(no subject)

I've decided to equate my thesis with the Great British Baking Show.
In that it's a horribly stressful, timed, endurance event that ultimately has absolutely no real world impact to speak of.

Like, I remember in the before times, when we were homeless while our apartment was in shambles Baking Show was what I watched to destress. Because living in a world where the WORST THING THAT COULD POSSIBLY HAPPEN is your cake doesn't come out quite right.
Sure, there's always that risk something is going to get dropped on the way to the table at the end, but ultimately...it's still just cake.

If there's a soggy bottom that isn't a failure of character, or of drive.
Baking is just one of those things that requires a very specific set of circumstances, and any deviation from that leads to...unexpected results. All still edible. All still good and worthy. Just maybe not as a pretty as we were expecting.

I...I find this all very soothing to my anxious mind.
Because I am anxious. All the time.
I honestly don't really feel like I should be getting a master's degree at all, not because I didn't do the work or didn't learn anything, but because I don't see myself as an academic.

And sure, we could go into the whole devaluing of education in the United States, where a BA suddenly becomes a GED, but...that's not quite what I'm talking about.

I study what I do because I like it. Because it interests me.
Not because I have some overpowering specific focused ambition that this is a stepping stone towards. 
And I kind of feel like that's what Academia, with Capital A, is. 

And I know that's about as correct and accurate as Pratchett not being Big L literature.
But...meh.
That's where my imposter syndrome is at the moment, so we'll just marinate on that.

Anyhow, today I'm going to do my best to get an outline of methods going. Which means I'm going to be mining some papers for technical specs for the data collection method used in gathering my data set. It'll be a bunch of technical tech the tech I don't strictly understand, but at the end of the day...

I don't have to know how the ingredients work on a chemical level to make a cake.
I just need to add the right amounts at the right time.