Relentless

I'm not sure how much I've written about this here, but I'm a part-time grad student and part-time support scientist. This means that at least 50% of my time is taken up by "real work". Much of the time, if there is a choice between getting "real work" done and getting work done on my thesis, the real work wins out. Why? Because it pays more than twice as much as the grad work, so I feel some obligation to work harder on it. I realize that this might sound stupid, since the grad work should be as important, since it will make my time and experience even more valuable (at least to an employer), but the almighty dollar and instant rewards wins out everytime.

This hasn't been too much of a problem so far, because I've been doing a lot of work that only required a lot of CPU time, rather than a lot of my time. But I'm currently getting to a stage where I need to put in a lot more of my time – the CPUs are still running, but I need to get a paper (or letter) out soon, which means that I need to spend a lot more time writing and pondering the meaning of the current results of that CPU time. I find that this battle between getting "real work" done and thesis work is coming to a head, and I'm really feeling overwhelmed by the amount of stuff that I need to do. Every time I think I've got the "real work" done, or at least to a point that it can wait a week or so, something new comes along. Even with my "real employer" knowing that I need to get thesis work done, and being agreeable to supporting my need to get thesis work done, somehow there never is more time or less "real work".

I think this week and next, I'm just going to have to claim an extra day to work on my thesis, and real work be damned. Wish me luck.