My research year has started like this: 4 weeks of work (in which my grandmother died & my car was totaled), followed by 2 weeks abroad for a conference, followed by a week road trip with my girlfriend.
This week was my first week back, and the first week where it became clear that I'm here to stay, at least for the year anyway. This week was also slow. Painfully slow. S-L-O-W. I felt like I wasted hour after hour, day after day, doing absolutely nothing productive. Research projects are in various stages of stagnation for various reasons- mostly sitting on other peoples' desks waiting for their necessary contribution. I know, I know, this is the way research rolls.
Too much free time spent surfing the inter-webs meant that I began questioning my decisions. Why did I decide to take a year off? What if waste this whole year and get nothing accomplished? What if I walk away with no abstracts and no manuscripts, nothing tangible to show for my year? How many hours can I really spend on facebook, words with friends, and the sudoku app before I kill myself from going stir crazy? I'm just slowing down my life- an extra year before I potential don't match in OB (even having taken a research year), another year in a long distance relationship (if it survives distance) with a megaphone of a biological clock, another year before I can settle down in one city and actually began making a real community... another damn year!
I'm still hoping this was the right choice. The opportunity to live in a kick ass city. A year to have some free time with priorities on improving my health and learning Spanish before residency. Maybe I'll finally get around to fine-tuning my basal rates after 16 years on an Insulin pump! A chance to reconnect with my Jewish identity. A chance to engage in some pretty novel, and interesting, research with some of the best in the field.
For now though, I'm hoping a restful shabbos will silence my existential questioning.
This week was my first week back, and the first week where it became clear that I'm here to stay, at least for the year anyway. This week was also slow. Painfully slow. S-L-O-W. I felt like I wasted hour after hour, day after day, doing absolutely nothing productive. Research projects are in various stages of stagnation for various reasons- mostly sitting on other peoples' desks waiting for their necessary contribution. I know, I know, this is the way research rolls.
Too much free time spent surfing the inter-webs meant that I began questioning my decisions. Why did I decide to take a year off? What if waste this whole year and get nothing accomplished? What if I walk away with no abstracts and no manuscripts, nothing tangible to show for my year? How many hours can I really spend on facebook, words with friends, and the sudoku app before I kill myself from going stir crazy? I'm just slowing down my life- an extra year before I potential don't match in OB (even having taken a research year), another year in a long distance relationship (if it survives distance) with a megaphone of a biological clock, another year before I can settle down in one city and actually began making a real community... another damn year!
I'm still hoping this was the right choice. The opportunity to live in a kick ass city. A year to have some free time with priorities on improving my health and learning Spanish before residency. Maybe I'll finally get around to fine-tuning my basal rates after 16 years on an Insulin pump! A chance to reconnect with my Jewish identity. A chance to engage in some pretty novel, and interesting, research with some of the best in the field.
For now though, I'm hoping a restful shabbos will silence my existential questioning.
