Half Full
Time for a bit of relaxation.... I had four exams and a short paper due within the past couple weeks. It's so refreshing having shed some of that burden. Now I've gotta prep for a half-hour presentation on my research next week. *exhales*
I also had a pep talk with one of my mentors. I wasn't even feeling particularly down (except for that long-term career thing), but felt a lot better after that.
I need to concentrate on my research and take advantage of this situation. No matter how tough I might think I have it, it's really not bad at all. I never had to claw away at the dirt until my fingers bled to make a bomb shelter. Never had to leave southern China to avoid the prosecution of ethnic Chinese by the Japanese during WWII. Never had to flee Cambodia, separating myself from my parents and siblings, to escape the genocidal regimen installed by the Khmer Rouge in the 70s. I grew up in the United States where I was able to get not only a high school education, but a college education, which is leading me to a degree and a potentially fruitful career, an education I didn't even have to pay for. I really have it good.
Anyway, research can be really fulfilling if I just refocus my perception of it; it would do me well to really immerse myself in the discovery aspect of it, plow through the technical aspect of it, and largely ignore the social ineptitude of some of the people in it. You get weird, intensely awkward people everywhere anyway, hehe.
Well that's my attitude and I'm sticking with it, at least for the moment. No sense in trying to brush off the optimism right now.
I also had a pep talk with one of my mentors. I wasn't even feeling particularly down (except for that long-term career thing), but felt a lot better after that.
I need to concentrate on my research and take advantage of this situation. No matter how tough I might think I have it, it's really not bad at all. I never had to claw away at the dirt until my fingers bled to make a bomb shelter. Never had to leave southern China to avoid the prosecution of ethnic Chinese by the Japanese during WWII. Never had to flee Cambodia, separating myself from my parents and siblings, to escape the genocidal regimen installed by the Khmer Rouge in the 70s. I grew up in the United States where I was able to get not only a high school education, but a college education, which is leading me to a degree and a potentially fruitful career, an education I didn't even have to pay for. I really have it good.
Anyway, research can be really fulfilling if I just refocus my perception of it; it would do me well to really immerse myself in the discovery aspect of it, plow through the technical aspect of it, and largely ignore the social ineptitude of some of the people in it. You get weird, intensely awkward people everywhere anyway, hehe.
Well that's my attitude and I'm sticking with it, at least for the moment. No sense in trying to brush off the optimism right now.