I have had adventures getting access to the department, which is behind lock and key ,several alarms, a deadbolt or two, and a scary looking spiky iron fence that is about 10 feet high. I have to go into the Security Department and get them to let me in. First request--they said, oh yes, we recognise your accent, and didn't want any ID. Second request--we need ID. Fine...Third request....we need more kinds of ID...fine...

Yesterday I called to get released ( as I am literally locked into the building and even if I got out of it there is the matter of the 10 foot high spiky iron fence) and they said, well, you left hours ago.

??????????????

I had a wee tidy up around Bleak Towers this morning--how messy can a single room become?? especially when you own nothing---but somehow it still managed to be! I found another article I had been searching for, though how it made its way to Bleak Towers is a mystery.

I had dogs, one ( and sometimes a stray one that was temporarily housed---as I was always rescuing them...). I will NEVER forget walking into my bedroom to see my dog take a mouthful of pages from one of my text books, throw them in the air, and watch them fall like snow flakes around him. The young stray puppy occupant of the house was watching, wagging his tail really hard at the fall of paper. Then my dog grabbed another mouthful of pages from the book and repeated this. I was dumbstruck. Fortunately I was able to rescue the book mostly intact--minus most of the index, but who needs those, and a literally dog eared back cover.

I remember doing my JD ( professional doctorate law degree) and the adventures of trying to study with pets. My housemate had two ( and sometimes more) cats ( she was forever rescuing strays). The cats would come and sit on my book so I could not turn a page, shove things off my bed ( this was in the days when computers were still run by people manipulating paper cups around a big motherboard in a huge room--so I did not have one...no one did), etc...anything to be a nuisance whilst people tried to study.

Agreed BHC and Smilodon that there ARE many more difficult pursuits than a PhD! Many other jobs, even different types of PhDs are more stressful. I guess what I find dissapointing with my near and dear is when they trivialise it into this adult gap year--as if I took off with a back pack in a flurry of a mid life crisis to hang at party beaches in Portugal or something....This is certainly not the hardest thing I have ever done. Nor is it the easiest. Perhaps it is the most important. It would be nice if close relatives could at least recognise that this is not a holiday....that's all. But as said, perhaps the failure to realise that this is not a holiday is just sour grapes on their part.

Messy office....you know its too messy when....

you cannot find an article that you need, and you know its somewhere within about a five foot radius of where you are sitting, but there are so many piles of articles that its just easier to reprint it!

I am due to submit at the end of this calendar year or early next year..I started my PhD in January two years ago, so I am on a weird schedule...

When are you aiming to submit?


Champagne sounds just like the thing!!!

Complaining is healthy!!! And somehow I imagine you as the first person with a bottle of champagne in hand for a friend to celebrate their good news!

What is it about a type of friend who is there when you are miserable--and no doubt about it, that can be so important--but when the sun shines again for you, they only want to find the dark side of what is going on? I think that those sorts of people really prefer you miserable, for whatever reason, it makes them feel less threatened or something to function as the comforter when you are down.

Someone who is genuinely able to be there for you when you are happy and have good fortune--now that is a good friend. So much for the saying fair weather friends--perhaps those are the truest ones in the end.

I have a friend who is a very young grandmother ( her son had a child when he was still in high school) and another friend whose child is younger than the other's grandchild ( does that make sense?) and we are all the same age within about 6 weeks of each other. The very young grannie has quit her job ( she still has a school age child at home) and has gone to pursue a Masters degree fulltime! Good for her, I say! My sister just had a baby in her 40's--and she is only following in a family tradition of another sister who has had all of her kids in her 40's--all fine and healthy, thanks! ( sister included).

Yes, what is that about thinking that you have to settle for a miserable existence? I disagree with that--what is the Emerson quote I think, about people lead lives filled with quiet desperation...and Thoreau? or maybe Emerson again, who said, that at the end of his life he did not want to find out he had not lived?!

Thanks all for the replies on the thread, its the sort of thing that puts this all back into the right frame and gives the fuel to keep going!!! ...I only have 17 more boring footnotes to proofread...ugh....

Xeno, that is too bad about losing a friend over the PhD ...but in some sense if it were a real friend they would have been happy for you. I have lost some friendships as well as a result of the PhD and my move to England, but my thought is, well, if you cannot be there for me, even if you do not totally "get it", you are no friend. I do agree that there is some element of jealousy and sour grapes that show up in the reactions that you get to a PhD...

So I sort of expect my 40+ friends having new babies for the first time to in their way understand the PhD. Yes, babies and a PhD are different in some respects--but the overarching thing is--doing something that matters to you and not listening to a society that says you are past the age when it should be done.

Hahah, I was just noticing, that before I moved to the UK, I had the odd grey hair I would pluck out in horror--and now since I have been here, there has not been ONE grey hair!!!!! contrary to what you might expect!

Yes Smilodon, I would guess you and I are close in age--and I know that people act like its an age where you should just as you say slide into old age. But old age does not come for another 30 years or so...or at least 25--that is a long time. What are you meant to do, sit and wait to die?! I am fortunate to have sisters and some friends who have had children in their 40's and so understand that it can be a decade filled with NEW not settling into some sort of coma.

Smilodon--that is interesting about your attempts to go to grad school, and now you are doing it! When I was in undergrad, my then boyfriend wanted to get engaged/married as soon as he graduated ( he was a year ahead of me)but I wanted to go to grad school, and knew I was not ready to settle into a married life with house and kids...he was not willing to wait while I went to grad school so he said...choose! which became the easiest choice of my life--bye bye boyfriend!