Treacle
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Been having a very hard time motivating. Finally got moving today and completed coding the first genus for the morphospace, Abas, although I’m going to need to make a trip to the Farlow library to look up a few characters in a reference about that taxon before it’s fully done. Yes, I’m going alphabetically. And yes, it’s going to have to progress a lot faster if I’m going to get through all 147 genera before the end of my PhD—I can’t take a week for each or I’ll be here till I’m forty.
Didn’t help things motivation-wise that I got the dreaded “annual progress report” email from the graduate studies committee, demanding I meet with my committee and get them to sign off on a written progress report by April 8th—or else agree not to meet if it isn’t necessary, and just sign the paperwork. I had hoped that perhaps I could convince Andy that it would be the best use of my committee if we put off meeting until I had some morphospace results to discuss, fearful as I am of a repeat performance of the last two annual progress reviews. No such luck—”all progress is good progress”, Andy said mystically, and insisted we meet, although his schedule is booked up and it’ll be closer to the end of April. Grrr.
Andy also wanted to know if I was happy with the composition of my committee. With a view to the defense, I pointed out, I’ll probably need to add someone from within EPS, since having just my advisor from the department probably wouldn’t satisfy EPS’ requirements. Andy suggested either Ann or Dave, both of whom I think would be fine (though I think that Dave might—might!—be a little easier, and I have a better personal rapport with him). In any case, that adjustment would happen after the progress review, so nothing to worry about right now.
Anyway. I tried to work some more and kept getting distracted. Couldn’t focus. Felt unbelievably tired. Motivation is definitely at a low. I think the anxiety over the radiolarian project is stifling any progress I could be making with the morphospace—not knowing whether I’ll even be able to get images, and not receiving any useful help from Andy about microscope objectives, and not knowing where to turn, and even if I’m able to make the imaging work against all odds not knowing whether the species I need are going to be on the slides—that is making me deeply anxious.
