walk

Hold my beer.

I should be writing my thesis, and instead... I'm programming whatever not important and not too difficult project that will be something like 50 - 200 lines of code...

Normally my personal projects have some key feature/challenge that make them interesting, but they are not too challenging so I'm motivated to work on them for 2-3 days without doing anything else. After that I have some idea that seems easy to do, except maybe for some little detail, 3 more days working on it, .... I'm not finishing most of them. Either I'm not able to solve the key challenge and give up, or I solve it and then I don't have the motivation to continue with it anymore. I save the project in case I want to continue it later and switch to another project.

On the other hand my thesis feels so out of reach and boring and too challenging... Moreover I'm not sure I'll stay in academia after all so I have less motivation to work on it.

zampano

My own pattern viz. coding (and most other things, for that matter) very much mirrors this. I'm beyond frustrated by my inability to really *accomplish* anything, and haven't been able to figure out a way to make being a perpetual dabbler actually lead anywhere.

commence2897

my thesis is just around the corner. ten thousand words due in very early May. i have written nothing; i have researched nothing. i float on a bed of music knowing that, one way or another, i will end up somewhere; a place where i need to be.

except i want to be more considerate with my dissertation. i'm going to be writing something relating to the discourse on intersex folks in a particular setting, and i want to take some pride in talking about that community.

i hear a lot from folks that i'm immature for this way of thinking, though i know what i need, and what i need is not what they need.

i wish you luck either way. what is your piece about?

walk

I'm writing about elliptic curves, these are mathematical objects very relevant in number theory.

Writing the thesis feels like trying to repeat what seems very well known (I'm biased, spending 3-4 years learning about it makes it feel it is well-known).

And I'm not sure if I'm writing the ideas in the "right" order, with enough detail, ... I'm very unsatisfied with my writing.

commence2897

that's an incredibly interesting topic, but i can empathize with feeling repetitive. i just finished my dissertation discussing homohysteria propagating through Internet memes and i felt very boring making similar points that deviated only very slightly from the overarching spine of my essay.

i'd very much like to read your thesis - if you're willing - after you finish it. i've wanted to get into mathematical academic writing for a while as a prerequisite for some projects i have in mind for the future :)

beefox

I'm programming whatever not important and not too difficult project that will be something like 50 - 200 lines of code

ah, a 6 month long 2000 line project then?

procrastination