Down to the wire

So close, so close, so close, so close, so close, so close...

Booked!

BFF and I are actually going on a cruise! It'll be just the two of us, which is just as well because both of our boyfriends like to be up doing stuff, whereas BFF and I can literally sit on the beach for hours reading books side-by-side without speaking. Then get hosed and go out dancing. Also, we'll both have finished grad school just before the trip, whereas EGM will still be all stressy about finishing his diss and not enjoy the trip so much, thereby harshing my mellow, man.

I have never, ever been so excited about a trip, apart from the big trip to Far Off Land we took a few years ago. And I've never felt like I earned a vacation like I do now. I've been daydreaming about how relaxing and fun it's going to be. And I'm totally going to get a massage.

I'm sure I'll feel ill at the energy use and consumerism of this cruise, and I know that most people in the world work much harder than me and never get a break, so I'm very grateful to be able to go on such a vacation.

What's left

Taking a cue from Ambivalent Academic, I will list the remaining work I have to do on my thesis.

• Summary: not started
• TOC: fiddled with Word auto formatting to see if it would work; real version will be last step.
• Chapter 1/Introduction: "finished". Waiting for comments Academic Adviser promised would come today. Will tweak hypotheses (edited from my prelim proposal) as I do the final polishing.
• Chapter 2: "finished". Needs a read-through.
• Chapter 3: Finished and published.
• Chapter 4: "finished". Waiting for comments from Research Adviser that should come by Wednesday.
• Chapter 5: "finished". Waiting for comments Academic Adviser promised would come today.
• Chapter 6/Conclusions: Crappy draft written. Needs editing for style, and review of content to ensure it matches chapters.
  

Also:

• Embed tables and figures into text.
• Place chapters into one big document.
• Consecutively number tables and figures.
  
• Merge literature cited lists for each chapter into one big list; format.
• Format section headings to generate TOC.
• List of figures.
• List of tables.
  
• Vita

Three days to go!

Sweet and sour

My mom sent a card wishing me luck finishing up. In it was a check and instructions to get take-out some night that I work late and don't want to cook. Isn't that sweet?

The power is out in my building today, so I have to work at home. That's a bummer, because working at home never goes as well as working at work. However, RA is expecting an updated draft of one of the chapters tonight or tomorrow morning, so there is some accountability today.

I can't find my passport! It's expired anyway, but it looks like it's easier/faster/cheaper to renew than to get a totally new one. I can't believe it's missing because it has a spot. It's always in that spot. Except now. So I'm going to go tear apart the office in hopes of finding it. And I'm blogging about it because that always seems to help, right? Oh, and the reason I need to deal with this now is that BFF and I decided to take a cruise in January!!!! I'll be cutting it close on the passport, although if I pony up for expedited service I should be okay.

Edited to add: FOUND IT!!!! It was in EGM's passport spot, where I had already looked several times. It was just under something else. Woo-hoo!

They came through

All five chapters have now be read at least once by at least one of my advisors.

I planned to distribute the complete document next week. Research Advisor suggests I ask the other committee members if they plan to read it that far in advance in hopes of getting a little more time to polish. That would be great. Even if I get the extra time, I'm glad I planned to finish it this soon so I can maybe have time to "polish" rather than "frantically finish".

Reminding the Passengers that I'm not a special snowflake

The last two days didn't go so well. I got stuff done, but not as much as I wanted. My normal emotional stability vanished, and I was a bit of a mess. The passengers on my bus were screaming at me, and it really distracted me from my work. They were saying things like your dissertation is going to be a mess; your defense is going to be awful because Difficult Committee Member isn't going to understand this train wreck of a dissertation; you'll be wasting Out-of-State Committee Member's time with your shitty diss.; and so on.

But then today I was venting to Awesome Technician, as usual, and she reminded me that I'm not the first person to feel this way, which of course I know, and that I'm not the first person to have a diss. that's not perfectly polished, which I also know. But somehow her reminder kicked me out of my self-pitying state so I could work again. There's a reason I call her Awesome.

Another helpful thing happened today as well. Academic Advisor had indicated he wanted to review the main introduction to my diss., so I sent him a rough draft of it on Saturday. I ran into him yesterday morning when he was on his way out the door. He he said he had been reading it, had found some issues, and would finish with it and send me comments in the afternoon. Then I never heard anything else. So late this morning I sent him an email saying, basically, that it was shitty to tell me he had problems with my intro but to not tell me what they were. I got comments within an hour. They were super helpful, and really pushed me through the remaining work on that part.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I now have a finished introduction.

Postcard from dissertation jail

Is it unreasonable to expect that each of my chapters will get read by at least one of my advisors before I give the complete dissertation to the rest of the committee?

Also, today I wanted to stab my eyes out with my pen.

On the bright side, my wonderful EGM made chickpea curry for dinner. Can't wait!