work

Ha. Hello. Long time. 

Its not the boyfriend. I swear thats not it. Okay, a little maybe. But primarily its work. So much work. And I feel like a fool for working like an ass and then barely meeting deadlines. Everybody seems to be under pressure, but they all seem to be handling it like champs as well. Tbh, I am not doing too badly myself. Like, if I had this much work last semester I would have cracked, but I haven't this time.

Two things worry me. 

Lets start with the first one. 

I am worried that I am not as efficient as my reference set of fellow PhDs. They are all a year senior or more,  but they are also doing more work, they are churning out paper after paper, attending conferences, rocking at seminars, teaching etc., well most of them. So why am I not as efficient as them? Why haven't I streamlined my operations to perfection? Have I not got my priorities right? I probably haven't. Am I not disciplined enough? Probably not. Well, I need to change all that then. 

Now if it was just a matter of working towards a known goal, all this wouldn't bother me so much. All said and done, by now I am kind of used to setting rather difficult targets and working straight towards it. But I don't know what my goals are. At least, not the way people in my reference set seem to have it figured. So there in lies my second problem.

Lets me put a more 'how these things bother me on a daily basis' spin on whatever I just said:

So I go to school, and there you have R and D (heh) constantly airing research ideas, making fun of research perspectives, discussing the nitty gritties and other abstract details of whatever paper/s they are working on. You also have mine truly boyfriend, fully in command of the empirical side of things. And there I am, with no clue whatsoever, not even in terms of what my semester paper topics are going to be. In a years time R and D would have graduated and someone would have to keep up the research productivity. And I want it to be me. At least to some extent.