Tuesday, November 10, 2020

Almost two months into PhD

In classic 2020 fashion, a venue we booked for my Bridal Shower 1yr ago, which we postponed in March, re-confirmed in Sept, and cancels 3 weeks before. Luckily my bridesmaids managed to secure another location with just over 2 weeks to go. Hopefully people RSVP...

I think I'm starting to get too stressed to even care about our wedding. At least point, all the bitter feelings are coming back, if only we got married in April, won't have to deal with doing PhD + work + wedding planning. I regret doing an extra day of work in Dec, will be working 7 days a week, 5 usual days of PhD then 2 work, plus still need to do the usual chores in between + re planning everything. It's also hard to plan because the church initially could fit 200, but now only 1/3 due to 1 person per 4 square metres...how do we un-invite 100 people? At least 20 or so relatives can't come, but that's still not enough. Ironically, we can invite more people for the reception, since they can take over 150 people...and Blair is literally working 10 jobs, so we haven't even had time to talk about it.

I'm just stressing out about mid Jan next year. It's the week before the wedding, so need to do wedding prep, our vision science reading restarts with our 'one on ones' with the centre director (whatever that is), I'm supposed to start calling people and recruiting people for my empirical part of the research.

Almost 2 mths in, I can already see the long term sacrifices. Apart from obviously no money (by no money, like I do have money, but only savings from the past year since my one day a week at work doesn't even cover half our rent cause my work pays peanuts...) , also missing out on dinners, road trips with friends, just relaxing/road trips to random places or hikes. There's really no time for that. 

Yes, I know I don't work 8 solid hrs on my PhD, but when I'm not working, I'm still thinking about it. A typical day is 12hrs at the desk, and only 3-4 productive hours. The other hours are just thinking of what to do....and the other few hours are just reading/just figuring out what papers from the 1960s even mean. even just understanding basic stats, I'm just like huh. Getting 'told off' even as a group at a post-grad level really doesn't have good vibes or reputation for yourself...

This is harder and more stressful than I thought, and it's only the beginning. It's a different stress compared to undergrad where there's so much content to memorise. Now, it's more understanding the history and development on a conceptual level (for obvious reasons since it's a doctor of philosophy). Hopefully, I can look back at this in 3-4 years time to say it was worth it.