Alice laughed. `There's no use trying,' she said `one ca'n't believe impossible things.'
`I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. `When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast...'
--Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
I received an exciting e-mail the other day--I had just completed stage 9 of my dissertation process: conducting research! The only problem was, this e-mail had been automatically generated by the e-mail alerts I had arranged through the U's library dissertation calculator, and it in no way reflected the reality of my actual progress.
This is the nature--for me and, I'm sure, for many other graduate students--of making plans related to program completion. I make plans for jumping the various hurdles associated with my PhD requirements, but to what extent are these plans built on belief, wishful thinking, or just plain delusion? Is the plan enough to motivate the action?
This blog will be my attempt to explore this process.
No.
This blog will be my attempt to make public this process, so as to better insure some measure of personal accountability.
No.
This blog will be my attempt to motivate myself to achieve the goals I have set for--
No.
This blog will be my way of dissertation-procrastinating ("disscrastinating") when I am tired of MSN games, browsing the web, cleaning out my refrigerator...
Yes.
I have come to the conclusion that meeting all of the goals I set for myself is impossible. There is some joy in that realization, though. Whatever tasks I will not be able to check off at the end of the day, I know that I can at least list the things I know I will not get to. Because I like that "Alice in Wonderland" quote, I'm going to aim for listing and discussing six impossible things in future posts, tasks that I need to accomplish, tasks I would like to accomplish, tasks that maybe I even believe I could accomplish--but tasks that, by the end of the day, will have been revealed to be impossible.
I invite anyone else who is or has been similarly situated to offer other impossible things, or new and exciting means of disscrastinating, maybe even potential solutions to the "impossibilities" that seem so daunting.