GrandeChaiLatte

Yes, it is normal. Procrastination is a sign of several things: anxiety, stress, burnout. When was the last time you took a vacation? If you don't have much time, try taking just a full weekend off to go somewhere. Anywhere, just to be outside and forget about work. Anticipating the trip will help you set goals, and when you get back, make sure you have enough time to rest and recover. You will feel refreshed mentally and emotionally.

My principle has always been: "Email is a passive form of communication". Email is wonderful because it's a recorded form of communication, and when you're incredibly busy or you want some time to think about your answer, you can sit on it. If it's an urgent matter, I answer it right away, otherwise, it can take a few hours up to 2 days for a reply. I do laboratory benchwork, and it's not practical for me to stop a critical experiment just to answer an email. To be efficient, I try to do go through my inbox first thing in the morning, after lunch, or at the end of the day. I don't think your time frame is "rude". It also depends on how anxious you are about replying to it. If you are, just go for it.

I'm writing because I'm getting confused and overwhelmed. I'm losing motivation, which is so critical at this point in my grad school career... My boss moved the lab from US to Germany two years ago. At that time, I was a 4th year student. I had quite a bit of data and I was too invested in my project already to let it go, so I stayed behind for a year and decided to follow later. My plan was to finish up in less than a year. This timeline is extremely critical, for two reasons. First, I was aiming not to go beyond 5-6 years in graduate school. Second of all, by following my boss, I entered into a long distance relationship. I finally moved last August. It's been 8 months, I'm officially in my 6th year, and all this time, I've been working my butt off to finish my project. I am in the process of writing a first-author paper on the first part of my project. There is a second part of the project that my boss also wants me to finish. However, it seems like it might take between 6 months to a year to finish everything. I've invested so much in this project, but at this point, I don't really care anymore. I want to ask my boss if I can do less and pass the project on to a new student, at the risk of being delegated as a middle author, but I don't know how to approach it. I don't know how to say, "This is all I'm gonna do. I'm ready to leave". I feel like my work here is never going to be done. And so here I am, in a strange country, working overtime while trying to adjust to a new culture. I had not been so good with the latter. I've hardly made any friends here, and after 8 long months, I hardly understand the language. I wanted to go out and explore my new surroundings, but it hasn't been happening much. I have to work on weekends just to keep productivity up, and I've been going back to the US several times for meetings with my thesis (I am still registered in the US school). It's great because I get to see my boyfriend, who lives in the same city, but it can also interrupt long-running experiments. I am incredibly homesick (I'm really from Asia, but US is second home to me). Just when I'm so close to finishing, just when I need moral support the most, everything is gone - the great friends I've made in the US, my regular hobby (latin dance classes, which I can't take here because I haven't had time and I can't understand German). I have video chats with my boyfriend (he also visited me recently) and family back home, but it's different. To top it all off, I'm getting extra pressure from them. My parents are impatient for me to graduate, and keep asking why I'm taking so long, it's supposed to be only for 5 years, blah blah blah. My boyfriend has been so generous and patient, but there are moments when he wonders why it's taking me so long. And everytime I tell him that it might take just a little bit longer, I'm so afraid that everything we have will unravel. Our plan is for me to go back to the same city, find a postdoc position (the city has a lot of options), and be together again. But that dream just seems so out of reach right now. I'm starting to regret that I moved. The project is good, the lab members are great, the boss is a great mentor and scientist, although pushy at times. But right now, I feel like I'm throwing everything that's good in my life away, for the sake of getting a PhD. There is no hope.