I know I've said before that disappointing others is my biggest fear. Well, I've taken a giant step in quite possibly disappointing everyone and his brother and it's not so bad after all.

I've been told that if my thesis isn't finished by the end of the fall semester, I'd be off the program (unless I pay for everything out of pocket, I guess). I talked to my advisor yesterday and told her that I was willing to kill myself just to finish the uber-long thesis in four weeks. Just to show how long the damn thing is gonna be, I've got 66+ pages of Excel tables and I end up writing a page and a half of text for each of those tables. That's just the results of my study too. I still have the introduction, methods, analysis, discussion and conclusion. I don't even wanna think about the literature review. That's just a long recap of everything published about my area of study, which starts with an article written in 1912. I told my advisor I was willing to finish all that plus make a presentation and defend my thesis before the middle of December (the end of the semester).

She kinda looked sad so I asked her what she wanted me to do. She just said she wanted me to stop lying to myself. We talked a little more and I cried some, and now I've decided I'm not going to kill myself for two lousy letters behind my name. The dean obviously doesn't care much that I lost a lot of time owing to my having to change/restart my thesis three times. I don't think I care much about getting a degree I haven't wanted for myself in over a year. My advisor said that she had seen me going through the motions for the last year but had known that my heart wasn't in the project anymore. I had been so excited about it when we first started but after disappointments piled on top of each other, I almost didn't come back to the US after last Christmas. I seriously wanted to stay home in Makati and go back to work.

So anyway, I can breathe again. My dad didn't faint at the thought of his "daddy's girl" not following in his scientist-cum-professional-student footsteps. This is the same dad who gave me the cold shoulder after an hour-long rant about my having a couple of Bs when my grades should have been all As. My boyfriend didn't have a fit that his girlfriend had decided to "waste" all her potential. I thought he'd break up with me, seriously. And to top it all off, I haven't been struck dead!

For the first time, I don't feel pressured to excel and damn it feels good!!! If I had two good knees, I'd be doing cartwheels right now.