Unwell

Originally posted on my Friendster blog on 05 May 2007.

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i'm totally grasping at straws right now. i haven't written a single thing in months. yes, i've written a few abstracts--for prospective conferences, grant application, IRB exemption--and a really long, overdrawn letter for why i was two months late in submitting an application, but as for the real deal? nothing. nothing at all. while i've been reading a lot and commenting (also doodling!) on the margins of my photocopies, i hardly think these activities can be considered real work. and as the conference to which one of my abstracts went is drawing closer and closer, i'm becoming, well, more and more, high-strung. i have an abstract, but i do not have a paper.

i have a 'sort of paper.' it's actually a full paper, which i wrote the entirety of about half a year ago and never really gone back to since. i'm saying it's 'a sort of paper' though, because it needs a lot of work, as it is, and specifically in terms of the theme of the conference. when i wrote the abstract, i took out two parts of that full paper and linked them to one part (the theme of the conference), which is yet to be thought about (or imagined) in any serious way--or in any way at all, if i really have to be honest about it. in a sense, since i have two parts of this thing actually out there, it shouldn't take so long to write. however, it's proving very hard now to link these two parts to the one crucial theme-of-conference part. i can't even remember how i made the connection before. i'm also begining to realize there is a HUGE difference between a 200-word abstract and a 12- to 15-page paper, especially with how things are right now.

how are things exactly? i suppose i have PQS. (thanks to an almost post-quals/(QE) student for the link, and good luck to you! hehe.) so anyway, there you go, that's one more site i frequent these days. (i hope you don't enjoy it as much as i do, especially if you have a deadline coming up.) i have to say i haven't done much of the advisor (or in my case, supervisor) avoidance thing, because, at this stage, i need her signature for so many things and she really is pretty cool, but add to this list, at least for me, is an inordinate amount of reality tv--and tv in general. and PQS, they say, is incurable. sigh.