Abstract Desires

I've just spent all day working on a 250 word abstract for my final paper in the Global Mobilities class.  It's amazing how long it can take to work on this stuff.  I've done a few things today besides that, like eating, filling out the general information for two more PhD applications, and spending a whole lot of money at ets.org to order score reports for the schools where I'm applying.  Here I am about 12 hours after starting on this assignment, still in my PJs, and I've finally posted the abstract.

The concept of feeling rewarded in my work is eluding me lately.  When I first started the master's degree I really felt fulfilled by the act of turning something in.  Now that I have more specific goals and desires for my work, I'm finding it harder to feel a strong sense of satisfaction once I've completed an assignment.  On the one hand, the lack of satisfaction is what keeps me driven toward pursuing this degree and the next phase toward a PhD.  However, I also realize that shuffling through my work without a sense of accomplishment is a recipe for burnout, even if it takes a while to get there.

I just came across this article, "Grad-School Blues," written for the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2009 that begins: "Graduate school is gaining a reputation as an incubator for anxiety and depression.
Social isolation, financial burdens, lack of structure, and the pressure to produce groundbreaking work can wear heavily on graduate students."  Yep.  That about sums it up just right.