Step Away From the LEDGE!

After the let down of my statistical results, I was ready to quit this program altogether.  I decided that if that was the way that I would feel when my research didn’t get the “right” results, that this was not where I belonged. Told my husband I was quitting. Told my best friend that I was quitting.  Didn’t write the results up into the paper that was due yesterday. Why? BECAUSE I WAS QUITTING!!!

So I came into the department office, and knocked on the statistics professor’s door. I told him that I needed to quit. He talked me out of it. Even gave me an extra day to do the write up. He said his job was the department hatchet. He has to convince the students who need to quit, but don’t want to, that they ought to.

These are some of the things he said that helped me change my mind: 1) There are more graduates from this program who go into jobs where they don’t have to publish than who go into jobs where they do. 2) I’m near the top of my cohort. 3) He could tell the first time I talked to him about my research question that I was too close to it, and there are lots of things I can work ON without getting worked UP. 4) His dissertation failed to reject his null hypothesis, meaning his data didn’t support his hypothesis either. On his dissertation, not just a class paper.  5) He gets to be 3rd author on lots of papers just because he’s the guy who crunches the numbers. Which I’m getting pretty good at, so maybe that’s a track for me. 6) I’ve made tons of progress in his class, which was frankly the one I was most afraid of.

So I have been working on statistics all day today, and I have until midnight tonight to send him a rough draft of the research paper. And he’ll critique it, like he’s doing for the whole class, before we have to write up the final product. We have a chance to fix any mistakes and make improvements before it is actually due. I’ve got lots of the parts of it done. They just need to be pulled together, and I can do that in the next few hours.

I just got out of my Tuesday night class, where there was an assignment due at midnight tonight as well, which of course I hadn’t done either. That professor announced to the class that he’s giving everyone an extra two days for it, because so many people didn’t do it over the holiday. Which gives me the time now to get on that rough draft.

I took a Xanax and an Adderall after class, so that I’d be able to focus and not stress while I write. I’ve been doing this blog while I wait for them to kick in.  Feeling pretty good now, and more awake and alert than I was. So it’s time to shut this down and get after it.

Right now, I’m really grateful that he talked me down from the ledge. Let’s hope I stay happy about it.