cotterpin

You guys, great news. I just finished the first page of my MS thesis and I'm very happy with it - thought I should share this tiny miracle. Only 59-ish pages to go before Monday when the draft is due. HAHA. (don't worry, most of it is drafted and just needs a major overhaul in style and organization. Or that's what I keep telling myself.) Welcome gryffinkat. I feel your pain and wish you the best of luck! Where are you in your program, and what subject? A PhD thesis sounds so overwhelming but what an amazing achievement... Haha, that's right. Just learn all the things and then you can take a break. Story of my life. fleaball, your roomate sounds annoying. Try to ignore her, or maybe give some reassurance that she is special and important - sounds like she might need it.

I'm out for this challenge.... I'm working 16-hour days and just can't handle it. I'll probably just repeat this one for next time. Thanks Raxie & Jormungand for the encouragement, though!

Hey fellow academic slackers! There's a theme of procrastination on this thread that I identify with strongly. I'm in my last term of my MS in Environmental Engineering and all I have to do is write my thesis, defend it, and take one more class. That's all. And yet self-doubt casts a pall over what should be a delightfully scholarly, celebratory month. Well, self-doubt and my advisor telling me a.) I don't have enough data to defend and b.) I need to get a draft done in 2 weeks. These tasks may seem mutually exclusive to mere mortals, but I apparently have academic superpowers and don't require sleep. But thank god there is finally a place where I can talk openly about R scripting. Wait, what am I doing here? I should be writing...

Hi KC, Nice to see Legolas again this challenge! I'm running too this month (or trying to, when all this ice melts). Good luck with week 1!

Hi all, I'm finishing up my MS thesis over the next 6 weeks or so, and I almost didn't post a challenge this time (although it's only my 2nd challenge ever!). But in the end I decided I want to have some quests on the books so I don't let everything slide completely without even trying. I'm joining up with you because I'm clearly a Ranger: Functional fitness is super important to me at this stage in my life - I want to start a family and, being on the older end of the spectrum for that kind of thing, really need to step up my game on general health, strength, and stamina.I can't stick to one thing for two seconds. I do backpacking, karate, yoga, triathlon, weight-lifting, and canoeing - but none of them often enough.At one point, I made my living as a an actual forest ranger.My real-life ranger hero is Marty from that reality show "Mountain Men" on the History Channel. This guy shot an elk and carried it 5 miles on his back to his bush plane, which he then flew back to the cabin he built with his own hands so he would have something to eat while he makes his living fur-trapping. What?My fictional ranger hero is probably Indiana Jones, because of his unbeatable combination of serious scholarship and rousing theme music.QUESTS are: #1: Sleep when the sun sleeps... Proper rangers don't stay up all night watching Star Trek reruns on Netflix. I need to be in bed by 10:30 and up by 6:30 every weekday to stay on top of these deadlines. #2: Eat roots and leaves... Rangers sometimes shoot elks and get invited to monkey-brain suppers by friendly cultists, but day-to-day they better learn to forage. I'm going for 5 servings of fruits/veggies every day, 6 days/week. #3: Get stronger, faster, and more precise! Achieve a certain number of total workouts of various types: 8 strength-training sessions, 8 runs, and 4 karate classes. #4: Life Quest - I used to play the piano, but since that's not especially portable for my nomadic lifestyle, I picked up a guitar - and promptly proceeded to not learn how to play it. For the next four weeks, I'm spending 3 hours/week painfully learning the basics. That's it - let's go!!

I haven't been saying much because school-wise, things are looking bleak! I'm in lab-work hell. Not to mention being behind on my thesis and other stuff. I'm a little bitter about the lab stuff because I would have started this work ages ago if it had been up to me - but I've had to wait on other people. I know it'll pass... I just need to work a little harder. I did have a job interview for an awesome company last week, so fingers crossed on that. congratulations on a great end-of-term to everyone!

Glad you are back! Just keep on clinging like a proper koaladle (I'm kind of clinging this week too) - it's almost over and then you get to start all over with a new Challenge! For what it's worth, I think the holidays are such an awesome and beautiful time, it's worthwhile sometimes to get swept up in the festive and let some "responsibilities" slide... As long as there is forward progress over the long term, I say hooray. Sorry about the sleepless nights and sickness though - that does not sound festive.

Hey, great progress! Good luck with the quilts!

Great job this week! I love that you have to switch out your regular dishes for Christmas dishes. I love getting all the shopping and decorating done by the first week of December - now I have time to enjoy everything. This week I hung up the boughs, put the ornaments on the Christmas ficus, and broke out the old Christmas puzzle. Just a few more details and then the cookies. Oh, and I saw a guy doing kettlebells at my gym today - it looked super fun and badass. I might have to give it a try next challenge.

Hooray for the end of the term! It means not-much to me since I don't have any real classes this term and none of my work is actually ending, but I'll celebrate vicariously through you all. Made a bit of a breakthrough on my independent study though - it's seeming like I might possibly finish it someday.

I know, jrosto, I can't believe it is week 6! And I'm still here... Week 5 update: Quest 1: sleep - success 6/7 days Quest 2: eat - success 4/7 days Quest 3: move - success 7/7 days Quest 4: relax - success 5/7 days So, not bad overall - although I would like to have it be more like 6/7 for all. I am disappointed in myself for not getting to bed on time and not doing my meditation, since there is no good reason for me not to do these things. I'm just screwing around on the internets or doing jigsaw puzzles at that hour so it's not like I'm being constructive. I just have this real problem with inertia - when I'm doing something, I almost always prefer to keep doing it rather than go do something else. I did get a good variety of exercise - two lifting sessions (I'm doing the New Rules of Lifting for Women workouts), went to a 2-hour karate class, one run, two bikerides and some yoga. I don't feel so bad about the food side of things - a piece of pumpkin pie, a glass of wine, too much dark chocolate... Overall I've been eating healthy, it's just that the rules I set for myself this challenge are pretty draconian (extremely limited sugar, no gluten, no dairy, no alcohol, only a tiny bit of caffeine, and missing any of these = failure for the day!). Who can live that way all the time? I haven't been tracking my calories, though (too time-consuming), so I'm probably still eating too much. Time to finish strong!

One of my major motivations for staying in shape is because I want to be able to hike the Pacfic Crest Trail (2660 miles) when I retire someday - and I don't plan to retire early so I will have to be a pretty fit old lady! I love that feeling... I can't wait to feel that feeling again someday... @Artemis & Fleaball & Quietriotgrrl and everyone: go kill those finals! I managed to climb out of my hole of thesis-despondence and write my 500 words/day this week - and I finished outlining my manuscript for advisor approval. BUT I had an unsettling conversation with Dr. Advisor in group meeting today which led me to believe I may not have enough data to defend. I still hope very much that I will be able to finish this up for defending in February, but I need to get an extremely detailed and coherent outline to my prof really soon. And I may be spending a lot of hours in the lab next month.

Definitely count your workout for full credit! My weight-training sessions (I'm a beginner too) tend to fall a little short of 20 minutes actual workout time, but I always count them as a full workout. Some workouts are longer, some are shorter, some are harder and some, for me, can even feel like kind of a cop-out (relaxation yoga??)... But they're all worthy! and 30 days of no doughnuts/extra chocolate is quite a feat, congratulations! I'm trying so hard to break my daily latte habit and am only half-succeeding. I'm sorry to hear about the crap with your job. I'm not a teacher but I know several - and there is always some horrible administrative bullshit going down in their work lives. Which sucks, because it's not the teaching that's making them miserable. Sometimes a peppermint mocha helps.

We need a "pray for this" button

Glad that you came back! As a perfectionist, I understand the temptation to give up after getting a less-than-awesome start - but ultimately the goal is to build habits and whether you are 100% perfect or not doesn't matter at all. So I think if you are making healthier choices than you were a month ago (and I think you are!), that is a win. Sometimes with workouts, it helps if I just focus on how much better I will feel if I do it, then come on here and announce to the world I'm going to go work out - then I actually have to follow through. Good luck with the rest of the week and try not to let work get you down!