what it takes to finish a degree
I managed to get the last few things for the thesis thesis, including all of the paper appendices printed today, but the last one was done 30 minutes too late to take it to the binder myself. Fortunately, my advisor had anticipated that might be the case and told me to leave it on his desk and he'd take care of that step. All that is left to do for the thesis is to burn CDs with the electronic appendices and get that to my advisor as well. Then I wait for months till the examiners say "yay", "nay", or "fix these items and it will be good".
In the mean time I fly to Sydney in the morning, where I will spend the day with blamebrampton before flying on to the US and West Kingdom June Crown this weekend on my way to visit family & friends in Seattle (and Portland and Eugene on the way) before heading on to Italy to start that post-doc position in July.
If anyone would like to see me in Sydney, please coordinate with blamebrampton. If anyone wants to see me in the West or An Tir while I'm there, please let me know.
Accomplished since last post:
* Finished creating/editing the figures
* worked out which figures ought to face which pages such that whenever possible one can see the figure on the left hand page while the right hand page speaks about it
* obtained good quality paper upon which to print the thesis
* transferred a chunk of my remaining funds from my Uni research account to my Uni printing account so that I'd be able to print
* printed the thesis text single-sided--three copies
* printed the figures on the back sides of the appropriate thesis pages, and re-printed whenever there was a mistake made (this part took from Midnight Sunday night till 7:00 Monday morning, after having done fully 16 hours of uni work on Sunday to get ready to do this)
* got the rest of my things packed for shipping (mostly while the shippers where here loading the van with the stuff that got packed last November)
* packed my luggage for the trip
* Discovered another box worth of stuff I wanted to ship & packed it
*put in an appearance at clovis_t going away party, at which I gave away all of my remaining food, and some of the clothes that didn't get shipped and aren't going in my luggage. Also gave away my bean bag chair.
* delivered final box of stuff to shippers
* created the remaining appendices
* attended morning tea at Uni, where we had yummy cake to celebrate my finishing up & heading out
* printed the last of it & put it on my advisor’s desk for him to take to the binder’s tomorrow.
Still to do before flying out tomorrow morning:
* burn the electronic appendices to CD’s to put in pockets in the back of the books once they are bound
It might amuse you to see this graph:
I started tracking my hours spent in various tasks a year ago, in May. In June I helped Harlequin with their costumes, did fewer hours of uni work/week than in May. From then on things stayed reasonable consistent till December, when we moved house and I spent my time on "useful tasks", rather than on uni work. The next change was March, when things in my personal life got complicated, followed in April by a job offer, to commence in July, but I’d need to have my thesis done first. Look at the average hours/week of uni work climb since then! And watch sleep drop. Today I’ve had 2 hours, 48 minutes total of sleep, in three different sessions. Yesterday I managed two hours in three sessions, and on Sunday I managed four hours in three sessions. I am looking forward to sleeping on the plane!
In the mean time I fly to Sydney in the morning, where I will spend the day with blamebrampton before flying on to the US and West Kingdom June Crown this weekend on my way to visit family & friends in Seattle (and Portland and Eugene on the way) before heading on to Italy to start that post-doc position in July.
If anyone would like to see me in Sydney, please coordinate with blamebrampton. If anyone wants to see me in the West or An Tir while I'm there, please let me know.
Accomplished since last post:
* Finished creating/editing the figures
* worked out which figures ought to face which pages such that whenever possible one can see the figure on the left hand page while the right hand page speaks about it
* obtained good quality paper upon which to print the thesis
* transferred a chunk of my remaining funds from my Uni research account to my Uni printing account so that I'd be able to print
* printed the thesis text single-sided--three copies
* printed the figures on the back sides of the appropriate thesis pages, and re-printed whenever there was a mistake made (this part took from Midnight Sunday night till 7:00 Monday morning, after having done fully 16 hours of uni work on Sunday to get ready to do this)
* got the rest of my things packed for shipping (mostly while the shippers where here loading the van with the stuff that got packed last November)
* packed my luggage for the trip
* Discovered another box worth of stuff I wanted to ship & packed it
*put in an appearance at clovis_t going away party, at which I gave away all of my remaining food, and some of the clothes that didn't get shipped and aren't going in my luggage. Also gave away my bean bag chair.
* delivered final box of stuff to shippers
* created the remaining appendices
* attended morning tea at Uni, where we had yummy cake to celebrate my finishing up & heading out
* printed the last of it & put it on my advisor’s desk for him to take to the binder’s tomorrow.
Still to do before flying out tomorrow morning:
* burn the electronic appendices to CD’s to put in pockets in the back of the books once they are bound
It might amuse you to see this graph:
I started tracking my hours spent in various tasks a year ago, in May. In June I helped Harlequin with their costumes, did fewer hours of uni work/week than in May. From then on things stayed reasonable consistent till December, when we moved house and I spent my time on "useful tasks", rather than on uni work. The next change was March, when things in my personal life got complicated, followed in April by a job offer, to commence in July, but I’d need to have my thesis done first. Look at the average hours/week of uni work climb since then! And watch sleep drop. Today I’ve had 2 hours, 48 minutes total of sleep, in three different sessions. Yesterday I managed two hours in three sessions, and on Sunday I managed four hours in three sessions. I am looking forward to sleeping on the plane!