Writing etc.

You may recall that last Friday my advisor challenged me to give him the next chapter of my dissertation by today. Well I haven't quite finished, but I will say that it got me really focused and I did get a lot done. Maybe I'll even have it finished by Monday. The kicker that is just so quintessential my advisor is that he went out of town today and I just heard that from someone random. So I couldn't even give it to him if I was done. Ah, that's grad school.

Although now I am feeling pretty happy with what I've accomplished, earlier this week I was majorly stressed about all the things I had to do on top of writing, so I made this list of other things I've done this week:

• Applied for a job that I am actually very interested in, but that required a rather tailored application.
• Finished most of the 8 page newsletter that I am going to send to 500+ alumni of the honor society that I am President of this semester.
  
• Cross-checked the honor society's alumni database to see which alumni we were missing (hundreds).
• Read and evaluated 50 faculty nominations for the prestigious faculty award that the same honor society gives each year. (We have a lot of amazing teachers on this campus!)
• Skipped going to a friend's barbeque party and another friend's poker game. See, I can prioritize work over fun sometimes. (Ha, I accidentally wrote that "work over work" the first time - so true!)
• Had an exam in the class that I TA for, including all the prep, follow up, and annoying make ups that the professor allows.
  
• Taught my own lab class, including grading and prep, etc. Fortunately/unfortunately Comet Lulin is not visible during class time so I didn't have to write a new lab about it.
• Watched a semi-decent amount of TV. This seems to be the one giant time waster than I can't let go of.
• Sat in on a course that is actually relevant to my research and useful for the upcoming defense. (Kormendy's Galaxies class)
• Completely ignored several dozen emails from an undergrad alumni group's Board of Directors that I'm a member of. We/they are drafting a letter to start a letter writing campaign. (And while checking that link discovered that I still had info from last September on that page so cleaned that up real fast!)
  
• Had lunch with the current GSA President. (Hey, a girl's gotta eat sometime.)
• Went to a postdoc-grad student lunch in the department, which was held at the same time as lunch seminar about active learning techniques that I skipped because it would take too long. (Ditto the gotta eat comment though.)
• Did some actual research, and remembered to email it to my advisor so he can see that I'm actually accomplishing things. He said it looked good, which I already knew so it was pretty pointless, but at least he's up to date, which he likes.
  
• And finally, cleaned my house for...
• ... the prospective grad student that I am currently hosting!

Whew, it's no wonder that I am taking 8 years to graduate! And considering that my advisor either doesn't know about or has forgotten about most of these things, it's not a surprise that he thinks I'm slow at writing.