So close so close.

I have to submit my thesis online before Friday.  Good times.  I am so close.  It's basically been done for a month now, I am just playing around with a few last minute formatting blips.  Right now Word won't let me number the pages the way I want to, and it's ANNOYING.  GAHHHH.  This is totally not something that I should be dealing with right now. 

Also, I started my new, real-person job last week.  Stories to come soon!  

Anyway, I apologize for the lack of posts the past month or so, and I promise to begin again shortly :-). 

Last weekend?

With any luck, this is the last weekend I will be working.  I am supposed to hand in my thesis on Tuesday to adviser so she can read the whole thing together (for the first time).  On Wednesday I fly in an aeroplaneeee to go to California for my cousin's wedding! And hopefully I don't return with a crap-ton of work to do on my thesis.  I just want to get back from my trip and SLEEP for DAYS. 

*crosses fingers*

I really just want to be done.  I am so over school.  And thesis writing.  And this whole working on the weekends without getting paid thing.  I just want to enjoy my LIFE.  You know?  That part of me that doesn't involve work?  My work, while definitely a part of who I am, is not WHO I am. 

It's beginning to look a lot like...fall!

A beautiful tree on my walk into work this morning.  Colors shamelessly enhanced by Instagram. 

Fall has always been my favorite season, and October my favorite month.  It's beautiful, crisp, and there's nothing I love more than hot apple cider and pumpkin flavored EVERYTHING!  

It's rather unfortunate that this year it is coupled with a huge sense of anxiety.  The first day of October sent a wave of terror across my entire existence.  Thesis is due to my sponsors and faculty reader in 2 weeks, if I'm going to get this done on time for the mid-November final deadline.  In a month I will start my new job, and new jobs are always scary.  Plus I am flying on an airplane in 2 weeks to go to my cousin's wedding in CA, which tends to stress me out.  I am spending all of my time inside working, but I just want to go outside and play!  

Ironic, that about this time last year, I was remarking on how I would no longer associate fall with the start of classes and it would be that much better this year!  Oops.  Next fall.  Next fall I won't have classes AND I won't be finishing a master's thesis.  

But in the meantime, I am enjoying the fall leaves.  Penn State is beautiful this time of year.  :-). 

Lantern Tours

Last night, boyfriend and I went on a "Lantern Tour."  Going into it, the only thing we knew was from a flyer that I saw that said you would "Meet the characters from Penn State's past and present during a stroll through campus by Lantern Light" and "Free refreshments."  I like lanterns, Penn State, history, and free food, so I convinced boy that this would be fun to do (he was less convinced, but he humored my enthusiasm).  

Oh man.  It.  Was.  Awesome.  It was a beautiful night in Happy Valley, approximately 65° and clear skies.  We showed up at Old Main at about 7:30, and signed up for a tour.  We had to wait about half an hour, but in the meantime we ate some of those free refreshments, watched some people juggle light-up balls, and listened to an A Capella group sing pretty songs.  Then we got called for our tour.  Our group was lead by two students, one of which was wearing a fake mustache.  We then started the walk around campus.  Intermittently, there were characters dressed in elaborate costumes who told us about things from the past.  We met George Atherton, one of the first presidents of the University, and his wife who was a ghost.  We met some military-dressed "students" from the past and learned about the beginnings of the ROTC.  We met Ben and Jerry.  We met a young Sue Paterno, who, in an effort to encourage school spirit in the 1970's, lead a group of other coaches' wives to paint the Lion Shrine ORANGE (so the students would think the opponents did it and rally behind their team, or something), accidentally using latex-based paint instead of water-based paint.  And we went to the top of the Old Main bell tower and gazed upon campus at night (which was TOTALLY unexpected!).  I also got to see my friend Maria who was in our tour group, another unexpected surprise.  

Afterwards they didn't really herd us out of Old Main very quickly, so we dawdled and took some pictures with all the pretty things in the main lobby.  

We were THIS CLOSE to the clock!

Picking the lamb's nose

Giving Pugh a wet willie

Being thoughtful in Old Main

Office of the President

Playing with the Lion

 
So.  I got to eat ice cream, drink cider, walk around campus on a beautiful night, learn about Penn State's history, and go to the top of the bell tower.  :-)

Grad School Fodder

It's Saturday.  I shouldn't be working.  But I am.  And I will be tomorrow. I CANNOT WAIT to graduate.  With any luck, I'll be done within the month.  But probably not, the way this is going.  I want my weekends baaaaack.  It's fall, I should be drinking apple cider and playing in the leaves and watching football.   
I don't have this feeling often.  The feeling where I think I will just never be good enough.  Seriously, I spent the better part of 3 weeks pruning my data, inspecting it, learning from it, and then writing [what I thought was] the best thesis chapter in the world.  My figures were colorful and beautiful.  My words were concise and technical.

But.  It's still not good enough.  I need to write it again.  My adviser thinks my figures are sloppy and inconsistent (I disagree...it's true that my contour plot has a different range of data than my scatter plot, but guess what?  THEY ARE ENTIRELY DIFFERENT PLOTS, SHOWING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT DATA!!!), and my writing was not precise enough (my focus was wrong?  for the entire chapter?  perfect.).  So again, I write.  The same chapter over again.  This time with better plots and more precise word choice.  Not to mention the fact that I need to write an entire paper in the next 2 weeks on top of this thesis thing. 

Seriously, most of my friends who graduated wrote their entire thesis in like, a month, and their adviser skimmed it once...maybe twice.  I mean, come on.  Can I have that?  I've been fine up to this point, working longer hours than many of my grad school friends didn't really matter to me because I liked what I did and I (surprisingly) was able to keep up with expectations.  And for the most part I stayed away from work on the weekends.  I was praised for what I did because I did it well.  But I am suddenly failing.  I can't write to her expectations.  I went from feeling like the Superstar! to Grad School is Hell in a matter of a few weeks. 

Which brings me to how surprised I am that I am so hurt by this.  Should my feelings depend on what other people think of me?  About whether or not I am living up to my adviser's expectations?  No.  They most certainly shouldn't.  But I was happy when she praised me and am now upset when she criticizes my figures (they were SO BEAUTIFUL!). 

The lesson to be learned is that my worth should not be put on any one person's perception of me.  My worth comes only from Christ.  Funny, that I remember telling a friend this when he was struggling with the same thing, with the same adviser, a little less than 2 years ago.  It pushed him far enough to quit.  I can't quit now.  And I won't.  But gosh darn it, I want to do something right!  Can we fast forward to December, when I will have a new job?  Or rewind to April, when I used to be good at what I did? 

Writer's block

Have you ever had writer's block?  If you're not a writer, then probably not.  I never really had either.  I mean, for awhile in high school, I would have to write something new every week or so, and it wasn't a huge deal to me.  Sure, I got stuck sometimes, but that was nothing that a trip to dance class and back couldn't cure. 

While I enjoyed writing in high school, I never gave my life over to it.  I decided to become an engineer.  That writing was too subjective of a subject to study.  I like concrete answers, for things to be black-and-white, for there to be a "true" answer to a problem or idea.  Plus, I didn't see any career in writing.  I mean, what do you do with a writing degree?  Just write more?  Teach other people how to write?  The job market seemed slim in that category.  And I didn't like writing THAT much.  I like math much better.

In undergrad I wrote a few things, lab reports, proposals, homework word problems, essay responses to Dr. Roth's material science exams, etc.  They were fairly cut and dry, and required little creativity.  I was fine with that.  If I wanted to get my creative juices flowing, I would go around campus and take some pictures, choreograph a dance, or write a blog post.  Even engineering required a certain amount of creativity, since there is more than one way to solve almost any problem.

And now, I have to write this thesis.  A master's thesis.  And I can't graduate until I do.  And I spend hours, days, looking at the screen trying to think of what to write.  Sad, huh?  I mean, I did all the research!  I can crank out technical drawings and figures in a matter of minutes.  But writing about those technical figures and drawings?  It's the most difficult thing I've ever done in my life.  Severe writer's block.  For like, the past month. 

So I figured, that maybe, by writing this blog post, I would get in the swing of writing again.  I have approximately a month left before that day where, if I'm not finished, I will have to wait another semester to get that degree.  And that's a problem.  You see, I have this job offer.  And this job offer is contingent on me receiving that degree.  And they already expected me to get that degree in August.  Now I have pushed it back to December.  They're flexible, but I don't really want to have to break it to them that I won't get a degree until May.  Plus, who wants to say they graduated in 2013??  Ick.  2012 is just so much better.

In other news, here are some pictures from last weekend.  We went on a boat, it was fun.  The lake we played on was a full hour drive from here, but it was totally worth it.

 

Sicky and Procrastination

I haven't posted in forever.  Mostly because it's summer, and any time I have I want to spend outside, with other people.  By the time I leave work for the day, I am really sick of sitting in front of the computer.  

I'm posting now mostly out of procrastination.  You see, on Tuesday night, I started to feel like I was getting sick.  And then on Wednesday through still today (Sunday), I have basically felt awful.  I didn't go to work on Wednesday or half of Thursday.  I probably shouldn't have gone to work on Friday, because on Saturday I was so exhausted I took a 2-hour nap.  And right now, I ALMOST feel better.  The only symptoms I have left from my fever/headache/sore throat/swollen sinuses/congestion/cough illness is the sore throat, more of a cough, and a teeny teeny headache.  The doctor said it probably wouldn't completely go away for 7 days.  That's Wednesday.  Ick.  

So I should be catching up on all the work I missed this week, right?  I mean, the only real work I have to do now is to write a thesis and a conference paper BEFORE October 17th.  2 months to do a thesis and a paper.  That's it.  That is 100% of my responsibilities.  But yet, I can't pull myself to work on it right now.  Church doesn't start for an entire 2.5 hours, so I can get a super big start on it.  But instead, I'm blogging.  I am never going to graduate.  

Sorry for the complaint-type post.  Just figured I'd keep you updated on what is ailing me most.  And right now it's worrying about getting everything done in time for graduation :-).  And being sick thwarted those plans this week.  I was going to do edits on an entire chapter this week, and have them ready by tomorrow! That is not going to happen.  

BUT when I graduate, I won't feel bad about not having worked on a Saturday.  BEST THING EVER.  I am so ready to be done with everything school related.  SO.  READY.