Ten years ago I took the first steps to something important, this becoming-a-doctor thing.\u00a0 It’s so close now, that the last step is consuming all of my mental energy and my discretionary time.\u00a0 In the midst of it all I’ve left emails unresponded-to, missed appointments with friends, and have been a bit short-tempered in situations where I would usually be calm.<\/p>\n
I’m told, by others who’ve done their PhDs, that this is normal.\u00a0 The end is hard and intense and time-consuming.\u00a0 For me, it feels a lot like when I’m almost to the top of a rock-climb and I’m exhausted and my whole body is shaking from the effort to get there.\u00a0 At that point it’s all I can do to keep focused on what’s in front of me and take it one step at a time.\u00a0 If I get distracted by anything other than reaching the top, it’s likely that I won’t have the energy to do that one last push to get there.<\/p>\n
So…I apologize for my flakiness in the meantime.\u00a0 Just a few more weeks and I’ll be on the other side of this and life will go back to photos and paddling and poetry and time-with-friends once again…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ten years ago I took the first steps to something important, this becoming-a-doctor thing.\u00a0 It’s so close now, that the last step is consuming all of my mental energy and my discretionary time.\u00a0 In the midst of it all I’ve left emails unresponded-to, missed appointments with friends, and have been a bit short-tempered in situations […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6152,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-deep-thoughts","category-school"],"yoast_head":"\n