Crunch Time

This month will be a bit insane.

Although my thesis defense isn't until the end of April, and the official thesis isn't due until then, I need to get a draft to my PI by March 7 or so, so that he can take a look at it before my committee, who apparently (according to the department) need it 6 weeks early to look at it before the external reviewer.  This series of totally artificial deadlines, accompanied by the refusal of my data to look good at any point before January, means that I need to finish up a bunch of experiments, write (and hopefully submit) a paper, and put together my thesis in the next 4 1/2 weeks.

Yesterday, I spent the hours of 7-8am running, 8-10:30am writing my paper, and 10:30am-10pm at lab.  I spent a majority of that time with a giant bag of blood.  The rest of the time was spent doing 4 other day-long experiments simultaneously.  And stressing about how I haven't written nearly enough of my thesis.  And today I'll basically do all of that all over again - except instead of running, I'm spending the morning writing in bed.  Somehow being in bed makes the whole thing easier to handle :)

So what do I do when faced with an unfathomable amount of work?  I stop fathoming......and just keep working until I hopefully come out the other end of this month with a paper and a thesis.

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