The doctor is in, or AHHHHHH!!!!

Well, it’s official. I mean it’s TECHNICALLY been official for alike two weeks now, but I made it! So why the delay in making this post? I can explain, it’s been a rush… what else is new? But I almost didn’t make it, almost. So now I’m done and I’ve got to figure out what to do next. There’s a lot of “what ifs” going on right now, so there’s a lot to talk about and I already have half a dozen or so post topics I need (want) to cover, which meant that today I really needed to write. Well now that we’re getting all over the place, let’s take this a little more systematically, shall we?

Welcome! For those of you who don’t know me I’m a Ph.D. candidate in neuroengineering. Okay that sentence was a bit awkward, but I stand by it for the effect. I (also) have a B.S. and masters in mechanical engineering (way different, trust me on that one). And for the past four years almost to the day I’ve been blogging about my degree progress in what I call the 365 days of academia project. Well I’m done, so spoiler there, but it was a journey and I do have thoughts about it I plan on sharing later. I mean a four year project needs a good ending and this is certainly not it… not yet anyway.

So what happened lately? That my friends is a story all on it’s own, which is why we’re talking specifically about this one thing today. Mostly it will help explain the lack of updates since the last post, which looking at it was nearly a month ago?! Where does the time go!? I guess it makes sense, and so will my absence in just a minute. For real this time, what happened you may ask? The story goes like this…

I was done! I passed my defense, and I specifically want to say thank you for those who could attend your support has been the difference between failing and succeeding I promise. After we cut the zoom meeting to the public, my committee delegated with me in the room asking questions about the project and what was next. Then I left for what felt like a lifetime, but when I was called back in I had passed, I believe that is where we last left off from the story. Well there were some edits that school-PI wanted to see happen. Everyone else had signed off on my nice little form saying I was done, except for school-PI, who informed me that he would sign it once the edits were done. So it was a mad dash to make those changes happen.

Things were going well and I was hopeful that I would make my deadline, in fact I was convinced I would make the deadline for submission (which was like two weeks ago I want to say?) when out of the blue school-PI emails me and suggests that even though I passed, I COULD put off submitting my dissertation to the end of fall term. Yeah, he meant well and was looking out for me, but I nearly fell over and died on the spot (only semi-joking, I did have to double up on the anxiety meds for awhile there, no shame in that!). Again, I’m sure he was just thinking that with the edits and my work schedule it would make more sense to just finish in the fall and take my time with making the changes.

HOWEVER, I couldn’t do that. Not only could I not do that, my job and a lot of future plans were built specifically with me finishing this summer. Basically it was a matter of life and death, or rather plans and just sailing off the cliff without any idea about how I would survive. I’m sure school-PI would’ve gladly taken me back full time or hospital-PI and I could have (with some luck) worked something out with the hospital, but I really did not have the energy to take all that on. While I live mostly comfortably (let’s say semi- paycheck to paycheck), I need a source of income (don’t we all) or the meager savings I have wouldn’t last the month even if I ignored most of my bills.

You can see why I had to double up on my medications now, right?

Thankfully the story has a happy ending! I made the edits basically the same day and the next week school-PI arranged for me to give an update to the lab on the changes I implemented. Overall, it went well and while there were some minor things he wanted to adjust, I got those done the same day while I was at school (I anticipated I would need to do some changes so I even had the data loaded and ready to plot) and waited for him to sign the form… and waited… and waited… but he did the day before it was due. I can’t say I was thrilled with the last minute signature, but at the same time he’s very busy so I only bugged him like twice a day to sign it for the entire time. Thankfully he was understanding and didn’t just blow up at me because I flooded his email with reminders to sign it. It made me feel better, what can I say? Anyway, point being he signed it, I turned everything in, I’m officially a doctor. Oh and since we were counting, the final page count was 126 numbered pages (which doesn’t include all the front stuff like dedication, acknowledgements, index, etc.).

He (school-PI) even threw a party to celebrate another student and myself both finishing our PhD’s. It was fun, albeit a little chaotic for me. I had just finished a very long experiment at work the day before (for those who don’t know what a long experiment entails), so I was physically and mentally exhausted on top of having to socialize like that (which is already exhausting for me). Still, I promised myself I would commit to this kind of thing, so I did.

As of yesterday I got word that school-PI wants to submit my dissertation into the running for best dissertation for the 22-23 academic school year (for the department, not the whole school). So now I need to make a short (five minute) video explaining what we did, what we found, etc. Which I’ve basically been doing for the past five years anyway, so no problem there! There are only two winners, but the prizes are pretty awesome, not only do you get recognition, but first place is $1000 and the second is $500. I’m not holding out too much hope that I will win especially seeing the previous winners, but as I’ve seen over the last few years anything can happen!

And that brings us (mostly) up to date on where I am. I’ve got a particular paper update to share, the end of the project to write about, and a whole lot of other stuff I want to discuss, so with any luck I will be writing a bit more frequently than I have been. You know, now that I can actually sit down without having to freak out about what to work on next.

Speaking of which, I feel like I’m suffering from a whole different kind of PTSD regarding that. Any time I take a break to watch a movie or just mindlessly surf the internet I’m plagued with a nagging feeling that I have some nebulous work out there I need to do. I guess that’s what happens when you work full-time while doing your PhD. 0/10 don’t recommend.

For those interested, my official graduation isn’t until December (the ceremony I mean, on paper I’m 112% done… thankfully). I’ll actually be attending graduation, I’ve never actually attended one before, so something to look forward to! I figured this one was important and while I should’ve celebrated the others (seriously celebrate everything, you deserve it), I (probably) wasn’t in the best of head spaces to do that. I won’t be able to zoom my graduation obviously, but I’ll try to post a photo or something once the big day happens.

Once again, my sincere gratitude to all of you wonderful people out there who followed along and gave me a steady stream of encouragement. My brain is a dangerous place for me to be alone and thankfully I had so many of you supporting me that I survived. I get the feeling that when I express my gratitude to people, especially in person, they think I’m over exaggerating or being overly flattering. I’m not, not even close I’m just that thankful. Maybe I just have really big feelings, but that’s just how I am. So truly, I could not have done this without all of you. I mean, how could I fall with so many of you there holding me up?

In short, thank you.