September 1, 2019

Agonizing August

This month, I started feeling a real sense of disconnection from my thesis. I spent most of it in agony. It was quite an ordeal. To be honest, I probably spent more time worrying about it than actually working on it (physically). You might remember from my earlier post that I ran into some major issues with statistics. The code that I needed to generate for my analyses was a complex one and totally new to me. As I don’t have a coding background, I required support from a statistician and it took over a couple of weeks (still yet to resolve fully).

The other reason I haven’t made enough progress was because of my teaching commitments this semester. While I have really strapped for time since semester has started, I’m really enjoying my current role and it has been a rewarding experience. However, I haven’t worked this many hours since I started my PhD so I also felt like I haven’t had enough time to focus on my thesis. I’m still yet to figure out a way to balance the two but I’m hopeful that it’ll slowly fall into place!

In other news, I decided not to attend the DAA conference in Gold Coast. The sad part is that I had even purchased tickets a while ago and really wanted to go. But I realised that it would be best not to go with a hanging PhD. It felt a little weird because I‘ve attended and presented at all the DAA conferences since I graduated as a dietitian. It was a tough decision to make but maybe it was a good thing that I didn’t go as I was down with the flu around that time.  

Overall, it was a really tough month as I had to deal with numerous challenges (both personal and professional). Dealing with a single setback is somewhat manageable but it’s much harder when you’ve got almost everything going wrong in your life (it may sound like an exaggeration but it really isn’t all that easy to see light when you’re stuck in a dark tunnel). Happy to say, I ended August on a happier note- I recently moved houses and got myself a much-needed haircut. I was really stuck in a rut, so both changes have been very refreshing for me!

Here are some of my August eats :)

Baked potatoes (white and sweet), salmon and wilted spinach
Quinoa, mushrooms and broccolini with baked salmon
Sunday pancakes with berries
Red and white quinoa with veggies and baked hoki fillets
Porridge (plain and cacao) with banana, strawberries, almonds and chia
One pan meal with quinoa, mushrooms and broccolini
Couscous with mushrooms, broccolini and capsicum + topped with pan-fried salmon