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Deflated trepidation
Sep. 5th, 2007 07:50 amMy advisor and I have arranged to meet once a week this semester to work on my dissertation proposal, on Tuesday afternoons. Last week I left the meeting angry and frustrated: she had asked to see one aspect of the proposal, my proposed experiments, and then proceeded to grill me about a different part that I have been struggling with and hadn't developed as extensively: the overall question I'm trying to answer and its broader context. I spent much of the following week trying to think through that part.
It's difficult to go to sleep thinking, "What's the point of everything I've been working on for the past four years?" alternating with, "But of course this is important--it has the potential to inform us about not just one aspect but multiple aspects of biology!" My work is interdisciplinary enough that it's difficult to sell under a single title (ecology? physiology? behavior? social dynamics? coevolution?).
Having been thus challenged, I was nervous about how yesterday's meeting would proceed. It doesn't help to be shut down by someone else when one is already afflicted with crippling self-doubt. I don't respond well to an accusatory tone, and felt like I learned little last week. I had left the rest of the afternoon free to give myself time to stew things over if necessary. So of course the meeting took on a completely different tone than the week before and I left with a sense of at least some small progress and direction.
I don't know if it was just the draining of the tension I'd been carrying around for the past week, or the events of the busy weekend catching up with me, or both, but I couldn't focus on anything after the meeting, so eventually I just went home and read a book and drew a bit. I've been trying to be more diligent about working, but I needed to give myself permission to take a break yesterday.
It's difficult to go to sleep thinking, "What's the point of everything I've been working on for the past four years?" alternating with, "But of course this is important--it has the potential to inform us about not just one aspect but multiple aspects of biology!" My work is interdisciplinary enough that it's difficult to sell under a single title (ecology? physiology? behavior? social dynamics? coevolution?).
Having been thus challenged, I was nervous about how yesterday's meeting would proceed. It doesn't help to be shut down by someone else when one is already afflicted with crippling self-doubt. I don't respond well to an accusatory tone, and felt like I learned little last week. I had left the rest of the afternoon free to give myself time to stew things over if necessary. So of course the meeting took on a completely different tone than the week before and I left with a sense of at least some small progress and direction.
I don't know if it was just the draining of the tension I'd been carrying around for the past week, or the events of the busy weekend catching up with me, or both, but I couldn't focus on anything after the meeting, so eventually I just went home and read a book and drew a bit. I've been trying to be more diligent about working, but I needed to give myself permission to take a break yesterday.
