Sunday Passes By...

With a blink of an eye, another weekend has passed my by once more.

Somehow being confined in the house, I feel quite differently. It has been a month or so since my buddy left the PhD programme, and I have more or less started to figure out different coping mechanisms for myself. I've been running more, reading more, and generally speaking, talking to myself a whole lot more.

I suppose I really don't dig into the ``solitary person'' thing all that well.

The end-of-semester crunch is upon me, and already I am looking at a rather long list of things that needs to be done. I have no idea how I am going to manage it, but I suppose that everything will be done somehow. No, I'm not interested in scoring all As for my classes---I just want to do enough to meet the department requirement so that I have time to look at other more relevant things related to my research. The three classes of this semester are killer, each with their own major projects. Sometimes I just feel like throwing in the towel. But of course, I often catch myself early enough to tell my depressing brain to shut-it and take active steps to move things along.

I'm starting to understand the feelings that some of my other friends who have left the PhD programme. It wasn't so much that the research is boring, it's the drudgery to fill up the paperwork and work on one's research that makes one develop a distaste of it all. Studies already take at least 40 hours a week, on a full course load, while research takes another 44+ hours a week. In short, it's like doing two full-time jobs at once (no, a full-time job is not 80 hours---do not believe the words of employers who are trying to undercut the labour to squeeze every ounce of ``productivity''). It's pretty easy to do it when one's young, but as age catches up and the real world's effects start to manifest themselves (translation: watching other people doing ``normal'' things and seem successful/happy), there will be a growing sense of self-doubt about whether all these additional hard work over and above the Bachelor's degree is ever worth it.

I know it is worthed it, in my case. But classes are just so... annoying. They get in the way. But they need to be done anyway...

Well, enough belly-aching for now. Till the next update.