Pressure

Now that we have a child on the way, the pressure is on for me to finish school. To me, this is an obvious (and a little unnerving) thing, but the reminders seem to arrive in a continuous fashion. Seminary professors that we attend church with chide "well, you really have to finish now!" Friends ask me how things are going, how much longer I have, and so on. Colleagues ask about the progress of my research. The answers to such suggestions and inquiries are, respectively, "yes, I know!", "two years" (the answer is always two years), and "it's going, how about yours?" Trust me, there's no shortage of reasons to be motivated to finish ... turning said reasons into real motivation, however, is one of the struggles in graduate school. Having a child on the way, however, is probably among the best (i.e., most persuasive) reasons.

Piled Higher and Deeper is a great web comic with an incredible amount of insight into what graduate student life is like. It's written by a former graduate student at Stanford (former, meaning he graduated), and the comic, in my opinion, effectively captures the graduate student sub-culture. If you would like to laugh at the challenges we poor (literally, figuratively-- take your pick) graduate students face, you should check it out.

Back on the subject of motivation, here's today's comic:

Yes, the pressure is on!