You've gotta be kidding me. I could not have last posted on this blog almost 4 months ago. I came on here tonight to just write about anything, but now here I am realizing that this term has gone by far faster than one could have ever imagined.
So what's keeping me up tonight? Life. Denial. Loneliness. Relating to the original reason for this blog, I mostly feel as a fast tracking student stuck in a lonely middle between the PhDs w/ MScs and the MScs who are not yet PhDs but will be soon...phew. I'm in a unique situation in that respect and its hard to relate to either group. Quickly you realize that for all intensive purposes, you are at the same level as the them. But on the other hand, your lack of experience puts you light years behind where they are. To be honest, I'm not sure me obtaining my master's would have helped all too much...but that its a completely different story related to Impostor Syndrome which I will definitely get into for a later post. Then there are the soon to be doctoral students who I don't really relate to either. So I'm in this group alone, academically speaking at least.
I think this is the one main thing that I am trying to grasp by being in this situation - don't totally base your abilities on the abilities of those around you. People are different and their knowledge base isn't something to get you all wound up over. This is not to say that you won't be working way harder than they will be. In the end, they are more experience than you and do know way more than you as a result, which is a disadvantage to the idea of fast tracking. But when you look at the big picture (i.e. how people learn, share knowledge, etc etc) it reinforces the fact that we are all individuals (I sound like a childrens' TV show that tells kids "you are all unique and special in your own way"...blah).
I think what coming back to these blogposts also tell me is that if I was being 100% truthful...this blog would be on an entirely different topic that had no relation to academics whatsoever. But I'll keep that one to myself...for now :)
Showing posts with label lessons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lessons. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Monday, August 9, 2010
Calm Before the Storm?
If this is the calm before the storm...I'm going to need a bigger boat.
As I have explained to many a family member, graduate students do not take summer vacations. I pay tutition, I come to school, I do my research, I sit outside in the sun and procrastinate. Now, as the title suggests, my blog is about me and my decision to fast track through my Master's degree after one year of course work to a PhD starting in September. I'm pursuing a degree at a Canadian University in Kinesiology, a science that looks at the way we move. As posts continue, I'll go into the trials and tribulations of fast tracking. But for now...its August.
When I first decided to fast track in April, I thought that I would be able to relax this summer. Not in the "I'm going to do nothing this summer" way. I had no pressure to have a thesis proposal finished by the end of the summer. As a fast tracker I am not required to do a Masters thesis. So, my supervisor suggested that I take the summer to learn. Easy enough.
In hindsight, I think I took the whole learning thing to an extreme. In talking to him a few weeks ago, we listed off everything that I was doing this summer - processing an incredibly large data set from a past student, running my own ultrasound study, a tech note collaboration study with a colleague, and helping out a Master's student finish her thesis collection. Sounds busy enough. But factor in everything I needed to do for each of these:
Study 1 - I had never really used the processing software and was completely unfamiliar with the literature and the measures involved
Study 2 - taught myself ultrasound techniques and motion capture system ( you know...like the ones you see the athletes wearing when making sport video games) that involves a ton of front end work
Study 3 - I knew very little about some of the techniques coming into this study, but my work in study two helped me get involved in study 3
Study 4 - Same motion capture system in study 2, but used in a completely different set up that I needed to learn
I think there is one more. Each study has sub studies and well...you get my point. Its now mid august and I'm overwhelmed with work! The tricky thing is that for a such as myself is that despite speeding up a year, I lost a year for publications. So I could potentially have atleast 3-4 papers coming from all this research. And for a young research such as myself, who has two first author papers to her name from undergraduate work, this is gold. But I'm exhausted. So like I said...if this is the calm before the storm, I am going to need a bigger boat.
Granted, I do enjoy the work even if I am pulling my hair out as a result. I believe its worse than I would have expected in the beginning of the summer since mastering any technique always takes way longer than you orignally planned. I have also run into major problems in each of the studies, which has involved an incredible amount of trouble shooting. In the end, I learned way more than I had even imagined possible when I began.
The moral of this summer is that writing a proposal would have been the easy thing to do. Concentrating on one study, not even an entire study, would have been a breeze. But I wouldn't have even begun to learn anything that I learned this summer, even through pilot data. In the end, hands on experience trumps anything you read in a journal article. Some may say I lost a year, but I can easily say I fit a years worth of work into one summer. I would also like to run into these simple start of problems now instead of two years in my PhD after I have already done my proposal. And, I have learned early on, that sometimes its just not possible to do EVERYTHING at once.
So I have three more weeks until I begin. That being said...my vacation can't arrive fast enough!
As I have explained to many a family member, graduate students do not take summer vacations. I pay tutition, I come to school, I do my research, I sit outside in the sun and procrastinate. Now, as the title suggests, my blog is about me and my decision to fast track through my Master's degree after one year of course work to a PhD starting in September. I'm pursuing a degree at a Canadian University in Kinesiology, a science that looks at the way we move. As posts continue, I'll go into the trials and tribulations of fast tracking. But for now...its August.
When I first decided to fast track in April, I thought that I would be able to relax this summer. Not in the "I'm going to do nothing this summer" way. I had no pressure to have a thesis proposal finished by the end of the summer. As a fast tracker I am not required to do a Masters thesis. So, my supervisor suggested that I take the summer to learn. Easy enough.
In hindsight, I think I took the whole learning thing to an extreme. In talking to him a few weeks ago, we listed off everything that I was doing this summer - processing an incredibly large data set from a past student, running my own ultrasound study, a tech note collaboration study with a colleague, and helping out a Master's student finish her thesis collection. Sounds busy enough. But factor in everything I needed to do for each of these:
Study 1 - I had never really used the processing software and was completely unfamiliar with the literature and the measures involved
Study 2 - taught myself ultrasound techniques and motion capture system ( you know...like the ones you see the athletes wearing when making sport video games) that involves a ton of front end work
Study 3 - I knew very little about some of the techniques coming into this study, but my work in study two helped me get involved in study 3
Study 4 - Same motion capture system in study 2, but used in a completely different set up that I needed to learn
I think there is one more. Each study has sub studies and well...you get my point. Its now mid august and I'm overwhelmed with work! The tricky thing is that for a such as myself is that despite speeding up a year, I lost a year for publications. So I could potentially have atleast 3-4 papers coming from all this research. And for a young research such as myself, who has two first author papers to her name from undergraduate work, this is gold. But I'm exhausted. So like I said...if this is the calm before the storm, I am going to need a bigger boat.
Granted, I do enjoy the work even if I am pulling my hair out as a result. I believe its worse than I would have expected in the beginning of the summer since mastering any technique always takes way longer than you orignally planned. I have also run into major problems in each of the studies, which has involved an incredible amount of trouble shooting. In the end, I learned way more than I had even imagined possible when I began.
The moral of this summer is that writing a proposal would have been the easy thing to do. Concentrating on one study, not even an entire study, would have been a breeze. But I wouldn't have even begun to learn anything that I learned this summer, even through pilot data. In the end, hands on experience trumps anything you read in a journal article. Some may say I lost a year, but I can easily say I fit a years worth of work into one summer. I would also like to run into these simple start of problems now instead of two years in my PhD after I have already done my proposal. And, I have learned early on, that sometimes its just not possible to do EVERYTHING at once.
So I have three more weeks until I begin. That being said...my vacation can't arrive fast enough!
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