Pastoral care

So today's post title comes directly from my supervisor.  No he's not becoming a contributor to the blog, but this was his description of a talk we had this afternoon.  I am 6 months away from submitting my thesis and I have moments where I seriously question the value of my work.  I won't call this interaction with my supervisor a "pep talk," because that's not what I was looking for, it was more of a "logic and reality talk".  It's his opinion that all (most?) students have similar feelings and that these feelings arise in particular when the thesis is in an early stage.  Following one of my prime reasons for writing this blog (i.e. helping other students), I want to make very clear that it's normal (and typical) to question your work.  Now I suppose there's always a chance that these feelings are warranted and in these cases it's important to take inventory of research, in particular why you did what you have done and what do you take from your work.  With proper supervision, I would be very surprised if 6 months before submitting your thesis, you realise there was no rational reason for your work or that after a few years you have absolutely no results to discuss (remember even a null result is a result!).  Speaking with my supervisor didn't make my apprehension go away entirely, but it was extremely help to talk about my concerns.

Before having the aforementioned crisis of confidence, I was able to write uninterrupted for two hours and drafted a couple sections for my thesis.  For the rest of the day I worked in the lab setting up for future experiments and took a couple trips to the mechanical workshop to troubleshoot some issues with the hardware that will go overseas with me in April.