Upcoming Masters VIVA presentation

Well, the date's fixed and it's on 28th of July :P

The bad news is that I had to write a manuscript before that date and have the slides ready... especially considering that I have practically forgotten quite a lot about my project. Guess it's time to do some intensive reading up... 

I have a really bad feeling about this VIVA... like I did when I was getting ready for my FYP presentation... but at that time, I'm actually happy with what I've gotten (results, although not that good) and I'm actually interested about the topic at hand. 

My supposed project is on TB and hopefully be able to find a way to diagnose it faster... it's a noble cause. I've done extensive research on that topic and had wasted more than half a year on it... with an interim period of 1 year plus... I guess you can understand my frustrations of not being able to do my own project because of some bureaucratic mess that could have been easily solved if someone just kept their big mouth shut and their ego deflated... and that I didn't have to waste months waiting for other people doing "side-projects" that didn't pique my interest at all, cannot be entered into my thesis or be published (I don't care much about publishing academic journals though) and is found out to be defective at the end (I've noticed something was wrong with it, but every time I said "something's not right, I want to double check using XXX method (which costs money)", I was rebuffed).

Now, my current project is not entirely my own and is about something that I have little to no interest in... and the "best" part, I had to do everything within 3 months and start writing or I'll need to shell out ridiculous sums of money for a piece of certificate that I now feel is rather worthless. 

How is it possible to get good stuff within 3 months after you had to suffer through 1 year plus of depression? I tried. The results look rather good... that is until I run them through the software and found the glaring problems. More than half of my results depends on the numbers from the software and now I can't use that part at all, unless I do everything all over again... (I've repeated everything once before). Time is not on my side.

Here comes the clincher... I got an email from my PI who received it from one of my external examiners about how dissatisfied she was with the thesis (she used less than 10 words to express this). Let's just say that this rant is due to this. She (I think it's a "she") then proceeds to use the other more than 10 words going on "student has no respect for the PI"... I was like WTF? Is this my thesis that you're reading about or is this a text-based psychological analysis of the student? If it is the latter, then IPS must have submitted my thesis to the wrong examiner...

Plus, I have absolutely no idea how she could jump to such conclusions from "boringly" written discussions about EPO, doping, assays and aptamers. Heck, it's not like I had a page added into it with "Stupid PI" written all over it. I'm extremely baffled to say the least!

And then there's the worry... if I have this sort of person as my ext. examiner, how the hell can I pass my VIVA? She obviously have some preconceived notion of me (perpetrated by whom, well, let's just say that I have some ideas, but not solid enough to throw accusations around) when she had not even met me! And with my rather weak (IMHO) results, it'll be more than a fight to the "death"! 

I'm not sure I even want to graduate anymore - to hell to those type of people. The postgrad institutions here are so weird (in a bad way) and negative. I'm sure not all people are like that, but I can't seem to find anyone that I think is cool and normal (well, besides the new lecturer who graduated from US - I'm not putting names here... but I dunno, I feel like she's being hugely affected by the very toxic, so-called "academics" there).

I just want to break free from that very mentally harmful environment forever, but I can't do that until I know my final "judgement" at my VIVA. No matter the outcome (for me at least), I think I would be glad to be rid of all these stuff... Though I could be extremely disappointed and perhaps upset to know that I've wasted my best (almost) 3 years there for an experience that has lasting harmful effects on my psyche.

... and I've seriously regretted not following my friend's advice to leave the lab when I had the chance. At that time, I had very promising results (for my previous project) and I thought it would be possible for me to finish this fast - I already know how toxic that lab can be, particularly through the effect on my very cheerful friend - she turned very gloomy at the end.

On the side note, I'll be posting up the "acknowledgement" part of my thesis here after I've submitted my final copy or if I get delayed indefinitely again (I will choose termination if it comes to that). I already saved enough cash to pay back my scholarship if I had to... which amounts to half the cash I need to buy my own car... zzzz

I'm thinking of putting up my entire thesis on scribd too... for free. I'm rebellious that way heh... well, free education and whatnots, right? :P Ah well, I won't go through with this... no guts xD


P/S: Seriously, I have to stop keeping stuff in the draft folder and forgetting about putting them up. - this was written months ago btw. Anyway, everything went well on VIVA, except where that part I embarrassed myself by being caught off guard by a simple question that I, needless to say, answered incorrectly. I did well for the tougher questions though, I think.

P/P/S: Just to let you know I have a whopping 100 drafts in my drafts folder LOL. So yeah, I'll be trying to get things up ASAP. Not sure why I suddenly reignited my passion to keep my blog up to date, but since I had that drive, I might as well make the most out of it :P