Well it was clear that what was really holding me back was that damn job! As soon as I left, I was able to really get down to the business of writing and experiment running. I have to admit I didn’t hate my job. I just hated my hours. I worked too many hours for the money they were paying, and I wasn’t learning anything from the work. It was the basic same stuff over and over, and I began to grow unhappy with the work. Essentially, there was no growth potential, and I saw it coming.

Since I left the job at the end of the year, I really buckled down and did a great deal of work on my thesis and on my research. I didn’t need money that badly because I’d saved up quite a bit from when I was working. I’ve found the true value of being able to work on research without the distractions of trying to survive financially. Just a reminder to you students who are going into graduate studies, know where your money/funding is coming from! I cannot stress that enough. Working part time (in industry) and researching sucks more than you can imagine.

Topic change before I go on a rant about funding... Now that I believe I’m somewhat close to seeing the light, I figured it would be ok to dabble in part time work again. With my Drupal experience, it wasn’t difficult to get work as a Drupal developer. If anyone is looking for a tech related job, learn Drupal. I got a job with a Drupal start up that I think seems like a decent company. I stressed to everyone that interviewed me that school was priority 1, and until I finish school, I will drop whatever I’m doing to get my thesis done. These people have been good with it so far.

So on Thursday, I got an email from the new graduate secretary saying there is a Student Evaluation Form that requires my signature. I’ve been in grad school for 3 years and I’ve never had to sign one. I swear, if it is a negative evaluation, I’m going to flip out. I’ve been through a lot of BS in the past 8 months and a negative evaluation will send me over the top. But on the other hand, if this evaluation needs to be signed simply because I switched to part time studies, then it will be fine. A negative evaluation will still get a negative reaction.

I started taking pictures again. I went to the auto show today and started snapping pictures all over the place. It felt great getting back into the swing of things. I know all the commands and switches on my camera now to be able to make changes in (almost) less than a second. Anyway, enough bragging. Check out the pictures yourself. All of the shots are straight from the camera. No photo editing using any software what-so-ever. Unless you want to count the in-camera stuff, they were basically uploaded directly from my camera to flickr. Check out the photo set.