Milestone acheived. Ten thousand points!

So...I had my first committee meeting.

It went well. I made one major mistake in completely forgetting to talk about an important aspect. I just...forgot? No idea, got to the end of my talk and thought "oh my god! I didn't talk about that at all! Well, someone is bound to ask me about it"...and then they didn't. Oops. And told me that next time I should probably cover it. Yup, sounds about right.

I stumbled a bit on the questions (can't do mental math. At all.) but most of the things they wanted to know, I had ready answers for. It definitely didn't feel like "they will keep asking questions until you don't know the answer," which is what I was prepared for (and dreading).

And it was fast! Over in 45-50 minutes, I think. I guess partly that's due to the whole first-one-don't-really-have-much-data-yet shortness of my presentation, but one of my committee members even commented on how quickly it went.

However.

As much as I'm pleased I didn't fuck it up, I can't help but regret spending so much time (a week, basically) prepping for the meeting and related requirements, and basically stressing like crazy over this.

And I worry a little that not having weathered the difficult questions now will hurt me later on--like during quals, when it really matters. And my committee members are sympathetic to the project. What happens when I meet someone who isn't? It's enough to make me want to ask them to turn it up a notch. I'll wait and see. Everyone says the second meeting is the hardest, anyway.

On the plus side, instead of feeling drained and miserable about my shortcomings, I'm energized and ready to generate some data! Wooo! Yeahhhhhhhh! *fist pump*

Committee Meeting Scheduling Fail!

Yeeks.

So I knew that scheduling committee meetings was going to be tricky, but I had no idea just how true that was.

So far there is no time in a 3 week period when I can get all 3 of them in a room together.

Oh well, not an insurmountable problem. Just annoying.

For the record, I'm using www.doodle.com to do this (as suggested by some of my fellow students) The name is awful and I hate the emails it sends, but it appears to work.

Now if only the calendar gods will cooperate.

Research proceeds. No complaints.