Aiming for the Moon

So I guess my balls didnt drop today at the presentation to a group of 4 professors and 4 PhD students. I think they were tired after bickering for 90 mins about some wireless network node distribution optimum configuration so they decided to let me do my half-time show in peace before resuming with their extremely technical analysis.

The meeting lasted three hours and by the end of it I had this headache from being continuously overwhelmed by stuff way beyond my level, and trying to fight the Zzz monster cos I had no part to play in the discussion. After a quick lunch, I attempted to finish my prof's paper which was crammed with so much technical information about models and statistical process analysis I lost count of the number of variables he was using and dozed off. Woke up suddenly and started blaming myself for skiiving on the job. Felt really useless that in three days at work, all I did was read three papers.

Talked to a PhD student about getting some direction on how to proceed in a useful manner without feeling so helpless and he said that it was very common to feel like this at the beginning. Felt much better after talking to him. Kinda put my focus back in place that my job is not about reading papers but really analysing the problem and thinking of a good solution. But still, my prof is a crazy high-flyer who seems to know (and control) everything, and being his direct worker I have to integrate and understand all parts of this project we are doing. He is beyond demanding, quite brilliant, and extremely busy. I suspect he has a clone, with all that work he has been doing.
 

I've really got to pick stuff up really fast now. If only to be able to show him I've been doing some reasonable work. I've got about three weeks to pick myself up, after which I expect to turn operational, which means I can start contributing actively to the weekly Thu meetings/debates. It's a tough job but someone's got to do it.