I was reminded this morning by a random thought that I only have 17 days left to study for my Ph.D qualifying exam. This will be the second and last time I will be allowed to take it.
If I fail it again, then the last couple of years I spent at the university will be completely pointless, since I already have a M.E. Well, I guess not completely pointless, since I did learn a little bit and got an internship at a government funded lab out of the deal, but it does mean I'll never get a Ph.D from the computer science department of this university. Needless to say I'd never have the heart to try again at a different university or department.
I also discovered yesterday that the research project I worked on for probably 6 months is now meaningless, since software has recently been released that solves the problem I was working on. I never had a chance to publish it because I couldn't find any test data. Oh well, I had pretty much given up on the hope of getting a publication out of it anyway.
And the day before that, I discovered that the poster that I submitted to the Supercomputing 2012 conference was rejected. Not much of a surprise there.
So I've basically been spinning my wheels in grad school for a good year and a half now. I am learning to thoroughly detest the entire process and environment. I just want my diploma so I can leave. I honestly don't care anymore about publications or whether or not I'll look like an attractive candidate for an academic profession. I'll work at this little ISP quite happily in comparison to the absolutely unreal level of competitiveness that graduate school and academia fosters.
I hate working under competitive conditions like this. Fighting for publications. Fighting for grant money. Fighting to prove that yes, I do know what the heck I'm talking about. At least here if I produce halfway decent programs everyone is happy.
Bleh, it's tempting to cross post this in the depression thread, but I'm more frustrated than depressed I think.
But I guess that's all pretty unimportant compared to the potential trouble with the middle east again. This crap is getting old.