Day 151

Finished. Defended. Signed.

Okay, so printed and turned in, not yet. But good enough.

Day 139

It's done. I made a pdf. Well, so, there may be changes after the defense. I don't know. This is the version I will be submitting to the office next Thursday. 101 pages. Lost 2 pages but am still 3 digits!

Day 135

Got my last set of figures. Took all day, learned a lot, blah blah. Time to finish this sucker up!

Day 132

I hit triple digits! Incredible. Never believed it would happen. And I still have figures to generate and input. Chapter 3 is more or less revised. I'll probably have to come back to it though.

My paper got rejected, whoop whoop. Good thing the way out is through The Thesis and not A Paper, though I think it means I won't ever get hired into a PhD level engineering job. I don't feel conflicted, though. I think I'm leaving engineering research for good. On the plus side, I will probably go into lab lore as the student who graduated without a publication. This will probably

1. offer hope to future grad students also, uh, "fortunate" enough to be in this lab with an "exciting" project
   
2. make me a "success" story to grad students in therapy
   
3. shame my advisor? I'm sure it's embarrassing. Eh, no one outside the lab will ever hear about me.

On the other hand, there's another student that will probably graduate without a paper, so I might lose the distinction. On the other other hand, there's another non-graduating student on that paper that probably cares, so I'll probably keep the distinction. On the other other other hand, if for the itty bitty chance that my advisor asks me to send the paper to another journal, of course I'll do it, at the risk of losing my distinction. Oh well. Fame could be overrated.

By the way, the reviewer comment was right on. And to fix it, eh, would require another 4-6 weeks of work on my part, if lucky. If there was a new student, maybe 8-10 weeks. And that's not counting the write-up portion of resubmitting with new data. That could be short though. I'm babbling now. I am more than willing to give authorship to any soul out there that needs one and wants to do this go-nowhere project for 10 weeks.

Day 128

After another haitus in Cali, I did some more work today.

I finished a revision for Chapter 2. Next up, Chapter 3. Some new figures need to be put in but I need help getting them. In the meantime, I'm writing up the analysis as if I had the figures already. Tedious and dull work.

Day 115

I'm baaaaaack.

Here are some updates. I defend 11/5. I become full-time resident of California on 11/7.

I've spent the last month totally enjoying myself. Fantasizing about graduation, jetting back and forth across the country, and not thinking about my thesis. Okay, only a little bit.

Now I'm back for the final revision. This is the final push to finish up and turn it in. Well, okay, I'm taking next week off. But still, final push!

Tim has been working on his paper, hence the flat line. :(

Day 94

Today I completed my preliminary defense. That's right. I completed it. And now.... I can set up a defense date!!!

Of course, I was nervous about the whole thing. I had no idea what to expect. The whole thing went down in an unexpected way. One professor completely rejects the literature. Went on and on about the literature must be wrong. Okay. One professor offered very good advice on data I already have. He believes I should be able to extract more information from them. One professor was completely silent. Hmm. I wonder who that was. Although, the silence was surprising.

I'm almost home free. Almost. Still need to revise the thesis, do some extra analysis, set a defense date, defend, and throw a party. Hey, I think I will actually become a doctor soon!

So relieved. And brainfried. Time to cheer for Tim. Go Tim Go. You can do it!

Day 87

Sent it to the advisor. 94 pages. Good enough for me.

Day 86

Hehe. Here's my excuse. I'm not done!

It took all day to edit Chapter 3. It's amazing how reworking it with a clear and sound mind actually helped me elucidate some of the weird parts of the data. On the other hand, that it actually happened made me feel really lucky. I'm sure I was certain (haha) for a while that nothing would make the data sound short of crappy experimental procedure. I made a couple of new graphs, fixed a few old ones, put in the missing section (very short), and nudged everything into good English.

I think I can actually present this chapter without meekly hiding my face behind a billboard.

I beat the page-per-day marker. Haha.

2 more chapters to go. Chapter 4 is kinda wishy-washy so hopefully I will have success toughening it up. I feel a little more confident now that I've gotten over the Chapter 3 hump. And I think I got over it well. Chapter 5 is a handwavy visions chapter. This chapter just needs to sound good and doesn't need deep data support.

Both better get done tomorrow. No excuses. I need time to start working on slides!

My boss will just get it when everybody else gets it.

Day 85

Well, the goal today was to add in the last section and revise, hopefully, the whole thing. Let's see...

1. Outsourced data came out less than stellar. Not anyone's fault. I didn't have high expectations but it's kinda missing a big chunk now.
2. I didn't write in the missing section.
3. Started revising from the very beginning. Wow. You can tell it was written in pieces and out of order. It really doesn't make much sense and there's horrible flow.
4. Revised chapters 1 and 2.

You know what, I decided to stop worrying about the page count and just focus on making it the best document I can make. Well, chapters 1 and 2 actually sound like a smart person who knows what's up wrote it. And I kind of feel proud of those two chapters now. In order to make them flow and be a little clearer, I ended up writing a lot more stuff. Good stuff. And now I have more pages. :) I'm sure tomorrow I will go beyond the shortest thesis ever in the history of the lab (86 pages).

I need to finish and send the thing to my boss tomorrow though. No excuses.

Day 83

Well, that's all I can do for now. I formatted the document and the entire thing comes out to... 77 pages. This is utterly demoralizing. I mean, whose PhD thesis is under 100 pages? I have one more section to write, which realistically, is not going to amount to more than 3 pages including figures. Wow. 5 years of work and I really did nothing worth talking about. How can I possibly be ready to graduate. My thesis is a lousy 77 pages!!

I really don't want to do this anymore. I don't think I even deserve to graduate. I don't think I've done enough to earn it.

Day 82

Spent almost a week in Vegas. Back now. And yes, I did do work. In fact, I wrote nearly 2 subsections. It was painful. But it was done. I made all the plots I could make. Just a few more things to make up, er, report on.... Some formatting to do, then PDF the sucker. The formatting is turning into a big pain. Apparently with the master/subdocument thing, every time you open the file, things get undone and don't get redone automatically. Hmmm.

Day 75

Finished my last day of data collection. Sort of. Pick up my samples tomorrow morning, download and process the data.... go on vacation?

I've given up. The data is what it is. I just hope I can finish writing but more importantly, create a presentation that is able to sell the work I've done. Market it worthy of a degree.

Goals for vacation week? Process the data, finish the plots, write soooomething. If I thought I could reach any goal, I would finish writing my thesis over vacation. But I'm gonna set things low. Do sooooomething.

Right, I have data that won't be in tomorrow. I've outsourced some work to the post-doc. Thank you thank you thank you. I have to write that in after I get back. My brain is fried. I'm babbling.

I made my title page today. It looks pro. I almost believe it.

Day 71

It's all data today! One whole page! Okay, that's two graphs. But they took a darn long time to process and make look pretty. At least they're done. A bunch more to go.

Day 67

Another chapter complete! Only half a chapter to go! Of course, ideally, I would be all done writing by next Friday so I can go on vacation without doing work. But, do I really deserve a vacation now? During crunch time? Doesn't matter because my outsourced data will be taken during vacation week. Which means when I get back, I'll have only a few days to write it all in. I'm hoping to turn in my draft by 9/1, though latest deadline is 9/3. If I want to give my advisor a first look through, I should have it done even before 9/1! Ug. She probably won't care. I'll do it over the weekend. When I need to finish my contract job too. I'll be making slides over vacation.

After my prelim, I intend to jet to Cali. If I have passed my prelim, great! A couple days of not thinking about it! If I have failed, well, I'll just procrastinate on fixing it. If it's conditional pass, I'll be freaking out. But I will still not worry about it for a few days in Cali.

Day 64

Still trying to get data for Chapter 3. Today, I started Chapter 5. A fluff chapter I guess. Ug ug ug. I have nothing to say in my thesis! It's going to be waaaaaay too short. Even after double-spacing. I don't think I'll hit 100 pages. :(

BTW, Tim started writing his thesis. He's the red line. Looks like his progress will be much faster. Maybe he'll blog, too. Dunno.

Day 60

Continued writing today. Created some graphs out of my incomplete data. Yeah. The figure better end up with more than 3 points. However, my samples tonight don't look very good. I'm worried. I may have to redo them again. Problem is, I have no idea what is causing the problem!!!

I want to make some corn dogs.

Day 59

So turns out I prepared the wrong figure for the paper yesterday. Had to redo that. But this isn't about that.

I have loads of incomplete, imperfect data for my thesis. Loads of data is good. Incomplete is not. Nevertheless, I did write today, though the graph does not reflect it. Time to go with the trick of just writing what I think the data will say and then fitting in the data later. Well, if the data says something else, then I'll have to edit. Which I'll have to do anyway. Rambling.

Day 58

Spent 4 days working on the paper. Verrrrrry interesting stuff from my excellent, life-saving collaborator. Very fascinating physics. Of course, it caused me to go retake some data but hey, whatev.

I need to get back to thesis soon. Ai.

Day 54

Hooray, more progress. I even took a great new photograph for my thesis.

My collaborator saves the day today by getting back to me on my paper. I will be spending from now through the weekend working on the paper instead of the thesis. The Boss wants to convene on Monday. That essentially means I'm expected to produce the next draft this weekend. Glad things are predictable.

Oh yeah, a 4th in the lab defended today. Gave me an anxiety attack. I really don't think I can talk about my work meaningfully for 45 minutes. Found out that you only need majority vote to pass though.

Day 53

I have finally booked a date for my preliminary thesis defense. It is September 10. Now, I figure I should have a draft sent to my committee by, say, September 1. That leaves me only a month left to write. Thank goodness. I certainly hope I can finish a draft before then. I also hope my prelims go smoothly and I don't have to do lots of work after it.

Scheduling the actual defense may be hard. I was hoping for it to be 2 weeks after prelim but it might be more like a month. I don't know if I should be scheduling that now. It feels a little too overconfident.

I wrote yet another section of my thesis today. Hooray for me! And my synthesis is happy today. Now I just have to set up my second Soxhlet and I can go home to nibble on homemade garlic herb focaccia.

Day 52

Ah, all is good. Put the progress back in my thesis and did a little more. My syntheses are behaving today. I have a whole slew of expertly cleaned, base-bathed glassware sparkling and dry.

Setting up my preliminary defense date is a small nightmare. It's nearly impossible to get three professors in the same room at the same time. Aaaaah. A sigh of relief. Time to head to the house then!

Day 51

This is a late post. I actually started writing another chapter yesterday (Day 51) but since I have a habit of just sleeping my computer, IT'S ALL GONE! No, not the whole thesis. Just the new chapter. Gahhhhhhhhh. Plus, I came into lab this morning to see my synthesis, once again, misbehaved itself.

On the other plus side, advisor says I should schedule my prelims.
On the minus side, I want to do mid-Sept and defend in early Oct but one committee member is unavailable in Sept.
On the plus side, I got permission to go on vacation in late August.
On another plus side, I got fantastic new data for my old paper.
On the minus side, my advisor doesn't read my emails.
But on the plus side, she did read my email asking for vacation.

I will write again what I wrote yesterday. After I fix the fiasco that are my experiments. Is that grammatically correct?

Day 46

Crisis with my data. I'm still trying to get some good data for my Chapter 3 but I found out today that maybe I've misinterpreted a critical piece two years ago.... Everything I did counted on that.... Now what am I going to do?? Must. Manage. Crisis. GRRR.

Could I get a pity thesis and guaranteed graduation?

Day 45

I resized the y-axis of the graph. But, I would like to announce that I finished writing another chapter! Yeeehaw. I clink my scotch glass with my homemade donut.

What to tackle next? I'm still missing data for my other core chapter. :( I guess I could start word vomiting the last chapter, which is all fluff. Bleh.

Day 44

Darn. I wrote an entire subsection today and there's no change in the page length! If only I followed the suggestion for word count.... I guess it's about time that all those blank spaces from the oversized images not properly formatting should come back and get me.

I actually feel better now that I've written some more of the thesis. I think tomorrow, I should be able to finish the chapter! This is the intro chapter, so it shouldn't be hugely long. And I don't want to bore my reader or myself. Yeah right.

Day 40

Alright. I'm annoyed at myself. That flat line is ridiculously long. Today, I finished editing Chapter 4, which didn't change the length much. The file is a half page longer, though, because moving some paragraphs around affected the spacing around the images.

Anyhow, I think I need to start word vomiting again. Chapter 3 probably isn't ready to be vomited but why not give a shot at Chapter 1. Maybe it's also time to write some lame stuff like the Abstract and Acknowledgements. I kinda don't want to do acknowledgements because I'm so darn annoyed at my graduate career. Bleh.

Day 38

This is both depressing and embarrassing. It's not even day 40 and potential call-outs on my blog no longer motivate me. Well, I don't know, I guess. There haven't been that many call-outs. :P

The paper got over another step but is now languishing. No surprise. I'm too tired to fight that battle so I'm leaving it alone now.

On the plus side, the machines are all working again! I am collecting loads of data (it is what it is, I'll stop labelling data "good" and "bad") this week for my remaining data chapter of the thesis. And right, that second paper I'm supposed to write.

Although it may seem that I've not made progress on my thesis, I have in fact been editing Chapter 2. Gosh that was painfully slow. Surprisingly, I didn't end up cutting enough words to shorten the chapter. I guess I ended up adding them back to clarify statements.

Day 30

Flatlining on the thesis. Been

1. Taking holiday
2. Hacking out a lung
3. Working on finalizing my paper.
   

Day 26

Finally! I have word vomited two entire chapters of my planned five chapters. This is really amazing. Also, oddly, I have finally caught up in number of pages to the number of days since I began this thing. How sad. Only today I have reached 1 page per day.

Not to worry though. I'm going to take a break from writing new content to hopefully

1. get my darn paper submitted
2. edit the vomit of the 2 chapters

The page numbers will soon decrease....

Day 24

Today started horribly. I didn't even go to lab today because of a terrible headache. Ug. At least was able to continue moving forward.

Day 23

More progress!! I've gotten through the boring part of my current chapter, sorta. Methods are now complete. The results and discussion portion should have lots of nice photos. :) Wow, dare I be optimistic and say this chapter will get done early next week? Or reaaaaally optimistic and say this weekend?

Day 22

Same old, same old. At least I made some progress today.

Day 21

Took this weekend to recoup a bit. I think I feel better. I finally exercised. Good stuff. Put in about half a page of text today.

Day 19

Today was a low day for thesis writing. It all seems so pointless. This current chapter is just pointing out to me what was not achieved and how lame it all was/is. I stopped pursuing this a few years back but I guess I'm supposed to include it.

If I didn't know so many Drs. I would think that

1. this is impossible
2. this is pointless
3. this is a character building exercise that you're supposed to suck at

Oh wait, I still think 2. and 3. are true when applied to mediocre scientists like me. Sigh.

I find it ridiculously difficult to be optimistic about The Thesis.

Day 18

Another chapter has begun. This chapter covers work I haven't touched in over three years. I hope it will still be coherent. On the plus side, part of this chapter is coming from my thesis proposal. Which was 20 pages of lies, er, optimism. That no one read because my PDF maker was screwy. No one told me they couldn't read it until the day of my proposal. During which my advisor didn't even show up for because I was less important than a 4-star general.

I'm not bitter. Really.

Day 15

Well, this chapter is more or less finished. I should say less. The English sounds terrible. It's so embarrassing, but I'm glad I got it all out. There are, of course, some holes and filling in holes is going to take forever. 80/20 rule. GAAAAH.

Looks like I'm going to need to start planning out another chapter. The data I was hoping for from this weekend didn't work out. Bleh. So now lab will be busy redoing stuff better.

Let's see, 15.5 - 1 (TOC) single-spaced pages (with figures) for one chapter. I'm not complaining.

Looks like I need to use Microsoft Word's master-document-subdocument feature for the per chapter bibliography?

Day 14

Forgot to celebrate going to double digits. Yay! Okay.

In other news, chapter not done, but close. The cork to my Balvenie scotch snapped in half, so now it's covered with plastic wrap. I guess I'll have to finish it. Good thing scotch is my drink of choice.

How do I set up a separate bibliography for each chapter? I'm using Endnote. There must be a way to do this. Phyllis?

Day 13

I think the goal for this weekend ought to be me finishing this chapter. Realistically, though, I have some data at school that I need to fish out and that requires me not being so lazy.

I'm pretty lazy. And distracted. I have other things to do! (Unfortunately)

But since new data is coming in on Monday, yes, the right thing to do would be to finish up this chapter.

Day 12

I know the day is not over yet, and there's a good chance I might write later tonight. Except lab is darn busy since I still have experiments to do, and there's RL obligations to tend to also. I'm banking a page now. Like in The Weakest Link.

I think I'm at a slightly easier section to write right now since it's mostly pre-written for a paper already. Gaaaaaah, that paper needs to get out before I stop caring about it.

Day 10

This is a backdated post.

In a fit of inspiration and lack of free wifi at SFO, I worked on my thesis. So ha! I did manage to get some progress in during vacation time.

I should note that there has been a slight change in accounting.

• The bibliography page is now included in the count.
• The page count is rounded to the nearest half page.
• A self-updating TOC was added on its own separate page.

So, the "drastic" increase in the number of pages is partly explained by new accounting but ALSO explained by the fact that I wrote several more paragraphs. Yeehaw! I'll take victories where I can. The TOC was more fun with figuring out what else Microsoft Word can do. Quite amazing. I never knew....

Does this post sound oddly optimistic? Maybe vacation was a good idea. Or, maybe CALIFORNIA is a good idea.

Day 7

Sheesh, so many days without progress! Wedding festivities are over, not back at school yet. I guess it's time to get back to writing. Maybe tomorrow. Ugh.

Day 3

Today I made some more progress on my thesis. Actually, I added another figure, which took up some space, AND added a table along with a few more paragraphs. Hmm. Meanwhile, I also backed up my thesis. I had to do some HF work today. Wrote for a few hours, then went out for 10 scoops of free ice cream.

I also found out that you can insert "captions" in Microsoft Word. And you can "cross reference." Wow. I'm too lazy/bored to learn to TeX like all the cool kids. Blaaargh.

Alas, I may flatline for a couple days because I'm heading out of this darned place for a wedding. Of course, now that I know there's at least three people who have heard of this blog, I guess I will attempt to do some work while away from lab. For a whole week! I'm so excited!

At this rate, this thesis will take forever. Blaaargh.

Day 2

Today is day 2. Instead of working on my thesis some more, I've now spent at least an hour figuring out

1. how to publish only graphs on Google Spreadsheets such that the chart automatically updates when new data is added
2. whether I should start another low-audience blog to clutter up cyberspace

Well, the answer to number 2 is clearly yes. So here it is. The graph will update as I write. Or not write. I have no idea when the end will come. With my lack of motivation and interest, it is sheer willpower that will get me to graduation.

RAWR.

Leave some comments. I'll read them because I'm always looking for a way to procrastinate.