Still stressed

Another assignment due on Wednesday; I've started it, but parts of it look rough.

I spent most of Saturday and Sunday trying to get my term project up and running; took most of today to get the datalogger programmed (with extensive work from Chief Grad Student) and reading valid numbers. There's still the question of whether I can get valid data in time for my term presentation, and (more importantly) if I can do enough clever analysis on my data to demonstrate that I've learned something from this class.

I feel like I'm really paying (with accrued interest) for not working nearly as hard earlier in the term (where it wasn't obvious, say, how many assignments would be due, and how badly they would be piled up in the last few weeks of the term). Although the course has been taught well, and contains a lot of useful material, the tail-end loading pisses me off in a big way.

I was hitting a real bad spot today--as in questioning what the hell I'm doing here at school. As in "Hey... if I get hit by a bus, I don't need to finish this term, right? That might be nicer that what I'm going through now." (yeah, so in that sense, it's a lot like undergrad days).

As one of my beloved commentors wrote: But it was rough there for a while. There's now a sign above the inside of my office door saying "SUCCESS IN GRADUATE SCHOOL IS NOT CRYING IN PUBLIC". Oh yeah. About how I feel.

I've also found it useful to titrate to control stress--when I start to get too jittery and nervous to actually concentrate on studying, I've started to pour a glass of port. Seems helpful.

And for what it's worth, it's making me feel better to kvetch like this.

As a side note, does anyone know about correlations between room temperature and depresssion/emotional mood? I'm cheap, and my apartment has (expensive) electric heat, so I'm trying to limit my house heating to whatever room I'm in. Unfortunately, this means I'm keeping the computer room at 52 F right now. Yes, like I said, I'm cheap.