Nice way of putting it :)

I was having some real problems lately doing my research. It became really depressing. Some of you may remember my rant against some of you regarding the screenshot thing. Anyways, today I just sort of "honestly" talked about my problems, lack of motivations, some things that happened in the recent past.
Anyways, the guy responsible for my mental wellbeing (lol, sort of responsible) just starting saying "yeah no problem, here's what we do" etc. Somehow he got me out of this mess with just a few commentaries. I don't understand, I thought I was really in trouble, but apparently it was that easy to do something about it.

What sort of research do you do?

Physical chemistry primarily. I have some confidentiality restraints, which doesn't really allow me to talk about it, but I guess if I'm generic (and vague, lol) as here it can't hurt.

It's so vague I don't even know what you are talking about.
Some context please?

Academic research or industrial? If you need academic advice, PM me.

Industry and academia both. A part of the project is in quantum chemistry, in other words submitting calculations to a large computer cluster. The point is that these kinds of calculations have a limited ability to predict what would happen in a reaction flask. The question is then, what are these calculations even worth? How do they help in understanding what happens in a flask? This question managed to depress me. :-) And that's really all I can say about it...

Red is developing the T-Virus for the Umbrella Corporation, doncha know. :-)

Ugh....I *hate* fast zombies...

hey redhouse existential crises are the norm for grad students.

I recently spent a week revamping our backup system... incorrectly. I feel like most everything I do will be considered a waste of time by anybody in the scientific community who even bothers to look at it - therefore I revel in that and just use the time to do the best I can.

Thanks YJ, that's actually a good starting point. I'm not a grad student though, I'm a PhD student.

Aren't PhD students grad students too (or do you mean you already have a PhD?) I'll be starting grad school this fall, so I'm hoping my motivation lasts for a while. The first time my work stagnates will be when my resolve will really be tested, so hopefully I can find inspiration by then :-)

Until then, http://bit.ly/Id5xhe

Santosh, in what field? I am myself a PhD student, although thankfully at the other end of the process.

Security, computer science. What area have you been working on?

I thought PhD candidates/students wer also grad students. Bachelors is undergrad and anything in Masters or Doctorates/PhD is grad school. Right?

Santosh beat me to the phdcomic. MS (soon to be PhD) student in electrical engineering (physical layer security of radio). holla. I wonder how many grad students are here? Seems like an oddly high fraction.

You take your confidentiality agreement too seriously.

I have just completed my dissertation in history. It's about the New Deal and the rural South. If anyone wants to buy a copy, please let me know.

I think graduate school fits well to webdip and similar activities because a graduate student's time, at least in my case, is so flexible. At least in history, even in the busiest time of the year I only had scheduled work about half the time. The majority of the time, I was doing my own research and writing at my own direction.

So, how many times did you watch O Brother, Where Art Though? during the past couple of years? And, Doctoral thesis or Masters thesis.

It is my doctoral thesis, and as I am revising into something a publisher might looks at, I am seriously considering using Washington Hogwallop's line "Sorry, Pete, I know we're kin, but they got this depression on" as the title of my first chapter. It so perfectly sums up how rural southerners imagined the Depression, plus it brings in southern notions of family and kinship. What a great movie.

In a venn diagram, grad student completely surrounds phD student.

I am also both, redhouse.