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.