Working Hard, or Hardly Working?

I have to be the first to admit, the internet is not always my friend. It can be one of the biggest timesavers ever, with all the information you could ever want simply a click away. I can't even imagine doing research for a paper in an actual library anymore, although I did once back in my undergraduate days for a rather complicated French Literature paper. However, on a day to day basis, I find the internet wasting more time than it saves. All the distracting feeds from my Google reader, Facebook statuses that have been updated, not to mention the continual checking of email... I find myself wondering how much time I'm actually wasting on a daily basis when I could be doing something "more productive".

In general, I feel like graduate school is a battle to seem productive. Key word: seem. I have quickly gotten over the idea that putting in a 12 hour, maybe even a 16 hour day makes you a good graduate student. Granted, some experiments are just long and that amount of time is necessary. But I know several people who are expected to put in that amount of time everyday. I often find myself wondering how much of that time is just unproductive face time, spent googling random stuff. I'm pretty sure that I could accomplish more in a super productive 8 hour day than these people get done in their 16 hour day. I know for a fact that much of that time is spent on long lunch and dinner breaks, maybe a trip to the gym. For me personally, I would rather just finish all my work and leave at a decent hour than brag about how I didn't leave lab until midnight. I guess the point is, the amount of time spent in lab in no way measures your actual productivity. As long as the work is getting done, who cares if you leave at 3pm versus 10pm? I'm tired of being judged by the amount of time people see me in lab. If I wasted a lot of time on the interent all day, I'll spend more time in the lab, finishing things slowly. If I get my stuff done right away, I'll leave early. Judge me by my work, not my hours. It's not like I'm getting paid overtime anyway.

A Beginning Of Sorts...

Today is the day. My first blog post.

I have never really thought of myself as the type to have a blog. I tried having a livejournal once, but I found that I was more interested in reading about other people's lives than actually posting about my own, which is selfish I feel, so I stopped checking it. In fact, it may still be out there, blocking up the Internet. I'm really not sure.

However, I feel like I am at a point in my life where I may or may not have consequential things to worry about. Major career decisions, life changes, etc. And I know that many of my friends are also in the same boat. The amount of weddings I have been invited to in the past couple of years has definitely increased exponentially. So, I decided that I would try to write down some of these thoughts and worries in the hope that it would help me along the way, but also resonate with some of the people I know. Plus, it's good to get some practice writing in case I decide to have a quarter life crisis after I'm done with grad school and do something writing related.

So welcome to my blog. I'll hopefully be discussing science I'm interested in, thoughts about careers in science, and anything else that tickles my fancy (like old fashioned colloquial sayings). I hope you enjoy and comment with any thoughts of your own.

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