first draft of my dissertation COMPLETE

just wanted to share that i have finally completed the 1st draft of my dissertation. i am still making minor modifications, but the bulk is done. i will be ready to send out chapters for comments and feedback in just a few days. this feeling is so awesome, and i am just thankful that i was able to persevere and get to this point. things lined up very nicely, and i am happy to see that my deadlines i set for myself worked extremely well. the last 2 months have been long and arduous, but it is always nice to see that the hard work was not in vain.

one of my new mantras is 'make the struggle mean something,' and what i mean by this is that too often we fail simply because we give up just before our time comes. if we can just hold on a bit longer, most times we will achieve our goal. most times you can defeat your adversary simply by lasting longer than he can.

p.s. - AIRPORT FRUSTRATION...we've all had it standing in the check-in lines....this is an interesting story about an airline CEO that got a taste of his OWN medicine in his OWN airline's check-in line

jackass is NOT a DAMN curse word....it was on cartoons i watched as a kid

just heard a caller into the rickeysmileymorningshow and she said that president obama cursed. jackass ain't a damn curse word. damn is though....lol.

i guess this post was practice for twitter usage. sorry for the brevity. just had to share.

'bow in the presence of GREATNESS' - kanye west

congratulations MJ. regardless of what you say, YOU ARE the greatest player ever. thanks for the moments and the ride. i am just grateful that i was growing up during the time to have you as a role model. you have shaped my life and inspired the competition that drives me EVERY DAY of my life. i cannot thank you enough and owe you so much. you were put on this earth to play this game and you did it the best.





GO HERE TO ESPN to see the top 23 moments of his career. be ready to be astonished

will THIS struggle ever go away

probably not as long as we still have racist parents spreading that cancer to their kids. look at how the president of the damn united states was treated most recently by a member of congress and no one is fuming. i swear, the entitlement of certain individuals.

peep how in the video his daughter is called 'black' simply because she was not white. as comedians have said, if you ain't white, you're black. this was a great example of this. look at what non-white people have to deal with in ALL walks of life.

i like this article

i would argue that in a world where access to the world's information is ubiquitous and open, and there are almost no secrets anymore (or gatekeepers of information restricting access), this type of mentality will infect other professional areas, not just tech and medicine:

the truth about managing geeks

the last few years were preparation for these last months of my phd

it just dawned on me the reason i was placed here in cambridge and have had the social (or serious lack there of) experience that i have: the purpose was preparation for this very moment where work has become balls to the wall as i make this final push to finish my phd. the fact that i am not missing some great social life (as has been the case since day 1) in being in the office for 10-12 hours daily makes it much easier to put in the necessary hours without a second thought about something more fun. here in cambridge (at least my experience...can't speak for everyone) 'something more fun' does NOT exist and will NEVER exist. this just isn't the place for that. at least not the fun that i am used to and long for.

cambirdge is simply full of cambirgde-caliber students. and frankly, there isn't a place on the cambirdge university application that requires you to be a social being....just smart. no 'urban' social outlets here. just.....well, i'll leave that part out as i have bashed cambirdge enough in one post!

p.s. - i think it is interesting how people thought racism in america would disappear overnight just because we have a black president now. them people still hate anything non-white, and all this controversy over the school address is just a manifestation of the deep-seated hatred held in too many people worldwide. like chris rock said: "i always expect racism."

a question for the people

inspired by a conversation with an amazing friend yesterday, i pose this question to you all:

is it possible to love your life and your blessings while at the same time hating what you do daily to earn a living (e.g. your job)? how long can you separate the two? how long before the positive overcomes the dislike or the dislike corrupts the joy?

i'd love to hear what you all have to say.

still fighting the dissertation monster

sorry for the hiatus, but things have definitely picked up. i swear, i am doing 5 things at once. between finalizing experiments, writing in 2 papers (another paper is about to start...and all the deadlines are in a month!!!), writing in my dissertation, preparing for life after grad school, and reading related work, i don't know which end is up right now. all this craziness will be over soon (or at least that is what keeps me going when i feel too tired), and i look forward to some time off. we've definitely come a long way, and we are almost done.

back to the grind