Up, up, up and down.

That has been the mood swing pattern every day for the last two or three months. Unless I don’t get out of the house during the day. If I don’t get out you can aptly describe the mood as down, down, and holy hell could you get any more down? This is the main cause for the lack of blogging.

Today I got another rejection letter. This one was from the city. Telling me that I was (wait for it. Hold your breath) NOT QUALIFIED. Right. Well I hate to tell the city here that I have been going to school for ten fucking years doing exactly what they described in their job posting. And I am sorry that they have some cheap-ass way of making people write essays that can’t quite hit on their qualifications… that they are more interested in whether candidates can name the make and model of every scientific instrument that they have ever touched.

Which leads me to my next rant. Why is that places like DeVry can place their graduates after they finish? And yet, when you have paid out your ass to get a Ph.D., you get nothing. No help. Maybe someone will look at your resume and say, “It looks good. I would hire you.” Which would be great if you wanted to be the assistant to the career counselor. But what about, “Here are some places to apply.” You don’t even have to hand me the job. Just help me figure out where I can fit. Where I might be happy. Because I apparently don’t know the answer to that anymore.

And nothing makes this worse than the fact that no matter how you feel during the day, the panic sets in when your head hits the pillow. And you decide that the best remedy to that is to come to the computer and blog. I tell you something… it really isn’t getting me any closer to some zzzz’s.

YES THERE IS!

I am finished. I now have my Ph.D. in Environmental Chemistry.

But I am trying to get a loaf of bread together… so we’ll celebrate later, k?

So I sent out my first version of my dissertation. A 112 page volume that chronicles my 5 years’ worth of research. With a huge table of contents and list of figures.

And then….

I didn’t know what to do with myself. I had nothing to work on. Sure I could clean my house. But that was it! I was going to get out the sewing machine. But first I figured I would do a load of laundry and go through the mail.

And that was enough time for one of my committee members to review the chapters and send me a critique back.

And here I am with work to finish. I am kind of glad. But he wants me to add a whole chapter. Which is as bad as it sounds, but not as bad as it sounds. It is hard because I have to take things that I have already said twice in this work of art and write it yet a third different way. But I will manage. And I will send out a new version to my other two signees. One of whom is my advisor.

The hardest part of the this process (besides getting Word to do what I want it to do and coming up with unique and creative thoughts to describe my work) had been getting other people’s input. I knew that one of my committee members was going to be out of town this weekend and that his input was going to come by Tuesday. But my main advisor isn’t responding to my emails, so I don’t know if he is out of town too.

HELLO! I am not getting a vacation here!!!

Just kidding. This is my own fault for procrastinating.

Well, it is back to the grind for me. Nothing too exciting. I am already anxiously awaiting the end of the semester so that I can get another job. I do have to say that I am excited about research. I have a really cool project that I am going to work on with a student involving lees and barrels. I have made some good progress today and will meet with the student on Wednesday to begin the outline.

I am just about done with editing the second paper for submission. I haven’t heard from any of my cohorts… I wonder what is going through their heads. I should email them. I will try and take care of that on Wednesday. I just wanted to contact them with the completed documents. No such luck. Perhaps I will get to it tomorrow night. One can hope, huh?

I have been waking up every day this week with the feeling that big things are going to happen to me. Big things like getting a real job, finishing school, getting a dog, getting married. Now, I know that I think about those things happening all of the time, but lately, it has been a different feeling. Like the feeling of being tied to an out of control tractor trailer and I am doing everything I can to keep up. I know that I am going to be beat by the time the truck runs out of steam, but I know that I will be really happy when it does.

It seems that lately I don’t really take very long breaks from work. In the past five years I took A LOT of time off. Going to graduate school was a full-time adventure, but no one checked in on me. I had a meeting once a week and I had to have something done. That was it. And what I had to have done varied GREATLY in the amount of time it took to produce the work. But lately, namely when I started working at this institution, I have found myself sitting down more often to my disseration. I keep lists of things to do and I actually check things off.

So I am going to keep hoping that these big things are in my close and emminent future. Which isn’t to say that I have somehow become comfortable with my life. I am still strangely sad about things that I shouldn’t be. I just saw pictures of some old college friends at a marathon and it make me miss so many people it almost hurt.

you schedule a 2 hour manicure-pedicure, right? HA!

Did I ever say I had any work ethic? I think not.

But I swear I will get something done today. Right after I look up a restaurant in the Bay Area for me to meet my cousin.

And after I bail on a few phone meetings related to my research.

HA! Again.

It has been hot here. And we don’t have AC. I am going to Las Vegas to meet my family. My sister and Winemonkey are going. I don’t want to make any more decisions.

I think that is my biggest problem these days. Decisions. I can’t seem to make them. And trying to make them sends me into these fits where I want to cry, run, and punch someone in the throat all at the same time.

I have about a month to get my shit together to teach. I am nervous and I still have a month to go.

I have only 1 more week of work left before I go on vacation and begin preparing for classes.

I finally have an outcome on the last chapter of the dissertation. Good thing too. Because the thought of not getting finished is enough to finish me. Should have worked on it today, but instead I made myself another pair of pants and watched Dodgeball.

FYI – when your washer stops running, it means one of two things:
1. Your clothes are done being washed, or
2. Your washer can not handle washing ~3 loads of laundry in one load.

East to Sacramento that is. I am gearing up for a meeting with my advisor. He wants to see a time line for my disseration. I keep trying to tell him that is a waste of time for me to make these time lines. If I had followed a SINGLE one of them, I would have been done CENTURIES ago. But alas, here I am, still knee deep in dissertation crap and scrambling for air. The only thing I can say is that I look forward to this all being in the past. But I say that all of time.

A few weeks ago my mom told me that her and my dad bet on whether or not I would finish by the end of June. Meaning one had faith that I would finish and one didn’t. And I know which one had the faith and which one didn’t. There was no winning this one. The one that had faith would lose faith when I didn’t finish and the other would already know that I wasn’t going to finish and never had faith to begin with. Which is worse?

Apparently there was something big riding on this bet. And I was pretty pissed that they bet at all and couldn’t figure out why my mom told me in the first place. I am guessing that they think it is taking me so long because I procrastinate. And that has a little to do with it. But it also has to do with a million other things as well.

But that is all the past. (I called my mom to talk about it and she made it clear that they are not dissapointed in me and all of the other things a great mom does when you tell her your feelings are hurt.) Even if I could have finished by the end of June, I wouldn’t have wanted to. See, the beautiful thing about grad school is that they pay me to do this shit. And what with not being able to work the month of August and wondering how I was going to pay all of my bills, stretching it out another month was really the best idea I have had in my entire life. Because even though I don’t work on my dissertation 40 hours a week, I am getting paid like I do. Add that to the part time job that I am working, and you are looking at a girl who might actually accumulate a savings. You read that right, a SAVINGS.

So even if the loser of the bet loses something big, or owes the winner something big, I sleep better at night knowing that I can afford to take my first trip to Las Vegas to meet my parents in August. I sleep better at night, knowing that my rent won’t be late and my bill payments are all on time. And mostly, I sleep better knowing that I won’t have to ask for financial help in the month of August, because I might actually have this money thing under control.

What do you do when you realize that you have a meeting with your advisor in t-minus 90 minutes?

Well, if you are me, you put a bunch of data together that you will claim took you two weeks when really it just took you an hour. Oh – and you hope he believes you.

Well. Here it goes. I started my new job yesterday. You know, the one I acquired in the sand box. And it was really nice. I like doing office work as much as I like teaching, and I don’t get the anxiety attacks like I do before I teach. I am excited to go back tomorrow. I am a little concerned that the hours that they want me to work and that hours that I am capable of working are not one and the same. I somehow convinced my graduate student advisor to pay me 30% instead of 25% but I didn’t tell him that I have another job. When summer rolls around, I will hopefully be making 50% from him and working almost full time for my friends.

I turned in my second draft today and it was totally uneventful. He was pleased with the amount of digging I did to get information about what kinds of activities were going on at the samping sites. So that is always a bonus. And I think he is satisfied that I have fixed one of the broken instruments in the lab.

Now if only I could get ONE good-paying job instead of three mediocre paying jobs. Then I would be set. Right?

Gotta go keep being productive.