Wednesday, September 17, 2008

am I being paranoid?

I started reading a book called Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day thanks to a recommendation from a friend. I'm not writing my dissertation exactly since I have no data, but I've been working on this review for a while and I really want to send it out by November. Anyways, the author emphasizes that the most important way to make progress in your writing to to really write every day. That's what I've been doing.

Over the summer I tried getting to work at 9 am and working until 5, but I didn't make much progress on the review. While I was writing my grad school applications when we were in RFC, I did almost all of my writing in bed. I would wake up, get out the laptop and write, sometimes for four or five hours before getting dressed. I think writing in bed as soon as I wake up has worked well for me in the past so I'm trying it again. Every day so far this week I've started writing before I do anything else, and I don't get up until I make some kind of progress.

Here's where I might be unreasonably paranoid: My preferred laptop position while I work in bed is not on my lap- it's right on top of my lower abdomen. I'm kind of concerned about damaging my reproductive potential from the electromagnetic radiation from putting a laptop right on top of my ovaries for hours on end, possibly 10-20 hours in a week. I know there's no evidence for laptop use damaging my reproductive system, but what I'm doing isn't exactly normal use and I do want to have kids (preferably the low-tech way).

What do you think? Can any of my readers assuage my fears with science? Or suggest a solution that doesn't involve me getting out of bed?

4 comments:

Anne-Marie said...

What about a padded lapdesk? You can get ones with fans to keep your computer cool as well.

Paulina said...

it's funny, but I have the same fears.

Anonymous said...

Slashdot had a discussion on this a while back; it's asked from a male point of view, but it still contains some relevant information:

http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/02/203218

Hope that helps...

Karina said...

Hmm, the slashdot thread was interesting but it was much more about heat.

Please keep commenting if you know more about this than I do! I'm still concerned (and so is Paulina).