Buckle Down

I'm sorry, dear readers, for being a rather negligent blogger. Those of you that are still students or not far removed from your student days know that this is prime crunch time. I have finals on Tuesday and Friday and my candidacy on Tuesday as well. I've been glued to my computer working on my proposal and my presentation. When I'm not doing these things, I'm glued to my family, all of whom get noisy when my attention is focused on other things for too long.

After I turned in my 40 page paper, Dr. Hari read it and made seemingly minor suggestions. Now that I'm a senior student, his editing doesn't come with written-in sentences. Instead he says "add a paragraph about this or that" which results in more reading and references. He also wanted me to switch around the order of the sections, bringing the last three sections up front and sending the first three to the end (not counting intro, etc). All these changes mean a complete reordering of references, figure numbers and all that piddly crap that will bite you if you don't pay attention. He also initially suggested I cut out a lot of content to make it a more manageable 30 pages. Five minutes after I left his office though he came running down to the lab breathless, a copy of a fellow grad student's 70 page proposal in hand telling me NOT to shorten mine after all.

Now I am working on my presentation. That is sorta fun since I get to draw pictures, play with fonts, colors, etc. My creative side can shyly peak its nose out a little. But this all takes time and I've put blogging on the back burner. I'm not consciously taking a break or anything. Just prioritizing. For now. Bear with me, and expect me to be back in full force after my real life slows down.