Categories: phd, university
Tags: stress, work, article, noise, PhD
Date: 23 June 2009 20:05:18
At work the area outside my office building is being dug up (and has been for seemingly ages), and so for some time I have been working with a backdrop of drilling, which I have usually been able to zone out. Over the last week though, the workmen have multiplied, and as well as the ones on the ground more have appeared on the roof of my building. I'm on the top floor, so when they're walking around with their hobnailed boots it sounds like a herd of wildebeest migrating overhead. Today they started drilling.
By lunchtime I was nearly crying I was so frustrated as it was absolutely impossible to work, or even think - it really sounded like they and their pneumatic drills were in the room with me. I thought I was being melodramatic, but I went for a coffee with a friend who has an office on the same floor as me, and she said the same thing. Unsurprisingly, we will both be working from home tomorrow.
In other news, I heard today that the article I wrote a few months ago (based on the paper I gave at Helsinki) has been accepted for publication by the reviewers and editors, subject to some revisions. This has been a really big boost to my confidence, particularly as the comments were pretty much what I expected and in line with my own evaluations of my work. They are also similar to the kinds of things my supervisors say about my thesis, so it at least also gives me some confidence in their advice as well. I need to do the revisions by the end of August, and providing that's OK it looks like I shall have something published in an edited volume at some point next year. I've also had some positive comments about the draft article I finished last week, so all in all I'm feeling like I'm on the right track, more or less.