venting

I'd like to take a few minutes out of my busy Thursday to vent about my feelings of inadequacy. I don't know what it is about today, but today I have felt groggy, un-energetic, and inconfident of myself, my intelligence, and my abilities to last in an academic world. Maybe it's the allergies or the fact that I've skipped two workouts this week, but I'm feeling off.

Anyway. For one of my classes, we spend most of our time workshopping the research papers and projects we're working on. I'm in a small group--three very smart, respectable guys and me--and we read each other what we've written so far and then give each other suggestions. Within this group of smart, smart people (did I mention they're smart?) I feel stupid, stupid, stupid. And like I'm on a different track than them and have different goals than them, even though we're all in the same PhD program. They asked me again today where I intend on publishing the paper that I'm working on, and honestly, I don't intend to publish this paper at all. It's just a month's worth of observations and one interview, and the "results" that will come out of it are hardly worth publishing, in my opinion. But between my group (two of whom, at least, believe everything we work on should be with the goal of publishing) and my newly-signed-on POS committee chair, I'm feeling like I'm going to have to try to publish it somewhere. That pressure is making me feel very out of place, very un-intelligent, very non-motivated in a "you don't belong here" sort of way.

So I'm discouraged. I don't see how I'm going to spin this into something that some journal somewhere would want to publish and find that journal within the next two weeks' time. That, in addition to writing the paper, doing the reading that needs to provide the theoretical background for the paper, writing up analyses of the readings for my other class (another twenty pages), and get everything extra that Dr. R wants me to do before I leave for home. And I'm desperately wanting it to be May 3rd or 4th, because on one of those two days I'll be on my way home, done with the worst of this, and be able to stay there--besides a honeymoon jaunt to Ireland--for three entire months. All I want to do is sleep. My eyes feel so heavy, and I got more than eight hours last night, so I'm pretty sure this is allergy-related lethargy. And my hair's bugging me since I decided not to shower today and it's feeling rather dirty. Okay. Only four more hours until I head home. I can do this.

Thanks for letting me vent. As if you had a choice.