Date: 08/17/05 (Algorithms)    Keywords: no keywords

I know this is a community dedicated to algorithms, but I honestly don't know what community would be better to post it in. I know there are some grad students and former grad students on here, and maybe one of you has been where I am now and can give me some advice.

I am feeling totally lacking in direction. I need to get started on work for my thesis prospectus, but I feel completely lost and tired. I'd turn to my advisor, but he doesn't even know who I am. I've looked around in the department, and the CVs of the entire faculty turn me off. To boot, while in years gone by I've always had "blue sky" dreams about what we ought to be doing with computers, I just don't have that any more. I'm somewhere between cynical, content, and bored. I just got done with a pretty big internship, and I did fairly well at it, so I know that when someone has a set of goals to achieve, I can throw down and make it happen, but I just can't find inspiration to reach beyond that. I've done a lot and had a really wide base of coursework, but I feel a lot of cynical inertia. I'm thinking this is what burnout is like.

Has anyone on here dealt with this problem before? If so, how do you manage it? I really would like to know because I need to get myself back in the saddle.

Oh, and I'll happily delete the post if it's offensively off-topic.

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/algorithms/63928.html