Hi just very short, as an update on the daily struggle:
Today I am having trouble to focus on work or anything else. My brain feels like pudding. Of course the hypochondriac in me raises his little voice: Here we go!! Thats it again: the tumor is coming back!!!!! Of course I had this before, and some of the people out there will probably tell me: Come on!!! Its FRIDAY!!! Thats completely normal, who wants to focus on WORK on a Friday afternoon???
Anyway, I will work on some Images I took yesterday at the microscope, thats easy and I don't need to run around.
Take care you out there! I know this is common, but different from you "normal people" I have a very ugly "box of similar things" to put this into. And therefore it makes me feel bad and anxious!
Have a nice weekend, guess you need it as much as I do.
T.
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Hey Thomas,
ReplyDeleteIt could just as easily be your brain letting you know that you are tired.
I finished my M.A. two years ago. I did stats daily for about 6 months: ANOVAs, MANOVA, Hierarchical regression... I used to find that after one or two good days of brain work (6-12hrs of intense looking at the screen) I was completely useless. And I mean... the rest of my week.
I found that the best thing to do is to let it go, work on something else if you can (ie. like you worked on microscope images) or else just leave and do something else until your brain is back online again.
In other professions, they have time during the week when they socialize, run around, drive, attend meetings, etc. Whereas in a research lab, we often find ourselves having to do attention-intensive work for long periods of time. With practice, I ended up putting a good 60% of my week in worthwile academic pursuits. But the other 40% was always... well, a mix of making phone calls, visiting the library, and a bit of IM, reading papers, blogs and learning about celebrities. Humans are just not designed to do research 40-plus hours a week.
Short form: cut yourself a break! It's Friday indeed!
Fred
Thanks Fred, you are right of course. Its just: to work hard and not give in to weakness is part of my fight against the evil thing. And on the other side, becoming a bit of a hypochondriac is probably almost normal in this situation. Unfortunately I see a lot of colleagues here in my lab who do (seemingly easy) 40++ a week, but that comes at quite a price I should say: they sacrifice their personal life for science. Is it worthwhile? Guess only every individual person can decide that. Comment of J., the best friend of my ex-girlfriend:
ReplyDelete"EVERY day?????...but when do they have a life.....??"
answer by Y. (my ex girlfriend): "they don't have a life"
(sad but true, I'm not in this club though, life is too precious to sacrifice it on the altar of career-building).
So I'l try to find a balance! Hard.
Thomas :-)