Lorena just came back from Seattle. She was up there for about five days to help Kelly because she has time for nothing but studying. In her PhD program she has to do two formal papers in addition to her dissertation. They are full-blown research projects with experiments and formal write-ups good enough they are often published in scholarly journals. Since first year students generally have never done such formal research, they have to learn everything from scratch. That was certainly true for Kelly. Kelly’s presentation of her first year paper takes place the second week of February and she is working every waking hour on the paper, her TA responsibilities, research for her advisor and the classes she has to take.
Lorena went up to help her get caught up on shopping, house cleaning, laundry, etc., etc. We have decide Lorena will go up for a few days every other week until Kelly finishes her paper. Her qualifying exams are scheduled for July so she will only get a short reprieve before she gets slammed with work again. Then another short reprieve and another push to her second year paper. After that, the work will be tough but not so time sensitive. Having Lorena there for a week helped a ton. We need to do the same thing for Christian, too, but he has already passed his quals, so his next big thing is his dissertation.
Betty Blonde #469 – 04/28/2010
Click here or on the image to see full size strip.