As I was writing the R03 proposal for NIH grant, I hit a mental breakdown (in USSR, mental breakdown hits me :P)...
Being a grad student, a conventional/structured life is practically non existing. You work at odd hours to get to the deadline. There is no one telling you to come in such and such hours, but the job has to be done. You have to motivate yourself to get off your bum and do stuff, however mediocre the output might be.
When your adviser wrote an email to you at 2AM in the morning, you have to deal with a guilt that if your adviser is still up, perhaps you should be up doing work too. As some point, after all these years spending in school, you ask yourself "why am I doing this?" Will it be that rewarding after you get a degree? Or will you just feel the same? Why are you putting yourself through so much pain? Are you missing out in life?
But then, you have come along this far. If you quit now, you would never know the sense of accomplishment.. the sense of closure. Somebody compares it with finishing the marathon, "I've done it!"
I am so close to finish and yet so far... I can almost hear "Pomp and Circumstance" playing in the background. I want to see the happy face of my parents, advisers, and all my love ones at my graduation.
I guess I would not want to have it any other way...
