MRPhobia - and his bucket of parts

With just less than one year left to get my degree, I am trying to wrap up what is required to graduate. One of those pesky requirements is a master's research paper aptly named the MRP. My employer kindly agreed to let me take on one of the projects they had goin' on and use that for my research. This was beneficial in more ways than one, most notably the fact that I could use work time to do the research for school. Just to clarify, I am paying for the joyful experience of going to school. While not a perfect counterbalance, it helps. Also, I had a deadline to complete the project which injected itself into my motivational unit and produced results.

There is a distinct relationship between the amount of free-time a graduate student has, and how much time they spend doing school related stuff. Keep in mind that part of the "school related" bit includes avoiding doing anything school related. Anyone who has worked with criminal offenders will notice this phenomenon at work: an inmate/offender/resident/probationer/parolee (in no particular order) will spend vast amounts of time an energy attempting to get out of doing whatever it is "the man" told them to do. Now, while often times the level of innovation is clever and even astounding, the end result is usually the same- disciplinary action for not following the rules or conditions of release.

Similarly, a graduate student, or perhaps any student for that matter, uses a tremendous amount of energy attempting to get out of doing exactly what will allow them to graduate.

Lucky for me, I have a wonderful adviser who does not go easy on me, but is still encouraging. Alas, I have the first draft turned in, and back to me. I wonder what's on T.V. this weekend...