Research training wheels

Everything was plodding along at a manageable hectic pace, but somehow I went to sleep one night last week with everything under control and woke up to chaos.

Boss’s projects are all coming together at the same time, which of course means my work load has doubled – and it isn’t even especially remarkable work. For example, today I learnt the ins and outs of mail merge. Exciting stuff all round. But recruitment has to be done, and eventually I’ll have to start the long process of recruitment for my own work and learning the way that someone other than Advisor A approaches it is actually of surprisingly practical use.

However, because I am putting in extra hours for Boss, Advisor A is getting frustrated at my lack of progress on my own research. She has always expressed a certain amount of disapproval at the fact I work for Boss, and now feels she has a legitimate reason to vocalise those reservations a little louder than usual. But I do see (and am worried) that I am letting my research take the back seat. My university tries to deter research students from getting involved in large projects removed from their own research, but doing work with Boss is the only hands on research experience that I am getting. I mean, how does the department expect me to conduct ‘good’ research when I have little of my own practical experience, further coupled with a limited time (and budget).

So that is how I am justifying working with Boss, both to myself and Advisor A. A little lost time on my phd now is probably going to save me time in the future. But that doesn’t really help temper my current state of sleep-deprivation unfortunately.