Tonight was my second "night off" in about a month. My last legitimate night off was the night after my Gramma's funeral...and that really wasn't a night off, so it kinda counts, but not really. Either way, it's been so long that I honestly have no idea what to do with myself.
It's not that I don't have stuff to do...hell, I have 3 presentations to build for next week, an assignment due next Monday and all that other jazz, but I made a deal with myself that I'm not going to build teaching presentations until the weekend, when I do my marking. (Which likely won't all get done, but I really don't care at this point. My students have been pretty spoiled up to now as far as promptly getting assignments back, I'm sure they'll understnd if I don't get them the last one back on time.)
I'm going to tackle the other presentation and the assignment tomorrow and Friday during normal working hours. I should be able to kill them both off before the weekend to tell the truth, and if I don't I'm procrastinating too much to be honest.
Either way, after the last 2 weeks of incredibly high stress levels, I decided that tonight I will come home and do ABSOLUTELY NO SCHOOL WORK. Which, so far I've been able to do fairly successfully. The only documents I've touched so far is stuff that needs to be printed off, and honestly that really doesn't count, because I'm playing games in the background. :)
I did some LEGO-ing, some reading, some TV watching, lots of playing with Chaos and I even had a bath. I haven't had a relaxing bath in about 6 weeks. I used to have a bath a week. I think I'm a little behind. That said, there aren't many things in life better than "shower beer"....."bath beer" is one of them.
I think tonight I may finish the book that I bumped up on my "For Pleasure" reading list, because it was related to class material. That honestly doesn't count as school work. We weren't required to read it, I'm just THAT nerdy. The next book is the 7th Sookie Stackhouse novel. It makes up for the excessive nerdiness lately.
I met with my super-laid-back advisor today, for the first time in about a month. We're changing the direction for my project, mostly because he has funding that needs to be used right meow, I haven't submitted a proposal yet and he's comfortable in knowing that I'm in for the long haul. Also, the funding is for a full 2 years, starting last November, meaning that I still have to hunt for $$, but the pressure isn't on like it used to be.
I think I can handle this project better than the one I was planning on doing. All the data is collected, I just need to do the analysis, build the equation and call it my own. Likely easier said than done, but if I put my nose to the grindstone, we both figure that I should/could be able to finish the Master's component in a little over a year...meaning next April I could have the first phase done and starting on my Ph. D. research next summer. (That's my timeline, his was a little more extended. I honestly don't want to drag out the intermediate degree any longer than I honestly have to).
That would be pretty wicked actually. I could spend more time where it matters. It would be like the "by-pass Master's to Ph.D. program", but better. I'd actually be well on the way to completing and defending the Master's phase before I take the dive into Ph. D.
The only problem I see is that I'll need to fit in 6 months of actual engineering work between the 2 degrees to get my P. Eng. I'll have to look into seeing if my teaching experience counts. If it does, I'm likely part-way there already.
On a side note, my supervisor is pretty awesome. He almost went all "Office Space" on his cordless keyboard in the middle of our meeting. Sounds like something I would do.
No comments:
Post a Comment