a piss-poor day on the farm

This blog entry is really only of interest to true Anne Devotees. It's not going to be creative, it's not going to be funny, so if you're just being Anne-curious, look elsewhere because you're about to be bored out of your skull. Unless, of course, you have a passion for epic tales of woe that have nothing to do with love or human relationships, but rather focus on qualitative research methods. If that does describe you, you're weird.

Thesis proposal
Torn to little tiny shreds
One more albatross


For those of you who haven't already heard the three-hour psychotic tirade behind that haiku: today I was supposed to defend my reserach design proposal for my thesis... It didn't go quite as well as I had anticipated. I seriously thought my design was bulletproof and impervious to criticism, yet like I insinuated, it was torn apart. My professor found holes in my research question big enough to walk through. And of course the rest of the design, having been based on that central question, was totally invalidated. Phrases like "totally not feasible," "you're not an epidemiologist," "this is not a RESD thesis," and "you just can't really do this" were tossed around the room like so many spiny wiffle balls. It was not a good scene. I didn't know whether I wanted to cry or throw up or just scream "BUT WE DISCUSSED THIS!!! BUT I'VE BEEN WORKING WITH THE SAME RESEARCH QUESTION ALL SEMESTER AND ONLY NOW YOU'RE TELLING ME EXACTLY HOW BAD IT IS?"

Jesus Christ on a bike. I just couldn't help feeling like it was somehow personal. I feel like I got punched in the stomach repeatedly for an hour... I just f-ing HATE actually putting effort into things and having them suck. It just goes to show that my traditional formula of not putting any effort into schoolwork is actually the most effective.

I also f-ing hate the fact that I drank 3 cups of coffee at like midnight because I got a new coffeemaker and I just haaaad to try it out. This combination of seething anger, the resulting adrenaline, and being physically wired is just not helping me get to sleep. I have more pointless phone interviews to conduct tomorrow. Perhaps I should tell my interviewee, "Hey, its really nice of you to agree to talk to me, but unfortunately my research design is so lame that it's really useless for me to ask you any questions. Yeah, my whole thesis topic has ebola. Apparently. Thanks for your time!"

Why did I come to grad school? What in the good green earth was I thinking? I sucked at school before; I had no logical reason to believe that three years of waitressing would have given me that unstoppable impetus to learn that I had been lacking when I was in college...

I heard this amazingly beautiful John Lennon song today that I had never heard before, "Working Class Hero." According to John, "a working class hero is something to be." Please indulge my crisis of self/purpose in life and consider how this leads me to two possibilities:
1. I should go to New England Tractor Trailer School, get a real job, and get over myself.
-OR-
2. I am doing this for all the wrong reasons. I read a study or something that argues that people who go into social work, non-profits, social justice work, etc., do so out of a subconscious need to be taken care of themselves. That is, anyone who does something nice for someone else (but NOT as a means to an end - rather because they think they are just being nice and "caretaker-y") is actually hoping that someone will take care of them in return. I don't really know what to do with that theory, I just thought it was interesting to consider that maybe I don't actually want to help people - in which case I REALLY ought to just go to NETTS...

By way of ending
I know I'm totally nuts
It's something to be