More than just the week comes to a close....

The end of another fantastical week of graduate school.

The end of winter term.

The end of a satisfying botany class.

The final days of statistics, the final push before grades are out.  

Time to focus and drive ourselves.

And then finally it will be time for rest, time for beer, and time for sleep.

I think that will be a mantra to finish the last few days of Term: Focus, rest, beer, sleep.  Focus, rest, beer sleep.  It actually has a nice flow to it, or perhaps I am to brain dead to be clever right now.  Yes, I think it's the latter, definitely.

Stress is in the air

Well, they started again last night.  Those damn stress dreams!  You know the ones, everyone has had them at one point in their college experience.  You overslept on the day of your final, you keep trying to get to the exam and one obstacle after another presents itself.  Or the old classic, it's the last day of the term and you find out that you were registered for a class that you forgot about and you are now going to fail because you haven't been attending, and it's too late to drop it from your transcript.  

I think the stress of all the students and professors must combine to form a giant stress cloud over the university and stress storms begin to hit people at random all over campus.  No one is immune, I been told by professors who have been teaching for a quarter century that they still have those dreams about missing exams and forgetting class.  A friend described the condition as being like post-traumatic-stress disorder, once your body has gone past it's limit of stress your mind plays out irrational scenarios  on it's own.  I really don't know anything about PTSD but I'd believe that attempting to function in this high stress environment for long periods would begin to effect your health.  

In fact, all this stress has helped me discover my end of term mantra; "Just two more weeks, just two more weeks."

The Scientists' Mantra

I've been thinking about mantras lately.

Something to say to myself when I need that extra push.  Something inspirational, motivational, something that helps me to focus.  Not being in a recovery program, not ascribing to a particular religious view, and being moderately poor at yoga, I don't know any mantras.  So, I did what any laptop dependent adult would do in my place, I googled it.  More specifically I googled the scientists' mantra, thinking I'd find a inspiring message floating about in cyberspace. Unfortunately we scientist apparently are rather uninventive when it comes to such things.  The motley crew of mantras that I found follow:

Scientists need freedom in pursuing their research.

-Well true, but I find this rather lacking in inspiration and motivation.

First learn what others have done.

-A good message, an especially important one for us young scientists venturing in to new territory, but still not very mantra-like.

Anything that can be measured by statistics or quantified is by definition the right way to do things. 

-Well, I'm fairly sure this was meant to be insulting to scientists.

More research is needed.

-Very Blah.

There is value in basic research.

-Hmmm, better.  Could be especially good if you thought your research was rather rudimentary in comparison to others work., but still no winner.

Discover, develop, deliver.

-Would appear to be a commercial catch phrase, which by definition eliminates it from mantrahood.

Science for scientists.

-I really hate this one, "Science for all" would be much better.

A scientist is an objective observer and interpreter.

-Now, this one has potential, still doesn't have that powerful mantra-feeling, but it's definitely growing on me. 

And that leaves me still searching for that inspirational, motivational scientists' mantra.  Hmmm, something about the value of our work, and changing the world..... I'm working on it.