Am I Just A Number?

For the last few days I have been somewhat consumed by the research grant I am applying for. My proposal is to research the so called funerary mask of Agamemnon in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. A close encounter with the funerary mask in the context of the others it was unearthed with will allow for greater stylistic analysis in order to confirm or deny its authenticity. Basically I want to go to Greece to see it! Of course I'll do research and present my findings with the potential for publication if I come up with anything groundbreaking as an argument.

My ideas are easy enough to type out and I feel just as comfortable explaining them to people who ask about it. Writing three 100 word blurbs for the application is a completely different story! The first section is about my research topic and what the issue at hand is that my research will somehow answer. The second section regards my interests and how they coincide with my mentor's expertise. The third section is where I am to discuss potential outcomes in the discipline and in my academic career. Sounds fairly simple one would think....how hard can 300 words be??

Well if you readers have not picked up on the fact that I am WORDY then you must be wordy too. More than the challenge of writing a cohesive and succinct proposal is overcoming the potential for rejection. I sat at a computer on the 5th floor for three hours last night revising the draft I had submitted to my mentor. Thankfully his constructive criticism was valid and minimal which means my first draft wasn't too shabby.

My problem last night was my tendency to psych myself out. I am paranoid about my GPA getting in the way which at this point I can do absolutely nothing so to compensate I spent hours going over each sentence and each concept in my proposal. Mostly I just battled the road block that was in my mind preventing me from creatively and critically processing my ideas.

In the end I went up the reference desk and explained to the guy working that my brain was going to atrophy and that I needed him to just distract me and jolt my mind away from research for a few minutes. He kindly humored me and did so. After a riveting discussion of rain forests, toothpaste, my childhood affinity for nerdiness, reservations, boardgames and cereal I managed to buckle down and finish my proposal within twenty minutes.

I guess what bothers me about all of this is how futile worrying and stressing is. Going into over drive doesn't necessarily produce better work. Maybe someday my brain will pick up on that and I won't essentially produce one word a minute!