I was hoping to postpone this entry until some good news came in...

[rivka]

...but then I realized that you might never hear from me again.

Continued problems with Pediatrics, damn it. I called over there at about 4:45 to find out if any potential subjects had been identified for me today, and my contact over there said yes, they had. She didn't recruit for me herself, but someone else did, and that person was going to fax me the information that afternoon or the next morning. (Note: the parents write down all their information themselves, on sheets I provided. There's no preparation involved in faxing it - you just feed the damn sheets into the fax machine.) "Is there any possibility I could get the information tonight?" I asked. "I really need to start making calls and setting up appointments." (And, you know, also we had agreed in the meeting with the Chair that I was going to get the information at the end of each day.) So she gave me the person's direct phone line. And I got their machine. And I left a message, but an hour later it's obvious that the person went home by five and I'm not going to get any names tonight.

The Peds department knows that I'm on a tight schedule, because I told them. All of my subjects need to be collected by Saturday. It really does make a difference to delay getting me names for the 15 hours or so between this afternoon and tomorrow morning, because if people provided evening numbers only (as many do), that means I won't reach them until tomorrow night.

Parents can't do many things on the spur of the moment. If I'm not calling them until Tuesday, then realistically speaking, the earliest I can hope to get them in is Thursday. The earliest. (Ideally, I would have scheduled appointments for this week last week - you know, when they initially told me they'd start getting me names, on Thursday afternoon.) As it is now, I don't have any subjects scheduled for this Wednesday - a whole day wasted. If I'd gotten the names this afternoon, I'd be scheduling for Wednesday right now. Thursday and Friday are already crowded - I've got four subjects coming in on Thursday and five on Friday. And I hate having the week back-loaded like that, because if a subject no-shows on Friday of this week I have no time to reschedule them. I'm leaving on Saturday.

The bitter truth is that I'm the only person in the world for whom this stuff matters this much. It doesn't matter to the person in Peds who's going to fax me the names whenever she gets around to it. It doesn't matter to the subject who volunteers and then doesn't show up. They just don't really care. They have no reason to care. I don't really have the right to expect them to care.

*pounds head against the wall*

Okay: if every single subject I have scheduled right now shows up, and I don't get any more names from Pediatrics, I'll have a total of 37 subjects in my experimental group and 31 subjects in my control group. That's not great, but it's survivable. But they won't all show up. 75% of my subjects showed up last week. If I get the same ratio this week, I'll have... 28 subjects in my control group. That really won't do. If Peds sends me five names tomorrow, and all of them can schedule for Thursday, Friday, or Saturday, and 75% of all the subjects show up, I'll have... 31 subjects in my control group. That's not great. But I could survive it. I think. If Peds sends me five names tomorrow. If I can reach them all quickly and get them scheduled. If, if, if.

This kind of shit is all I think about these days. My mind is constantly engaged in miserable little subject-counting and subject-predicting calculations, around and around. I'm like a mouse at the bottom of a jar, circling endlessly and getting nowhere. Either I'll get enough subjects or I won't. Either I'll get enough subjects or I won't. Either I'll get enough subjects or I won't. Stewing about it isn't going to help either way.

Comments

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

God, that sounds awful. Truly, truly awful. And I wish I didn't understand how you feel, but I do. In the summer of 1994, when I did the pilot study for my dissertation, I spent two weeks in each of four cities, and during those two weeks in each place, I had to track down 50 suitable people who would be willing to fill out a questionnaire. I swore after that summer that I'd never do anything like that again, and I haven't.

I'll be pressing my thumbs for you (as they say in Germany) that the people you have scheduled for this week are unusually reliable.

-J

[mittelbar.livejournal.com]

Ghhh.

Hgggg.

*hug*

Completely irrelevant comment, but ...

[almeda.livejournal.com]

That ring in your userpic is lovely! Is that from a website somewhere?

Re: Completely irrelevant comment, but ...

[mittelbar.livejournal.com]

It's a (probably 1960s) modernist ring by Anna Greta Eker. I saw it on ebay and totally wanted it, but I missed the auction. Other sites selling them either want outrageous prices for them (over $150 for a sterling silver ring) or are only selling the 3-ball ring, as far as I've been able to find.

Isn't it cool? It's my icon for a cheerful effect, or celebratory, or something. Which isn't entirely appropriate in this context, so I wonder what I was thinking.

[tammylc.livejournal.com]

That all sounds horribly frustrating and yucky. I'm sorry.

Hugs!

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

(hug) It reminds me of being caught in traffic, watching time tick by and knowing that I'm helpless to affect anything. I used to grind my teeth, fret, pound on the steering wheel... I've been working on trying to just let go, and accept that I'll get to [place] whenever I get there.

That said, is there any way that you could extend your stay into next week? Or on the weekend (which might work better for parents)?

[rivka.livejournal.com]

That said, is there any way that you could extend your stay into next week? Or on the weekend (which might work better for parents)?

There might be, under ordinary circumstances. But we have that grant due Oct 29th. I've already been away from work longer than Lydia could afford to not have me - I'd planned this trip before the call for proposals came out. I'll stay Saturday morning and part of the afternoon if that's what it comes down to, but it's a 16 hour drive back to Baltimore and I'm not comfortable doing more than an 11 hour day as a solo driver, and that means I have to leave early enough on Saturday to be able to get in at least five good hours of driving.

We'll see. We'll see. I'm trying to cultivate an attitude of acceptance, but I'm afraid that what I'm actually managing is more like grabbing acceptance by the throat with a strangling motion.

I hope that Pat's doing better. Does she get to go home soon?

[minnaleigh.livejournal.com]

I'm so sorry to hear how badly things are going for you there. I *so* understand the recruitment problems. It took me 3.5 months to get just the info on how to get the Red Cross to recruit people and get me their white blood cells (it's now a funny story but I still prefer to tell it with a drink in my hand so you can catch me and ask me about it after I move, if you want). Never mind the hassle of later trying to track down my own volunteers so I could follow them over time when what I wanted was a pint of blood every 2 months for half a year or more. And then the University changed the way they paid out fees to volunteers and I lost my donors. Even after The Dean's Sexy EA found me a way around the problem (grad students love bookstore gift certificates!), I had trouble finding people. Eventually, I sent a funny and endearingly cute email to everyone in my Faculty saying that if they liked me, I could really use their help and if they didn't like me, this was one way to get rid of me forever. I was always kind of surprised that the Dean and the Director of Graduate Studies, neither of whom could stand me, didn't volunteer.

After recruitment, there was the constant stream of no shows. And the times where the person pulling the unit screwed up and the donation was lost- the problem when you can't do the collection yourself. And donors who ended up on medication that meant they had to withdraw from the study only partway through. And yet, I now have a PhD and no one can take it away. So. Sending you all the data collection vibes I can muster, and a few hugs, if you want them.

[dedoc.livejournal.com]

oh dear....

I wish I had some way to help. But, Ghu hang it, I don't.

Sheesh.

On a less unpleasant note, Honored Colleague, you'll notice I finally broke down. *g*

[elusis.livejournal.com]

I hear you. Doing just three qualitative interviews with families years ago for my Family Therapy with Children and Adolescents class was completely from hell. (When the transcriber whom I'd hired to type out the second and third interview for me never returned any of my data, that was just the last straw...)

Hm, I'm reading several journals in which the owner is having Dissertation Trials right now, and it's making me exceedingly anxious about moving forward on mine... I suppose I'll be interviewing mental health professionals, though, so perhaps they'll be a little more used to making appointments and keeping them... I can only hope.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Argh. I understand how you feel, to a large degree; despair[1] is something I have to face all too often. I wish I was there to provide some assistance (or, I'm glad that I'm not there, if I couldn't help and would only get in the way...)

But...you're right that stewing won't help... and remember that 'false confidence' can help... or at least, avoid the harm that negative thoughts could cause. Keep in mind that, in one sense, you're now free to concentrate on what you have, rather than what you can't get. Don't give in to the illusion of control if you really don't have any, and don't give in to despair, because it makes despair more likely.

Oh, and don't be afraid to mention your tight schedule to parents when you're trying to schedule things... if they're already refusing, you've got nothing to lose, right?

[1] Despair might be too strong a word for you here, but it's 'my' word for this kind of situation. I think of it as a word with lots of modifiers, and that can be 'relatively' true, like 'cheap' or 'expensive'.