Hello World!

Shall I? Shall I not? Shall I? Shall I not?

I shall!

Today, after years of sneakily lurking others' blogs (and incidentally commenting - yep, that "grad student" comment may have been me), I have finally decided to de-lurk and become a more active writer. For purely selfish reasons, I must add. To rant, to be heard, and to (hopefully) gain some perspective on the whole "grad student thing".

I am not a born writer. I'm chaotic and often find myself having trouble wording exactly what I want to convey. I'm the one-liner type of person; I magically link concepts without being explicit about it and expect you to follow me nonetheless. I've become better in recent years, but still have a long way to go. When I ramble or say things that don't make sense (which, believe me, happens a lot - I try not to in professional settings though), I simply blame it on being a non-native English speaker.

I am direct and a huge proponent of getting distractions (grading, committees) out of the way as quickly as I can. I've learned that that's not always the best approach, but find it hard to change. I'm also a perfectionist, but try and be more picky what to be perfectionistic about. I'm generally happy with my position at NAU, although I'm sometimes anxious about how little I've accomplished so far and the amount of work that has yet to be done. The idea of a finished thesis freaks me out, so I'm trying to suppress any thoughts related to the word that shall not be named.

Hi, I go by Observant Academic and I hope to create my own little space here in the blogosphere where I can ponder, sigh, and be naive.