As of next week I will be 3 months into my Ph.D.! That is 1/12th of the way through the 3 years they like to set as the goal finish time! It was a tough week involving some animal experiments on Monday and then an exhausting two days trying to do a solo TECAN run, but I got through it! Despite the fact that I was so shattered on Friday that I actually caught myself googling ‘good things about PhDs’ to remind myself why on Earth I am doing this! Though to be honest it never takes much reminding :) I was just pretty tired, and it had been a bit of a hard week with things getting lost-in-translation, which makes me feel really stupid because my colleagues feel like they've explained it perfectly so are not sure why I am struggling, and the absolute LAST thing I want to do is suggest that their English is the problem, because they speak English SO well, there are just sometimes verb tenses that aren’t used the right way, or something just isn't translating in a way that I understand what they mean. I really really hate feeling stupid, it’s mainly down to my Impostor-Syndrome insecurities, no matter how qualified I become I always expect someone to turn around and say “What makes you think YOU are smart enough to be a Neuroscientist!” or “Who let HER in here??” I hope to get past this one day, but have spoken to tenured Professors who still haven't shaken their Impostor-Syndrome - so I'm not holding my breath!
For the next week and a half I am flying pretty much solo, which will be a nice test to see how competent I am after a quarter of a year in the lab! Also it appears as though my Love will be arriving in Berlin on the 9th of August if there are no troubles with the American embassy in NZ (fingers crossed). We should know for sure by the end of next week :) I am struggling to keep my excitement under wraps :)
I have my meeting at the Berlin Foreigner’s Office on Monday to officially apply for my Residency Permit! I will be glad when it is all sorted!! Then it is just University Registration to get through and hopefully then all the paperwork with be DONE!
I finished reading the Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood this week, I really really enjoyed it, more so than Oryx and Crake I think, probably because I related to the females a bit more easily than I did with the Snowman, who looking back after having read Year of the Flood seems pretty pathetic and whiney compared to the females in the Year of the Flood.
IT IS SO HOT. I am mainly living off ice-blocks, I am not built for anything above 30 degrees celsius!
Song for the day: Wye Oak - If Children Were Wishes, my favourite from the If Children album, quite haunting and beautiful.
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