Grad School Barbie

GRADUATE SCHOOL BARBIE (tm)
Graduate School Barbie comes in two forms: Delusional Master's Barbie (tm) and Ph.D. Masochist Barbie (tm). Every Graduate School Barbie comes with these fun filled features guaranteed to delight and entertain for hours:
* Grad School Barbie comes out of the box with a big grin on her face that turns into a frown after 2 weeks or her first advisor meeting (whichever comes first).
* Adorable black circles under her delightfully bloodshot eyes.
* Comes with two outfits: a grubby pair of blue jeans and 5 year old gap T-shirt, and a floppy pair of gray sweatpants with a matching "Go Screw Yourself" T-shirt.
* Grad School Barbie talks! Just press the button on her left hand and hear her say such upbeat grad school phrases like, "Yes, Professor, It'll be done by tomorrow" "I'd love to write it all over again" and "Why didn't I just get a job, I could have been making $40,000 a year by now if I had just started working with a Bachelor's. But noooooo, I wish somebody would drop a bomb on the school so that I'd have an excuse to stop working on my degree that's sucking every last drop of life force out of my withered and degraded excuse for a soul..." (9 V lithium batteries sold separately)
* Grad School Barbie is anatomically correct to teach kids about the exciting changes that come with pursuing a higher education. Removable panels on Barbie's head and torso allow you to watch as her cerebellum fries to a crispy brown, her heart race 150 beats per minute, and her stomach lining gradually dissolve into nothing. Deluxe Barbie comes with specially designed eye ducts. Just add a little water, and watch Grad School Barbie burst into tears at random intervals. Fun for the whole family!
Other accessories include:
* Grad School Barbie's Fun Fridge (tm) Well stocked with microwave popcorn, Coca-Cola, Healthy Choice Bologna (99% fat free!), and small bottle of Mattel Brand Rum (tm).
* Grad School Barbie's Medicine Cabinet. Comes in Fabulous pink and contains Barbie sized bottles of Advil, St. Johns Wort, Zantac, and your choice of three fun anti-anxiety drugs! (Barbie Medicine Cabinet not available without a prescription)
* Grad School Barbie's Computer Workstation. Comes with miniature obsolete PC (pink of course), rickety desk, and over a dozen miniature Mountain Dew cans to decorate your workstation with (Mountain Dew deposit not included in price, tech support sold separately)
And Grad School Barbie is not alone! Order now and you'll get two of Barbie's
great friends!
GRADUATE ADVISOR KEN: Barbie's mentor and advisor in her quest for increased education and decreased self esteem. Grad Advisor Ken (tm) comes with a supply of red pens and a permanent frown. Press the button to hear Grad Advisor Ken deliver such wisdom to Barbie as "I need an update on your progress" "I don't think you'll be ready to graduate yet" and "This is no where near ready for publication." Buy 3 or more dolls, and you can have Barbie's Thesis Committee!(Palm Pilot and tenure sold separately.)
REAL JOB SKIPPER: When Barbie needs to talk, she knows that she can always count on her good friend Real Job Skipper (tm), who got a job after getting her bachelor degree. Press the button to hear Real Job Skipper say, "Sometimes I wish I went for my masters degree" and "Work is so hard! I had to work a half an hour of overtime!" Real Job Skipper's Work Wardrobe and Savings account sold separately. WARNING: Do not place Grad Student Barbie and Real Job Skipper too close to each other, as there have been several mysterious cases of children leaving the room and coming back to find Barbie's hands mysteriously fused to Skipper's throat.

So true

Night Owl

I'm a weird person. All day today I have been hammering and hawing about working on my thesis. I manage to get some work done in the morning and a little in the afternoon, but besides that I have not been in the mood to work on the revisions. However, after watching tv for a bit in bed at 11:30pm I get the urge to work on my thesis. Why now? Why when I am supposed to be going to bed do I feel like working on my thesis? I guess any time that I actually feel like working on my thesis is a good thing, but I just wish it would happen during the day as well.

The revisions are going pretty well I think. I have a clear picture of what I need to do before my second defense (bleh) which is looking like will happen April 4th. Hopefully they will like it. If not, I'm not sure what I'm going to do.

D-Day

Today is D-day. The day that I defend my masters thesis. Should I be worried I'm not that nervous? I have thought about this day for a while and I'm glad its finally here so I can get it over with. At 3pm I will know if I passed or failed. Im sure I'm going to pass. What I'm wondering about is how many revisions I'm going to get. I'm hoping that since I had sooooooo many revisions before I turned it in that I will only have a small amount to fix. That would be wonderful. I just hope I can answer all their questions and they don't think it sucks. I will be defending from 1-3pm so if anyone feels like sending me some good thoughts feel free!

Also, I know it's goofy, but I keep checking the comic PhD in hopes that the character Mike Slackenerny defends today too. He is supposed to defend his thesis this week as well. Not sure when this week though.

Stuck in two worlds

I am very fortunate. I have a lot of great things happening in my life right now. I am very thankful that I have what I have when others are struggling. However, that doesn't mean I don't worry and have my own problems. Right now I feel like I am stuck in two worlds. I have all these great things coming up soon yet all I can do is think about them. I am a person who craves stability, likes to know exactly what is going to happen and that things will be ok. I know in the end everything will be ok, but I am not liking this process. I feel that yea I can think about the wedding, getting a job, moving to Delaware yet I can't really do anything about any of it at the moment and that makes me nervous. It's hard when you live in a totally different state and need to do everything by phone or on the net. How I have to schedule myself to be in the same place with family and Jeff to check things out which takes longer which doesn't assure us that we will get the dates we want. I just want at least one thing to come through so I can start planning and feeling better about it. In six months everything will be great I'm sure, but now Im getting nervy. Yes, I am a worry wart. I just want to know where I am going and how things are going to work out.

What tree did you fall from?

I found a cute quiz on a different journal site and thought the results were pretty accurate. There are a few of course that don't fit for Jeff and I. I don't hold great animosity and Jeff is very good at forgiving. Here are my results:

Poplar Tree (Uncertainty) -- looks very decorative, talented, not very self-confident, extremely courageous if necessary, needs goodwill and pleasant surroundings, very choosy, often lonely, great animosity, great artistic nature, good organizer, tends to lean toward philosophy, reliable in any situation, takes partnership seriously.

Here are Jeff's results:

Rowan Tree (Sensitivity)) -- full of charm, cheerful, gifted without egoism, likes to draw attention, loves life, motion, unrest, and even complications, is both dependent and independent, good taste, extremely generous, artistic, passionate, emotional, good company, does not forgive.

Ready to graduate

It's now spring break. Woo hoo. Thank goodness. I needed a mega break after the hours I put in before it. I was trying to get my thesis into my committee by the 7th while my advisor kept giving me more and more revisions. I hope that because my advisor gave me so many it will be harder for my committee to find things to comment on. Probably not likely though. I just want to be done.

So for spring break I am up visiting Jeff for the week which is nice. The only thing that stinks is that he has to work, but oh well. It's nice to be in his apartment and to be there when he comes home from work. Makes me feel all domestic like.

Right now I should be working on a few things for school, but I'm just not in the mood. I'm feeling a bit lazy at the moment. I really burnt myself out that last month before spring break so I'm trying to get myself back to normal by the time I go back.

The real world

I just applied for my first job as an individual with a masters degree. It would be really awesome to get this job because its a "real" job, prestigious, and is in the city that Jeff lives. However, I can't help but wonder. Could I really do this job? Am I kidding myself applying for something like this? Who knows what will come from this, but I sucked it up and applied. The worst they can say is no.

Hurray for good deals

To break the monotony of working on my computer doing thesis work and work for classes and then taking a break on the computer I decided to go to EB Games today after I was at campus. They had this promotion going where if you bought two used games you could get one free. I picked through their used ps1 games and tried to find three I liked. It seems like they have a million copies of a few games, and barely any of others. There were a lot of repeat names, but I had never heard of the games, so I guess I can't really say anything. Anyways, I ended up buying Sim City 2000 for $9.99, Spyro the Year of the Dragon for $5.99 and Crash Bandicoot Warped for free. I like free. I have played a few of the Sims games on the computer so I'm not expecting it to be that different. May be cool. I have the first Spyro game. I believe Jeff bought it for me way back when. Its a cute game and I love turning the sheep into lamb chops. I have never played Crash Bandicoot, but the name sounds familiar. I think Jeff had it as a demo or something and liked it. I am thinking one of the characters is a racoon or something, but who knows. So yea for good deals :)

Back to reality

As Jeff wrote about in his blog we got engaged this weekend. He really got me good. I was expecting him on friday, but he showed up on my door step thursday night. It was a great surprise and we had a really great visit. Im sad that it ended, but unfortunately both of us have to get back to reality. For Jeff, back to work, and I have to meet my thesis deadline. Only a little more and I'm finally done.

But, back to our visit. It was nice just spending time together. Not even doing anything really exciting. Long distance sucks and I can't wait till that part of our relationship is over. I keep telling myself only two more visits and then we won't have any more painful goodbyes. Two more. I can handle that. So what did we do? We watched a lot of movies, had quality time together, I took him to some of my favorite restaurants around town, we bought cd's together at best buy and did some other random shopping, took turns talking to members of each others families, we cooked together, and just talked. An over all good visit.

I have been thinking about what I want to do with my free time recently. I had been playing an online mmorpg as I'm sure I mentioned. However, I'm bored with it and I don't intend to pay $15 every month for it. I had been looking for a new game to play or a new craft or something to take up. However, I think I'm going to focus on wedding planning, because we are getting married ;) Right now I don't know much at all about planning a wedding and it's kind of scary thinking about everything we will need to do. So I'm going to buy a few books and bridal magazines, read on the net and talk to some people an see if I can figure it all out. It shouldn't be too hard once I figure out the main things. I also like the fact that it will enable me to plan my own wedding, with Jeff of course, and not have to rely on anyone else telling me what I have to do. Though I'm sure I'll get some of that from family members, but oh well. That is life.

Valentines Day Gift

What should you give your valentine for valentines day? According to a psychotherapist you should give your valentine a kiss. It's actually pretty intereting though I think a little biased.

Honk if you think I'm cool

Thanks to A Small Victory and Jeff for aiding me in my search for other things to do besides work on my thesis. I have to admit that site is pretty fun to play with. What do you think of my designs?

Online job hunting

I don't know if its just me or the search engines I'm using, but its defintley interesting. I am signed up for eRecruiting through the University of Delaware and CareerBuilder after seeing their commercials a million times during the Super Bowl. LOL one successful commercial. I have only done a small amount of job searching through eRecruiting. However, when I did look I kept finding odd jobs that didn't fit. Like when I searched for children and research or research and psychology I would get pharmaceutical or computer programmer jobs. How does this fit??? This is also happening with CareerBuilder. I signed up last night in the middle of the Super Bowl. Yea, I'm a nerd, but anyways. I signed up last night and this morning I have already gotten two emails from two companies totally unrelated to anything in my field at all. I have a feeling its because I selected some option for companies outside of my field or companies that hire other people, like head hunters or temp agencies or something. I think after I do some more data entry I'm going to look around my preferences and see if I can figure out what I did sign up for so that my email box will not be stuffed with weird jobs that I would never apply for. LOL could you imagine me working at a company that deals with identity theft?

The last major crunch

Normally in this situation I would be freaking out a bit, though maybe I will as I get a bit closer. Anyways, I'm under a deadline once again. But this deadline is different. This deadline is the last major deadline that I will have in grad school - i.e. my thesis. I am just finishing entering in all the data into the computer. Hopefully I will be done with that by wednesday. Then on wednesday I will run my analysis with my advisor and then I have to have my results and discussion sections written along with all the revisions needed from my first comittee meeting by March 1st. Ouch. That gives me what? 3 weeks or so to do everything. I don't know why I'm not more nervous. Maybe because I know deep down that I will get it done one way or another. Everything always does. But after this major crunch I will have at least a draft or more of the entire thesis. After that its just lots of revisions and chart making and lots of time spent at kinkos. Yes, I still will have to crunch at the end to get my Grant Writing Proposal written but that class doesn't really matter much in the scheme of things. I'll do what I can, but I'm not going to bust ass trying to make it perfect like my thesis. My thesis is much more important. So in a way its a nice feeling. After I get past this hurdle I will only have a few smaller things to work on and then I will be done. I will be able to wear my cap and gown, get hooded, and finally graduate.

I'm not evil

How evil are you?

Aww, I wanted to be at least a little bit evil. LOL oh well :)

Random observations

Recently I have observed some interesting things on campus. Yesterday morning on the bus to campus two people who did not know each other at all on the bus struck up a friendship because both of them had that new nintendo thingy. I have no idea what the name of it is, but its the small one that just came out that sorta looks like a game boy. They sent each other their game data, an for the short time they were on the bus they played together. I had no idea they were that popular. I guess I am out of the technology loop.

This afternoon I got to class a little early. When I came in this one girl was talking about some surgery she had and swelling. I was like huh?? Turns out she was talking about how she had lyposuction on many parts of her body after she had her son (she's around my age) and is really thinking about going back for more. She was all gung ho about lyposuction and was trying to convince this other girl in my class to get it too. Then all of a sudden another girl in my class said she had had it before an what a great thing it is. Meanwhile, my professor is listening an shaking her head with many of my classmates thinking what is wrong with you people.

Speaking of my professor, I have to quote something she said today. She cracks me up. We were talking about make believe characters in the media today to use for play therapy toys. One person brought up Sponge Bob. That brought up the whole news story going around about that guy thinking that he is gay. Then this other guy in my class said that the guy accusing Sponge Bob believes that family values and diversity are just code words for homosexuality. Don't quote me on that, he said something like that, I don't remember his exact words. Anyways, my professor then responded to the guy accusing Sponge Bob by saying "My code words for your an asshole is your allowed to have your own opinion."

Also a little side note. In tonight's episode of American Idol they were in Orlando, Florida. They held their auditions at the big convention center on International Dr. that was right across the street from the hotel I had my convention in in November. I actually went in there the first day when I was trying to find the right place. Pretty cool. I kept wishing they would show what was around the convention center but they didn't.

Research

Today I was amazingly motivated to work on my thesis. I think it was because I knew I would have to be writing my results and other sections soon and I haven't finished my theory and lit review sections yet. I actually found a lot of good primary sources which has been the hardest thing for me this whole process. Anyways, just as I was about to go to bed I checked Piled Higher and Deeper which is one of my favorite online comics. I suggest you go read some of their comics if you are in graduate school and have never seen them. The most recent comic really struck a cord with me and made me laugh. So for any other graduate students out there struggling with research I'm going to quote Phd's latest comic.

One graduate student sitting at her computer says, "I hate research"
Her friend replies, "Yea, well life is tough and then you graduate. Get used to it."

LOL. There is an end in sight. Only three months and one week left. Technically I should have most of my thesis written by the end of feb so only one to one and a half hard core months left.

Beginnings and endings

This semester will have a lot of endings. This is my last semester of graduate school and boy am I ready to be done. Tomorrow are my last two days of data collection for my thesis! YEA!!!!! I have had enough of getting up at 7am. Of course the first day I don't have to do data collection I have a meeting, but at least its not as early as I would have been there.

Tomorrow I'm hoping is another beginning. On thursday I sent in my form to the Univ of Delaware Career Services. I'm not sure if other schools do it this way but if your alumni you can use their eRecruiting site for six months for $25. Yea it sucks that I have to pay, but in the long run I'm hoping it will be worth it. If your not familiar eRecruiting is a website where you post your resume and you can apply for jobs and potential employeers in the area can find you. I did sign up for the one down here, but its all jobs down here. An when I graduate I am not staying here, so that doesn't work. Anyways, I sent it in on thursday so I'm hoping they will have it bright an early Monday morning so they can set me up and I can access the site. My goal is to have a job or be close to having a job by the end of the semester. When I graduated from undergrad it took me six months before I was employed. I do not want to do that again. So in a way I'm a little bit nervous about what I'm going to find when I log into the site for the first time, but also excited. Who knows, some great company may want to pay me a good salary and I would be able to be local with Jeff. All great things that I will have in the future. The future is looking pretty good, getting engaged pretty soon, hopefully getting a kick ass job, being local with Jeff, being done with graduate school and having my masters. All good things. So lets hope the career services people are on the ball an get me hooked in tomorrow.

The nose knows

I haven't blogged in a while. Its probably because I have been getting up at 7am for the past week to collect data for my thesis and have been bombarded with other school work. It's finally starting to slow down and I can see the light, thank goodness. So I figured now was a good time to blog. Things have become less stressful with my thesis, but I'm now majorly behind on my assistantship. I guess Ill be getting caught up next month. My grant writing class is a pain in my butt. I don't know much about the process and all the correct jargon so this has been an experience for me. I think I'm finally getting it though which is good. Hope it stays that way.

On tuesday we had a program that I had been working on putting together for some time now. It was a program for undergrad's who are interested in going to grad school, but aren't sure how to begin the process. I worried about it enough over the whole process and I am really glad it's over now. It actually went pretty good. We had a lot of good information, lots of good professors from different areas, and even some good snacks. The only problem was that we barely had any undergrads. We had maybe five in the beginning, three or so in the middle and then I don't think any more came in after that. Most of the people that came were fellow grad students that I hadn't seen in months. I think grad students have a sixth sense or something. Whenever there is free food we know where to go. At our little program we had pretzles, oreo cookies, some other type of cookie, two types of cheese slices, grapes, and soda. When we left I got to take home a 2 liter bottle of diet coke. Score :)

So anyways, as I type this I'm sitting at my computer procrastinating once again. I have already been to campus and observed and created a spreadsheet in SPSS. So now I am home with little things to do like find articles for my advisor, yet I'm not. I feel like either taking a nap or playing my mmorpg. Gotta hold off for at least a bit longer. Maybe I'll try cleaning the apartment a bit. Whenever I get stressed or have little time I tend to throw things everywhere and my space tends to get pretty messy. I know what I'll be doing this weekend.

The snow dance

Last night I saw my first snow of the season. We got snow here over break, but I wasn't here so for me it doesn't count. We got a dusting on cars and grassy surfaces, but nothing really on the roads. Farther north though they got a lot of ice and lots of parents could not get their kids from school so many children spent the night at school. When I woke up there was a ticker on the tv with many schools closed, but when I looked out the window almost all the snow had melted. Guess its a big viewing range. As I went about my business today it actually felt warm for a change which I was happy about. Everything has melted. However, tonight we are under another winter weather advisory. Its supposed to start around 10pm-12am and we are supposed to get about 1-2 inches of snow. Not much of anything. However, I am in the south so its a bigger deal here. Then saturday night into sunday we are supposed to have another storm, but this storm is supposed to be heavier. I haven't heard any predictions yet though.

Anyways, I can't help but hope for a snow day. What would I do if I had one? Probably stay in my apartment where its nice an warm, do some homework, an play my mmorpg on the net. Nothing really that exciting. I guess its a mentality. Whenever you can get of doing work because of snow its always exciting. I just hope we don't get ice. I absolutely hate ice. So I may try wearing my pjs backwards tonight and hope for snow even though that will put me behind in my data collection. So we will see what happens.