Life Lately

Wooo... As I am writing this, I am sitting in a sports bra and my boyfriend's shorts he left here over Christmas. He also left his sweatshirt. That's mine as well now. My laptop is on my countertop, next to my Ipad, notecards, a stack of articles, a binder, a lab notebook, a glass of water and a box of Peeps you get the picture.

That's my life lately. I am trying to get research, school work, and presentation work finished. If anyone ever said a PhD was easy, they were freaking drunk and lying. This semester has felt like my entire Masters degree pushed into 12 weeks. I have deadlines with research fast approaching, research is brick-walling right now. I have a presentation in T-minus 13 days. It's supposed to be the first section of my dissertation thesis. Oh, and I get to present it to about 45 people in my department. And it's a 45 minute talk. The presentation is up to 32 slides right now. I jokingly/ seriously told one of my advisers (who happens to be on my committee) that I am going to take up day drinking to cope with my stress levels. I have an exam next week over 9 chapters of reproductive toxicology. I have a final exam in four weeks for my tox class that, oh yeah, my committee chair teaches. On top of all that, I have toxicity testing, histology, and proposal writing that needs to be done. My stress level is through the roof.

Despite all of that, I am doing daily workouts, working a weekend job, on the healthy smoothie kick, reading books, and periodically online shopping to cope with my stress. I have always been able to compartmentalize my stress and turn it on and off when I am finished working. In college, when I was super stressed, I would bake. The boys loved it. I made cupcakes, cakes, cookies, whatever..

Now I do a few things:

I run.
I cook.
I read- and it has to have NOTHING to do with science
I binge watch Friends (I just got Netflix which was a the best/worst idea)
I clean.
And my bad habit- I online shop.
(Rarely do I buy anything. But sales like Bloomingdale's friends and family 25% off. Bobbi Brown's friends and family 30% off, Nordstrom's price matching, or J.Crew Factory's 50% isn't helping. I did buy the most beautiful fun dress from Bloomingdale's for a wedding coming up.)

So this and next week, I might be a tad MIA. I'm alive. I promise. Just trying to get a doctorate that is slowly killing me. Thanks for being understanding!