Fragmented Friday

This is my first time to join this meme. I found its theme very interesting where we can document fragments of recent events in our lives ~ too short for a stand-alone post, but too good to discard. Hence my fragments for this week.

***I was so busy this past week with my experiments and at the same time pressured for my oncoming oral presentation where I'm not that prepared yet. I'm freaking out! Can't help blaming it to my late night experiment schedules that further exhaust and stressed me out. I know I had time management issues.

***I realized coffee is no longer effective for me. Drinking a cup still doesn't wake me up and more than a cup gives me palpitations. Crazy!

***I felt so bad my daughter had to endure staying with me in the lab till late night, sometimes until 3 ~ 5 AM the next morning. So terrible. To make up with her, we usually ate at nearest McDonald's that wee hour. But I managed to fix this by dropping her off to stay with some friends for the night.

***In spite all of the challenges rocking my week, I got many blessings to count and thank for too. I'm so grateful with Prof. H1, an expert to what I'm doing right now. Although he's not my adviser but he always find time to discuss with me regarding my research.

***I'm so thankful with Prof. H2, who without any questions entrusted me their lab keys and entitled me to use their laboratory and its equipment anytime. His PhD students are equally very helpful to my project, imparting their expertise and skills to the betterment of my experiments.

***Ah, Prof. S is the best. He is not my adviser and it's my first time to solicit his expertise, but he goes beyond from simply improving my protocols to actually performing my preliminary experiments as part of our class activities. He offered the experimental animals, the experimental area, the skills and the assistance of his research assistant and students. The bonus part, I got to learn a lot of experimental skills and have parts of my experiments done. How great can that be! Indeed, I'm beyond grateful.

***My daughter learns Math and Chinese mostly without my assistance. And she often gets 100 score which I buy for 3usd each, so to further encourage her. My hectic schedule plus my weakness in Chinese can't help her in any way but I thank God for heaven sent angels to assist her ~ her teachers and some of my friends. I'm so proud of her independence, smartness, diligence and for understanding our crazy situation.

***I'm so glad to have good friends around me. Their support and hugs are very much appreciated. I would have gone crazy had I didn't have them around. Truly they're my true friends. A Thanksgiving greetings and a chat with a good friend from Fiji last night was a nice surprise too.

***My husband's constant chat and text messages everyday, though he's a country away from me, strengthened my weakening perseverance and optimisms. My mom's text messages brightened up my days.

***Indeed, for this Thanksgiving Season (though we don't celebrate one in our country), I had so many things worth thanking for!

***This particular message caught my attention. So true and had me thinking and reevaluating my priorities in life.

Wishing you all a Happy Thanksgiving!!!

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Kick ass pressures

Going back to grad school, not even been officially enrolled yet as a student, the pressure is now getting on my nerves.

Pressures, stress and more pressures are now terrorizing my used-to-be-relaxing days. Vacation is finally over and I think I'm starting to get crazy.

Then again, I thought of my own limitations. I'm quite prone to attention deficit and easily falls to depression ~ often ending up either surfing the internet aimlessly or just sleeping off my supposed-to-be-busy days.

In this light, I guess I need this bombardment of kick ass pressures ~ to push me, to annoy me, to get me pumpin' and work my lazy ass out. Sounds fair enough, right?

Hope it works *fingers crossed*! Good luck to me though!

The lazy student in me

After a year of rest from my studies, I'm geared to go back this coming semester. My kids are already settled. Their classes will start by next week, 3rd grade and kindergarten for my 9 and 5 year old daughters, respectively. On the other hand, the new semester for my graduate studies (PhD 2nd year, Veterinary Medicine) will start by next month. But still here I am, unable to work. :-(

I need to go to my office/laboratory or to the library to gather literatures for my experiments. I badly needed to finalize my research designs. My husband's schedule to work in his lab is in daytime so I couldn't do it in daytime.  I can't fully work at home either since home means the absence of online journal subscriptions, which are only available in the university. This means I need to work in the campus. Since I can't leave my kids at home (no way) or bring them to the library, my schedule hence allows me to work only at night time, (best) right after early dinner when my husband arrives home until early dawn. A good friend of mine is willing to keep me company at night time in her cozy study office. However, I just can't work at night time either. For two weeks now I've been lagging behind from my program. Why? I just can't bear to leave my kids at home (with their dad), knowing that they can't sleep without me by their sides (*sly grin*). All right guilty. I know this is just an excuse (yet true, wink*). The truth is, I am enjoying home, being lazy, with my kids ~ this is life. But how can anyone blame me? I'm still enjoying the vacation. Come on it's still summer vacation, gimme a break, lol. Being a WAHM (part-time researcher for my professor) for a year, believe me it's not that easy to get back out there. I know, I need to toughen up. I just need more determination, more discipline and a good time management. But I never thought it could be this hard. Oh I need my mom, I am so weak, so lazy...
but I will try my best to overcome this before the vacation ends! I promise!