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Jul. 18th, 2005 12:59 amYet another unproductive weekend...
I went home Friday afternoon because my family was visiting my grandparents on Saturday. I didn't know Chris was planning to run the machine (I'm assuming they did when Doc got back). The necessary rearrangement of optics also upset my plan to take additional calibration measurements this evening - I was going to have a number for our magnification by tomorrow's group meeting, but that is doubtful. Something is wrong with my calculation and I cannot figure out why... it seems so trivial as to be embarassing. I'm also stuck in bugs in my Abel inversion code... there are some weird geometrical things at the boundaries that I have to rethink. Again... the plan was to have the code done, and results from it, for Monday morning. Not done. Nothing's anywhere near done, not as I had planned it out to be. And I hate failing to deliver on something I've promised to do.
Oh, I should have worked on Friday night (although my mental coherence after a long week was dubious). I could have worked more in the car to/from New York on Saturday. I got a little bit done, but clearly not enough; I know I slept part of the way and also read some other things that I had on my laptop. And then, on the train back to Swat, instead of working, I began to read Newman's The Idea of a University. Good book, interesting and stimulating insights from a learned man, but not productive.
When will this end? I've been working all summer and feel like there's next to nothing to show for it. And have I been working hard enough? Has there been a single weekend this summer in which I spent a full day working? I don't think so... I've worked in bits and pieces on weekends but never have treated them like workdays. Fire stuff is taking a lot more time/energy than I had thought it would... my plans to do more thesis writing and plasma theory studying have long since gone down the tubes. Chris is rightfully starting to get on my case about doing some serious writing... right now I just feel utterly overwhelmed. All the time that I've wasted this summer surfing the web, sleeping in, reading, baking, etc, that could otherwise have been spent being productive.
And don't remind me that I'm taking the general GRE in a week and 3 days, and that I haven't even begun to study for it. I don't think summers are supposed to be this stressful, but right now my brain wants to explode. The first problem is how to deal with having virtually nothing to show for a weekend.
I don't think fire school went particularly well today either. I barely passed the 60 second SCBA donning test... not good enough for certification day in August. As for search and rescue... I used way too much air for the amount of time we were in the smoked-up house, and my partner and I also failed to locate the victim, who was trapped behind a couch (then again, only a few people found the victim). Going in with someone who's also new is a lot different from my one other search and rescue experience on air and with no vision, during a company drill in which I went in with a member who's an experienced professional firefighter in Chester.
Time spent writing on LJ is also not productive; perhaps I should go to bed. I originally wanted to go see the performances of Il Pagliacci and Cavalleria Rusticana in LPAC on Wednesday night, but again perhaps the time would be better spent working.
I went home Friday afternoon because my family was visiting my grandparents on Saturday. I didn't know Chris was planning to run the machine (I'm assuming they did when Doc got back). The necessary rearrangement of optics also upset my plan to take additional calibration measurements this evening - I was going to have a number for our magnification by tomorrow's group meeting, but that is doubtful. Something is wrong with my calculation and I cannot figure out why... it seems so trivial as to be embarassing. I'm also stuck in bugs in my Abel inversion code... there are some weird geometrical things at the boundaries that I have to rethink. Again... the plan was to have the code done, and results from it, for Monday morning. Not done. Nothing's anywhere near done, not as I had planned it out to be. And I hate failing to deliver on something I've promised to do.
Oh, I should have worked on Friday night (although my mental coherence after a long week was dubious). I could have worked more in the car to/from New York on Saturday. I got a little bit done, but clearly not enough; I know I slept part of the way and also read some other things that I had on my laptop. And then, on the train back to Swat, instead of working, I began to read Newman's The Idea of a University. Good book, interesting and stimulating insights from a learned man, but not productive.
When will this end? I've been working all summer and feel like there's next to nothing to show for it. And have I been working hard enough? Has there been a single weekend this summer in which I spent a full day working? I don't think so... I've worked in bits and pieces on weekends but never have treated them like workdays. Fire stuff is taking a lot more time/energy than I had thought it would... my plans to do more thesis writing and plasma theory studying have long since gone down the tubes. Chris is rightfully starting to get on my case about doing some serious writing... right now I just feel utterly overwhelmed. All the time that I've wasted this summer surfing the web, sleeping in, reading, baking, etc, that could otherwise have been spent being productive.
And don't remind me that I'm taking the general GRE in a week and 3 days, and that I haven't even begun to study for it. I don't think summers are supposed to be this stressful, but right now my brain wants to explode. The first problem is how to deal with having virtually nothing to show for a weekend.
I don't think fire school went particularly well today either. I barely passed the 60 second SCBA donning test... not good enough for certification day in August. As for search and rescue... I used way too much air for the amount of time we were in the smoked-up house, and my partner and I also failed to locate the victim, who was trapped behind a couch (then again, only a few people found the victim). Going in with someone who's also new is a lot different from my one other search and rescue experience on air and with no vision, during a company drill in which I went in with a member who's an experienced professional firefighter in Chester.
Time spent writing on LJ is also not productive; perhaps I should go to bed. I originally wanted to go see the performances of Il Pagliacci and Cavalleria Rusticana in LPAC on Wednesday night, but again perhaps the time would be better spent working.
