Wednesday, February 09, 2011

Developments

So I’ve spent the last few days driving the long way to Pretoria to do labwork, which went fantastically well until… it didn’t. I’m facing a 6-week/indefinite delay and it feels like I’m never going to graduate sometimes. This time there’s nobody to blame, it was just incredibly unlucky, and I’ve been fortunate in that I emailed the wrong person about fixing it and he has been incredible in pulling out special contacts to get things moving faster (almost a-la-mafia-esque).

In the meantime I’m working on the write-up, which as a friend of mine says ‘steals your sanity, one penguin at a time.’

Therapy/counselling/sitting-in-a-small-room-with-a-captive-audience is going pretty well (I think). I’m getting used to the whole idea of talking about my feelings and she is very good at putting things into perspective or re-explaining what I’ve said in a slightly different way which makes me re-think it and figure things out.

On a personal note, my friends keep getting engaged! Seriously, three engagements in the last week – that’s a little bit excessive isn’t it? It makes me feel some weird kind of mix between very old and very young. I am very happy for them all though, particularly Joey who finally got her fairytale proposal.

And that’s basically all I can talk about right now, it’s back to work! Another evening in the lab, woooo!

3 comments:

po said...

Helen, no matter how crap it is now I swear you are gonna get that PhD and be a doctor and conquer the world! Seriously it's gonna happen. You just have to survive the write up, which as you say is responsible for much insanity in this world. Good luck.

Kath Lockett said...

I am full of admiration for anyone who gets a PhD and survives, so you've already got a fan here in Australia. It'll happen!

Vanessa said...

You know why I KNOW that you are going to get that PhD??? Its because we all have setbacks, the ones who succeed, email people (wrong or right), go off to a small room with a captive audience and deal with the issues at hand (related to academics or not) and they get it done. Its hard to keep motivated. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel and then when you get moved up to 1st class cause you are Dr. Helen :) then I want to be moved up too :p