i passed the 1000th-article mark for my meta-analysis some time on thursday, and have probably read the abstracts for more than half of those. i'm reminded of my rather painful time doing literature searches in NIE, except that then i was actually getting paid somewhat more than i am now (ouch). the tedium of this project has also finally convinced me that our qualifying exams are terribly designed -- any collaboration is disallowed, while in the real world no one does any science on their own. thus, one demonstrates not competence but the willingness to be beaten up by the system, a trait that we've arguably already shown by applying to grad school in the first place.