my life, my pace

It’s always hard to get back into the more annoying things in life (such as setting up my quals) after enjoying the more fun things in life (such as having a nice semi-relaxing weekend with my non-crazy family). I almost convinced myself not to check my email today, but knew better.

And things were going well at first. Committee member #1: December is good. I like certain days of the week. Committee member #2: December is good except for a few dates. And then there was committee member #3: December is not good at all. D’oh. Eh well, that’s to be expected considering I’m trying to schedule this all at the last minute. On to committee member #4’s (who is also the chair of the committee) response: WTF, why didn’t anyone tell me about this? Okay, so maybe those weren’t his exact words, but close enough. I proceeded to start freaking out once I read this response because committee member #4 is by far the scariest member of my committee and also the chair of my committee, who I really didn’t want to piss off.

So I freaked out for a good fifteen minutes or so before deciding to ask my older and wiser major professor how to proceed with this turn of events. Instead of being helpful, he just kept right on rubbing it in my face, saying “That’s why I told you to contact your committee earlier. You’re going to fail now that the chair of your committee is upset with you. Go call Dr. My Buddy and ask him to chair your committee.” Why thank you for being so supportive. And just because you like to throw your weight around and because you can doesn’t mean I like to or even can do the same. It’s not like I can even change my committee let alone push some random person into being the chair out of nowhere. Thanks for nothing, major professor, as usual.

By now, I was too busy being mad at my ass of a major professor to freak out as much about committee member #4’s response. So I wrote him an email apologizing for his not being informed earlier and explaining how and when the committee assignments were made. Then it was off to lunch with the husband, who of all places to eat, chose to eat at the bar of Yummy Seafood Restaurant, tempting me to no end to order a mai tai or two to help me forget how it seemed that this whole putting off scheduling my quals thing is blowing up in my face. But I resisted and had gumbo instead. Yum.

When I dejectedly returned to lab, I found that committee member #4 had already responded to my humble apology email…nicely. So I guess I made it through my first (second if you count the whole getting off my lazy ass to contact the committee members in the first place as one too) hurdle on my quest to pass my quals. Now let’s see if I can survive the meetings with these committee members. First up: committee member #4. Other pesky matters that may turn into hurdles: I’ve gotten no response from committee member #5 at all and committee member #3 insists that she’s not available in December, period. But I think I’ll bask in my little accomplishment of not pissing off the chair of my committee too much today.

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1. the dreaded phd qualifying exam*I’ve put it off way longer than I should have. And it’s not my fault. Well, not 100% my fault. When I first started grad school still high from that adrenaline that pumps non-stop during those hectic first two years of med school, I wanted to take my quals as soon as possible so that I could finish my PhD as soon as possible. Then in stepped my major professor, who told me that I’d be committing suicide by doing so and that I should take the quals at the last possible minute to ensure that I would have enough time to study for it. Adding to his argument was the fact that one of the classes I wanted to take was only offered in alternate years and not that particular year. So I really had no choice but to wait until this fall to take my quals. So I putted along with my grad school classes (none of which could even come close to matching the difficulty of a single med school class, by the way) and dutifully met with my advisor at the end of the year. I had listed out the courses I still needed to take before being done with the required coursework, including the I-put-off-my-quals-to-wait-for-this-class one. When he saw this course listed, he told me that it had not been offered for awhile and that he didn’t think that it was ever going to be offered again and to confirm with the professor. I emailed...
2. how to freak a grad student out (tip #251): random qualifying exam committee shuffleAdmit it.  You're always on the lookout for cruel new and unusual ways to freak your grad student out.  It's obviously not enough for you that s/he is already always in full-on freak-out mode for one reason or another anyway.  You just have to make it worse, right?  Well, time to rejoice because I'm now compiling tips on how to freak grad students out from my experiences on the receiving end of such torture.  So let's preface by saying that I'm already super freaked out since I'm supposed to be studying for quals and I haven't been for oh, the last two weeks.  And I keep promising myself that today will be the day that I'll get back into super hardcore studying mode everyday.  So I'm freaked out.So today, I tried really hard to study.  But I was distracted by a number of things, only a few of which actually pertained to grad school.  Just when I was getting ready to hunker down for a long day of studying, an email pops up in my inbox that fills my heart with fear.  Why?  Because its subject was: Qualifying Exam Assignment - mylifemypace.  Oh crap.  They figured out that I should have taken my quals last quarter.  Masochist in me clicked on the email anyway and it took forever to load while my major professor blabbed away about the Mercedes SL500 (seriously, can't you see I'm in the middle of something?).  When it finally loaded, it wasn't what I thought it...
3. how to freak a grad student out (tip #323): ask her to take her qualifying exam earlierHere's another way to freak a grad student out.  And it's almost as cruel as randomly changing one of her qualifying exam committee members.  It's rather simple, really.  Ask her to change the time of her qualifying exam from afternoon to morning so that she can't possibly spend the morning either sleeping because she stayed up really late the night before preparing or doing last minute studying/freaking out.  Not only that, but make sure that you're having her change the time for a completely non-life-threatening reason such as simply because you felt like it.  Even better yet, also make sure to request this change as close to the actual date of the exam as possible so that it'll really catch her by surprise.Yep, that's exactly what the chair of my committee wanted.  And that's what she got.  I was counting on Evil Committee Member to shoot the request down, but she didn't.  So now, I get to fail my quals that much earlier on January 24th.  My husband thinks it's a good thing because I'll be fresh and will get it over with.  But I just think it's going to make things worse than they already are.  I'm so screwed ...

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