maybe I should be thinking more about graduating...

I gave a talk on my research today. It wasn't a big deal, so I didn't spend a lot of time preparing for it (although, I did waste several hours between 11pm and 2am last night procrastinating on making the last couple of slides - "future directions" are always hard for me since I never think enough about the details until I'm actually about to do the experiments, but I don't want to sound too vague). I was tempted to say this could be my homework for group therapy, but I don't think it was challenging enough for that. I was still nervous, mainly because I hadn't really run through it (I've given the same talk in various forms before, since I don't seem to be accumulating any new data that would require changes), and I realised halfway through that I mustn't have been breathing properly because I was a bit out of breath and then I got worried about people noticing that a bit. It was fine, though.

What I really wanted to write about was the reaction it got from the post-docs in my lab. They cornered me afterwards to convince me that I should be graduating in a year. They seemed to think I have a lot more data than I do, or maybe just that it would be much easier to finish the follow up experiments than I think. My advisor seems to be more of my view, but maybe that's the problem. It would be nice to finish sooner than I anticipate, but the idea is kind of scary, too. I don't know enough to be a post-doc! I guess I should be thinking more about what I need to do to graduate, instead of just muddling along, though.

I'm also not motivated enough to be a post-doc, possibly, considering that I haven't analysed all my beautiful data from yesterday still. You'd think having no substantial results for ages would make me appreciate it more, but not enough, apparently. If someone else set up the databases for me, so I wouldn't have to do those painful steps, I'd probably be happy to play with the data. As it is, even though I thought I might have sufficient momentum to keep working beyond the star-mandated time, I stopped as soon as I hit the first snag.