The pain of being a research student...

I'm looking out the window, and it's the end of another day. My research is trickling down the drain at such as speed that it is now worrying me. I am meant to have 60 people take part in my research and I have only managed to get four people to come in to take my test. 4 out of 60... it is frightening because I could have done more to recruit people, but I am just so lazy.

It has now hit me though just how important my research really is to me - it isn't. If it was, I'm sure I'd show a lot more passion, and lot more enthusiasm and worry for my research, and yet here I am, just feeling a little worried and concerned that those people who said they'd come haven't shown up. I have 3 weeks to go before I give up my right to keep hold of the computer lab for my research. I actually DO have time, but I'm thinking of this in realistic terms, and I realise that come December people will not be bothered to come in because they will have assignments and exams to contend with. I then realise that it's not a matter of I should have done more to recruit people, because I did everything to the letter and I did everything in the time frame I said I would.

Thankfully, during the times I've sat in this rather bleak computer lab I have been able to write more in my thesis and complete a couple of abstracts to submit to conferences about my non-existant data. Writing those abstracts really are a mockery of my work. I'm writing about data I'll have and analyse, then show to the world, when I don't have that data to begin with. People have not come in to submit that information yet for me to analyse just yet! It's so sad because I've been appealing to friends and family, and all I can do is wait. It's frustrating and depressing, and if it weren't for the great supervisor I have ("recruitment is slow and depressing, but please hang in there"), I think I'd just give up.

However though the other day I sat in the research room, and munched on a hot chicken wrap, while I spoke to my sisters in pain. We sat there discussing what our days off were like and I realised that I really wasn't the only one to feel or to go through what I was going through. On your days off, if they can be really called that, you are racked with guilt because you think of what you should be doing and how much work you could be finishing. You never walk around with a small bag because you'll stick at least ONE journal article in there to read on the train or during lunch or something, so that you feel you've done one thing constructive. But the article never leaves the bag and you end up just carrying it around ALL THE TIME. You sit at your desk all day, hoping to write something, or do some work, and nothing comes to you. You sit there thinking that you could go out to get the paper or a coffee, or just for a quick walk and get some fresh air, but you think "NO, I've got to get some work done." but you spend the whole day like that and NEVER get anything done. Nothing gets done that day, and that's how you'll spend it. It would be a blessing if it was just one day that was like that, but you can have a whole week that will be like that. If you read an article, nothing goes in and you wonder just how stupid you are. Or worse, you see others around you are reading books and articles, just charging right through them, and you're just trying to get through one measely article that just about hits 20 pages and you wonder how much you scored on your last IQ test. You constantly question just why you are doing this shit and just who the hell would be interested in what you've got to say. Who is going to read your work again - and then you hear that your friend has finished their PhD and has been encouraged (and actually acheived) to turn their thesis into (not one, but) two books.

Whoever said the life of a PhD student was easy was obviously never a PhD student... especially not one who has to run an experiment. So next time you see a lonely nerd, BE KIND.