Greetings from The Cave
The coolest thing about my thesis cave on the second floor of 79 Mansfield Street is that it is directly adjacent to a frenzied, mid-February roof replacement project at 84 Mansfield Street. Other perks include a totally average (read: shockingly noisy) toddler living downstairs, and a law student living upstairs who evidently pumps herself up for Constitutional Law lectures by pacing back and forth wearing tap shoes.
Did I mention the toddler has access to a piano?
I don’t think I really noticed these things when I began living in my cave back in the first week of January. Way back then, when rocks were soft and dirt was young, the pages were flying and figures were materializing out of nowhere thanks to the existence of two previously-polished manuscripts that served as willing sacrifices to the Gods of Chapters One and Two.
It was sometime in late January, when the aligned thesis writing planets started to droop lazily out of orbit, that I started to hear things. Like little Caleb whaling on the piano in the high octaves. (Always the high octaves!!) And now the Gods of Chapters Three and Four are angry. Chapter Five God, the Great Conclusion God, won’t even enter the cave now that he’s heard the tap shoes pacing upstairs.
And don’t even get Chapter Six God (Supreme God of Methods, Materials and Endless Tedium) started about the fact that I have accepted a position to TA another two sections for Sex Class this spring. But honestly, how do you pass up another chance to explain ambiguously-gendered people and fish species that change sex twice a day to the Yale football team? You don’t. You take the job and the large pile of cash and you tell yourself that sleep isn’t necessary if you do enough yoga and eat enough cruciferous vegetables.
Whenever I’m feeling extremely sorry for myself (which is often) for being trapped in this 12-week state of suspended dissertation-writing animation, I try to remember that life in the thesis cave does have some genuinely positive features. For example, even though lab life may have nice things like human contact and fancy laser microscopes, the thesis cave has hot water bottles and ton of mini chocolate chip cookies from Trader Joe’s.
I have also created an incentive-based system for myself on days that I do not leave the cave at all, taking full advantage of my ready access to tea, duvets, and streaming internet classical radio, all things that are pretty much nonexistent over at the laboratory. If I’m up by 7 and writing by 8, I get to stop for snack at 10:30. Lunch starts at 12:45, giving me just enough time to collect food on a tray and set myself up on the couch for the 1 p.m. episode of Matlock on the Hallmark channel.
Yep, you heard me. Andy Griffith is my carrot. I’ll admit that Matlock isn’t the best show in the world. The plot lines are about as predictable as they come and Ben’s adorable love of hotdogs has just gotten kind of gross over time, but compared to figuring out how to make a lower case ‘gamma’ in Adobe Illustrator for figure legend 17, Matlock is pure heaven.
At 2 p.m., after the bad guy confesses on the stand under Matlock’s withering cross-examination and the wrongly accused good guy gets off the hook, it’s back to work. I’ve deduced from screaming and crib-door rattling that 2 p.m. is also naptime downstairs. I try not to think uncharitably of little Caleb and I know that at 2 years old, it is difficult for him to understand the beauty of being told to sleep during the day. But if we could swap, just for one day, and he could sit and try to think up another synonym for ‘suggests,’ ‘indicates’ and ‘is consistent with’ while I sack out on the couch, I’m sure he’d be inclined to cut out the hysterics and just pass out like a good boy.
Regardless of intentions or incentives, I’m usually blotto by 5. Crazy hard yoga, teaching 40 19 year olds where sperm goes if a man has a vasectomy... I’ll do ANYTHING to get away from that cursed Microsoft Word file simply called ‘MyThesis.doc.’
It’s all over in less than two months though. Another couple chapters, some comments from my committee and an hour or so with my laser pointer and a PowerPoint talk in Brady Auditorium on April 2nd and voila!
I’m Dr. Campodonico.
Did I mention the toddler has access to a piano?
I don’t think I really noticed these things when I began living in my cave back in the first week of January. Way back then, when rocks were soft and dirt was young, the pages were flying and figures were materializing out of nowhere thanks to the existence of two previously-polished manuscripts that served as willing sacrifices to the Gods of Chapters One and Two.
It was sometime in late January, when the aligned thesis writing planets started to droop lazily out of orbit, that I started to hear things. Like little Caleb whaling on the piano in the high octaves. (Always the high octaves!!) And now the Gods of Chapters Three and Four are angry. Chapter Five God, the Great Conclusion God, won’t even enter the cave now that he’s heard the tap shoes pacing upstairs.
And don’t even get Chapter Six God (Supreme God of Methods, Materials and Endless Tedium) started about the fact that I have accepted a position to TA another two sections for Sex Class this spring. But honestly, how do you pass up another chance to explain ambiguously-gendered people and fish species that change sex twice a day to the Yale football team? You don’t. You take the job and the large pile of cash and you tell yourself that sleep isn’t necessary if you do enough yoga and eat enough cruciferous vegetables.
Whenever I’m feeling extremely sorry for myself (which is often) for being trapped in this 12-week state of suspended dissertation-writing animation, I try to remember that life in the thesis cave does have some genuinely positive features. For example, even though lab life may have nice things like human contact and fancy laser microscopes, the thesis cave has hot water bottles and ton of mini chocolate chip cookies from Trader Joe’s.
I have also created an incentive-based system for myself on days that I do not leave the cave at all, taking full advantage of my ready access to tea, duvets, and streaming internet classical radio, all things that are pretty much nonexistent over at the laboratory. If I’m up by 7 and writing by 8, I get to stop for snack at 10:30. Lunch starts at 12:45, giving me just enough time to collect food on a tray and set myself up on the couch for the 1 p.m. episode of Matlock on the Hallmark channel.
Yep, you heard me. Andy Griffith is my carrot. I’ll admit that Matlock isn’t the best show in the world. The plot lines are about as predictable as they come and Ben’s adorable love of hotdogs has just gotten kind of gross over time, but compared to figuring out how to make a lower case ‘gamma’ in Adobe Illustrator for figure legend 17, Matlock is pure heaven.
At 2 p.m., after the bad guy confesses on the stand under Matlock’s withering cross-examination and the wrongly accused good guy gets off the hook, it’s back to work. I’ve deduced from screaming and crib-door rattling that 2 p.m. is also naptime downstairs. I try not to think uncharitably of little Caleb and I know that at 2 years old, it is difficult for him to understand the beauty of being told to sleep during the day. But if we could swap, just for one day, and he could sit and try to think up another synonym for ‘suggests,’ ‘indicates’ and ‘is consistent with’ while I sack out on the couch, I’m sure he’d be inclined to cut out the hysterics and just pass out like a good boy.
Regardless of intentions or incentives, I’m usually blotto by 5. Crazy hard yoga, teaching 40 19 year olds where sperm goes if a man has a vasectomy... I’ll do ANYTHING to get away from that cursed Microsoft Word file simply called ‘MyThesis.doc.’
It’s all over in less than two months though. Another couple chapters, some comments from my committee and an hour or so with my laser pointer and a PowerPoint talk in Brady Auditorium on April 2nd and voila!
I’m Dr. Campodonico.
posted by Eva Marie at 9:52 PM
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