coming from my little laptop. I am sitting on my feet to keep them warm, and probably look very silly in my blue striped hat with the earflaps. At least I know that the second half of my ham and swiss sandwich will keep until I am ready to eat it for dinner.

I know that it was 70 degrees in NYC just two days ago, and that it is very difficult to turn the heat on and off at a moments notice, but I feel like this is a little ridiculous. I'm thinking that tomorrow I should bring my down throw blanket just to keep warm. I feel like I am a starving student that does not have enough money to pay the electric and gas bills and thus makes do without. I spend enough money on tuition at NYU, you would think they could use it to properly heat the library ... ugh.

Anyway, I thought I would take a moment to express my frustration ... I would go work on my thesis at home, but I am sure my roommates haven't done any of the dishes from this morning. Thus, I would have to do those before I could study. Also, being St. Patrick's Day, my Irish roommate is probably drinking beer, smoking pot and playing playstation (or watching March Madness) and I really don't feel like dealing with that right now.

I guess I will put on my down vest, use my scarf as a blanket and go back to staring at rows upon rows of figures on an excel spreadsheet, trying to come up with some financial statements for my business plan ...

I've decided that my down time today can be used productively to look at one of my bad habits, and come up with solutions for dealing with it. Random? Yes, but I wouldn't want it any other way.

It occurred to me recently that my ability to over-think any situation was causing me to be counter-productive. Instead of simply sitting down to work on my graduate school thesis, I found myself delving into every little aspect of it until I would get so overwhelmed that paralysis set in and I was unable to move forward. So I would focus on something really mundane for a while (reading my friend B's fantastic blog for example) until I felt ready to tackle my thesis again, but inevitably the cycle would repeat. This was definitely preventing me from actually writing my thesis. So today I decided to examine why this was happening, and hopefully by the end of this exercise I will have a plan to keep it from happening. (Hey, we're practicing positive thinking here ... it's good to have goals dammit!)

True, there are times when my ability to over-think is a good thing ... in the professional world it allows me to notice things that other people did not. This is helpful when I am trouble-shooting user errors, testing new applications or trying to come up with a creative solution to a nagging business problem. Over-analyzing on this level challenges me. It makes me think long and hard about things, and it means that I not only need to know the outcome of a situation or process, but I also need to understand the whys and hows that created said outcome.

When it comes to my personal life, my over-thinking is not so beneficial. Obviously from my opening example, it gets in the way of my schoolwork. But it happens at other times too ... I dwell on things more than I should, often remembering stupid things I said years ago and re-hashing them, as if someone really cared that in 1993 I used X word instead of Y word and everyone laughed. Does something that happened 13 years ago have any impact on my present day self? No. As they say I should let bygones be bygones. But I just can't seem to do that!

It's funny because I was on some silly astrology site recently (procrastinating from my graduate school thesis) when I read that my moon sign is prone to "over-analyzing" and one of the possible weaknesses of my sun sign is "Fear of the past repeating in the future" ... Now, I am not one to live my life by the dictations of my horoscope, but I find it interesting to contemplate. Then again, it may only take the power of suggestion for my brain to begin making associations and dredging up examples. I am sure that if my horoscope had said that my weaknesses were jealousy and intolerance I could find plenty of life examples to fit those traits as well ...

I started this post as an exercise to come up with a goal, and here I am digressing. I've started to over-think my tendency to over-think. Do you see how bad I get? It is a vicious cycle!

Goal: To live in the moment and not dwell so much on the past or worry so much about future.

I just need to "be here now" as Ram Dass said and enjoy the present. If I can accomplish that, then things like my thesis and huge projects for work won't be so daunting because I can take it just one day at a time, and do the best that I can. Similarly, I can take the time to truly enjoy the human interactions that make up my days. I can let the conversations, moments and connections be what they are and appreciate everyone of them -- from coffee and good conversation with a newfound friend to the look and smile I share with fellow passengers on the train as we realize that the woman who has been singing very bad renditions of songs by the Beatles has now switched to the original Mickey Mouse Club theme song, and apparently has no intention of being quiet ...

These are the things that make life interesting, and I need to appreciate them more.