Monday, January 14, 2008

A few things

My trip to dissertation town is all worked out. I'll be there from Jan. 26-Feb. 5th. I'm looking forward to seeing my friend and her baby, my department, my rugby friends and my adviser (in this order). There is also, of course, a few things I'd like to do in the lab.

Laziness: As I was laying in bed this morning, contemplating when/if I should wake up I thought about other people's sleeping patterns and was curious how many of you have to wake up to an alarm. I get out of bed anywhere between 6am and 10am. I think my average is 8am. What is so great about my life now is that I don't have to wake up to an alarm. I've read that it's much better for your sleep cycle to wake up on your own accord, but what if you have no motivation for waking up? But I think I currently have horrible sleep patterns sleeping around 10 hours per night, but does this make me less sleepy? NO. But part of my morning thought pattern was, "should I feel guilty for sleeping in?" or "should I just enjoy this while it last?"

Motivation: I read an interesting quote this morning in Conscious Choice, a free magazine. The person being interviewed said:
If something interest you, satisfy your curiosity. . . . .there was a time in which I was
writing a book when I really thought I was making it up. there was sort of a crisis of
confidence. I wondered: Is this pattern really there? During those moments, there's
a certain amount of "Just go with it." Believe it. . . . you always think you don't have
the personal capacity to fulfill the job that the universe invites you into. If you're
honest with yourself, everyone always feels a certain amount of "I'm not the right
person for this." But guess what, you have been asked. At that point, you literally

serve the work.

What spoke to me in this quote was the part about fulfilling the job that the universe invites you into. I don't always believe in the mind set that we have some divine purpose in life, but a part of me does, and it's pretty cool to think that maybe I'm studying what I'm doing for a reason and if I don't do this no one else will, and then what. I do think my work is purposeful and will aid in the understanding of this particular contaminant. So no matter what I believe or don't believe this quote really spoke to me. I'm now going to work on my research with a less focused view on it but more of a universal view.

3 comments:

ruchi said...

I am WAY lazy. I got out of bed today at 8:30. With an alarm. I went to bed at 11:00. On the other hand, I've been fighting something for a couple weeks, so that might be why I needed a ridiculous amount of sleep.

ScienceGirl said...

I will sleep for 10 hours and then feel guilty if I don't set an alarm. I think it is winter and the darkness, or lack of happy reasons to jump out of bed in the morning, or maybe that I keep waking up in the middle of the night realizing Hubby is still working (his way of dealing with a deadline).

Hope you get things squared away in the dissertation town!

Unbalanced Reaction said...

I love the order of who you want to see. ;)

I think it's GREAT that you don't have to get up to an alarm. Over Xmas, I learned that, when alarmless, I'll sleep 9.5 h. This is disturbing because most nights I get 4 or 5, with weekly averages of MAYBE 6.5 hours.