You know, everything was just fine until this past Thursday.

Then, it was time to run this experiment that was the culmination of four years of work.

It was an utter failure. And I only have myself to blame.

I really don't need this shit. Seriously. I was doing just fine with engineering. And then I got to thinking about developing my botany skills, and how much more marketable it would make me. Yeah, right! Now I'm staring down the barrel of a job interview that goes like this:

Them: "I see your resume is pretty much blank for the last four years here Mark, what have you been doing?"

Me: "Failing at earning my doctorate."

Them: "Don't call us, we'll call you."

I wish I were kidding. But I'm not. Not even a little bit. I've single-handedly managed to torpedo my entire fucking career.

I don't know why I decided to switch away from ecology and field work, which would have served me well. And I really, seriously, don't know why the fuck I decided to pursue this project here at the University of Chicago, of all places, since they have nobody but me on campus here working on the molecular genetics of plants.

It was misguided, and stupid, and now I'm paying the price for it. Even though I was admitted, I've spent the last four years existing on the goodwill of the various other professors that do molecular work, but not on plants. For the most part, they've been helpful. But the technical issues, dealing with the molecular biology of plants... well, it can be difficult. And it's totally beyond them. And why the fuck would they care, anyway?

As a result, I've had to do everything - literally, everything! - myself. Imagine doing the post-doc for your own PhD, instead of having lab support, and you can see the shitpile that I find myself in, today.

This sucks, by the way.

So maybe you're wondering...

Mark, you're saying, what the hell went wrong here? How is it possible to fuck yourself over this aggressively? How could everything be riding on one lousy experiment? And you're a scientist, right? Negative results are still results, right? Even data that disproves the hypothesis is still data for the dissertation, right?

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

It was my own self-confidence that killed me. I've always been of the opinion that I can learn anything if I put my mind to it, but at this point I'm ready to concede that it's just about possible that I overestimated my abilities, here. I've had to force myself to learn unfamiliar disciplines at an absurdly high level in a ridiculously short amount of time, and that was my first mistake, folks.

But the bigger problem is the lack of actual data. It's not a "null hypothesis" situation, where I can say, "Well shit, that didn't work!" No, in this case, the process failed me. Why? I don't know. I didn't think of something, and I have no idea what it is.

I still haven't taken my quals, and now I'm thinking it might be the time to go ahead and do it. Mostly because I have nothing fucking else to do, at this point. Spending a few solid weeks cramming for the test sounds like a tropical vacation in comparison to what I've been doing this week.

What have I been doing, you ask? Oh, nothing that would be considered embarrassing, like long, awkward meetings with the committee chair, trying to explain my situation without bursting into tears. They have reiterated that I absolutely MUST be finished by the end of the next academic year. I'm so tempted right now to just give it up. Walk away. Another ABD hits the pavement. Happens all the time, right?

I constantly wonder just why in the hell I did this. I had a good job. Things were going well, professionally.

But was I satisfied? Of course not! I just had to try to take things to the next level.

I'm just about at the end of my rope.