What's killing me

Thursday last week. 8 November 2007. I came to school early to spend some quiet time to do my reports for DOST. When I stay at home, I usually procrastinate until the day has ended without me typing a single letter for my report. I have constantly been putting it off that I totally forgot it's the 2nd sem already and I badly need to pass my reports ASAP. I needed motivation to do what needs to be done and the laboratory is the perfect place to get that motivation from.

As I was approaching our lab, I saw this blue paper stuck on our door. Announcements, I thought to myself.

Blue paper on our laboratory door

I moved closer and checked out what does it really say.

RCNS updates

So this was it. This was what Dr. Binag called me for 2 months ago. Researchers get to report to the "local scientific community" what they have been doing and improve their research work through the insights and suggestions of other researchers.

Anyway, I looked at the names of those who will be presenting...

names names names

...and nearly fainted when I found mine written under the December 5 heading.

December 5. 2:00 pm. DORCAS CROOC. ahh (faint!)

I was honestly alarmed to find myself presenting my study so early in December. I knew it's going to be in December, but I didn't expect it to fall on the first week! It's just too soon!

So for the past week, I've been doing follow-ups on my experiments to get more reliable and presentable data.

Experimental set-up

What's hard for me is that I have several other deadlines to beat for my money-making brouhaha. But who says I have to sacrifice one of my duties? I can always do things at the same time. After all, I'm not called ultra-amazing Superwoman for nothing.

Doing paid opps while doing experiments

My working area

And so for today, since I am finished with the last few experiments for the first phase of my study, I will be staying at home trying to encode my data. I will be having a meeting with my adviser tomorrow, so I need to prepare the stuff I will report to him. This research update thing goes at the top of my list (together with my paid opps), and next are my pending DOST reports which I hope I can prepare as the days (or weeks) pass by.

*As I was doing this post, the mail man arrived and handed me a letter from DOST. Yes, they are looking for my reports already. Waaaaaahhhhh! OMG, I'm gonna die! (Mariel Rodriguez way of saying)