Wearisome Week

In which your humble narrator stares down the gaping maw of a test with no parameters and the beginning of another lousy semester.

Today is the first day of a new term, bringing with it new classes to teach, fresh undergraduate faces, an impending preliminary exam for my doctoral degree and a big old-fashioned bucket of glum. The enterprise of completing a Ph.D. seems less and less appealing since it seems apparent that it will result, not in a wood-paneled faculty office complete with tweed jacket and pipe, but rather a somewhat less glamorous job in the food service industry. "Would you like a thesis on the application of psycholinguistic research to reading comprehension tests with your burger and fries, sir? No?"

At least I'll be Dr. Impoverished Unemployed Person, Ph.D.

Friday brings with it my preliminary oral examination in which I will go into a room with my committee, give a 20 minute presentation and then hope and pray that I have actually learned something in my (too long) graduate career. I scheduled in for 9:30 in the morning, thinking that at least there won't be much of the day preceding the exam to spend agonizing over my impending doom. The lack of any set expectations for this exam is what sends my anxiety into full-on catastrophic mode: "What's that, simple boy? You're not ready for the physical challenge in which you wrestle with Jean Piaget's reanimated corpse?"

This may be the last post until after Friday as I plan to spend the next 60+ hours pulling the hair from my head strand by strand.