Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Ups and downs

It's been an up and down sort of day, the kind that leaves you ready to keel over on the couch at the end of the day you're so tired.

After a pretty good sleep-in, I got up and, in a show of getting the new year off to a good academic start, finished off some revisions on a paper right off and sent them into the journal. This was followed by a healthy veggie lunch, a nice walk, a visit to the local dog run, and...

...an email that I didn't get the big scholarship that I applied for.

This isn't a big surprise, and this certainly isn't the first time I've been rejected. The chances of getting it are slim, and even slimmer given some of the elements of my research (it's new, a lot of people don't know/trust the field, it's a new department, really, all kind of things.) But I found myself sitting here, whining to my sweetie about how it feels so much like I'm battling my way upstream most of the time in my academic life, despite promises of yummy sushi and lots of hugs.

I know that I don't always feel this way, and part of it is the fact that I don't always take the easy route to do my work, because I really do like to push myself and learn a lot, but there are so many times when it's insanely frustrating. There are few people in my department who "get" my research, and fewer who do anything similar enough to offer me help. Heck, although the field is growing, there just aren't that many of us doing it period. Getting in with the group that are working on it frequently feels like fighting my way into an old boy's club. It's hard to get funding, especially since I need really general awards because there aren't any available that are specific to my field, and everyone's fighting for the general ones anyway.

That reads like a sob story, which is likely at least in part because I'm pretty damn tired and having a sugar crash right now. And I know that everyone goes through this sometimes, no matter what it is that they do. It's just that this is one of those up and down days (made worse because it started at the up bit, and came significantly down later. But, tomorrow's another day, and hopefully there will be more work done, and emails sent, and reading finished that will help keep me on this track a little better, and in a way that's a little less frustrated and frustrating.

Here's hoping.

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