I rarely talk about my (school)work on this blog, but today I’m making an exception.
This Thursday I’m heading over to San Diego to attend the SPIE Optics and Photonics conference. I have a paper in the conference, and will be giving a presentation on Monday the 22nd. The title of my paper is “Modeling Polycapillaries: Comparison between Simulation and Experimental Results”, and it concerns itself with the results of the polycapillary computer simulation that I have been coding (on and off) since 2002.
This work is finally coming to an end, since I intend to complete my PhD thesis and defend it (ie. graduate with my PhD) during this upcoming semester. This is not a lofty goal since I am more than half done with the writing (I’ve written about 65 pages in the last 3 months), but it will be a difficult goal because of the balance of my responsibilities.
During this upcoming semester I will be teaching again (a class of 135) as well as teaching a discussion group (class of 34). In addition I will be administering all of the (14) discussion groups as well as all of the (19) lab classes. This is a lot of work; more than I have ever taken on in a semester. Running everything to the usual level of perfection I strive for and finishing my thesis will likely keep me busier than I have ever been.
Truthfully it’s enough to get me down if I think about it. But I’m trying to keep my eye on the goal and take it one step at a time and know that once it is all done I can take a great big vacation and say to myself “Job well done!”