General announcement to the blogosphere on dissertation submission: If your institution requires submission to the UMI site, as I suspect most do, plan to spend at least one day doing this. I thought this would be over after I stayed up all night last night, fussing with their website. Now, I've spent all day back and forth with the editor, and she's gone home, without giving me an all okay. This means another night of poor sleep, since I don't think I can sleep well until this whole saga is really over.
Any tips for Alice on relaxation are most welcome.
A done dissertation!
This week has been pretty insane. My sleep debt went up exponentially. I was up all night last night and turned in my final version to my advisor early this morning. My advisor approved it. I finally have a done dissertation. Yep. Done. Its a great feeling! A good dissertation is indeed a done dissertation!
After some logistical things this week, including writing the acknowledgements and getting the editor to check the margins etc. it will finally be in my rear view mirror. I'm the first PhD in my family, but my grandfather's initials were D.R. so I am the new Dr. Academic in my family! Hurrah!
After some logistical things this week, including writing the acknowledgements and getting the editor to check the margins etc. it will finally be in my rear view mirror. I'm the first PhD in my family, but my grandfather's initials were D.R. so I am the new Dr. Academic in my family! Hurrah!
Guilty pressure
Yesterday, I filed, shredded and generally sorted out papers that were in a big stack on my living room desk for a good long while. Whenever I do anything like this, it is a clear sign of procrastination and, in this case, massive dissertation avoidance. Wracked with guilt, I whipped through a ton of my final revisions today. I got some work done on my revisions yesterday, too, but today I checked off a bunch of stuff on my revision list. Some of these things had appeared daunting earlier this week, but today, somehow I quickly and efficiently got through them. Maybe binge writing is not as bad as they say. Maybe sometimes you need enough procrastination guilt to really get going on things, to be able to move quickly because you have to. My final draft goes to my advisor at the end of this week. That is one email I am looking forward to pushing the send button on.
a few happy things
This is one of those set of random bullets/not really a post, but I am grateful for these at the end of a long week:
cake leftovers in the fridge
polka dot snowflake fleece pajamas
lavender candle
cheery primroses
a whole new week starting...
as soon as I go to bed and wake up.
Have a great one everyone!
as soon as I go to bed and wake up.
Have a great one everyone!
Feeling the love
I am usually anti-Valentine's day. Even when attached, I just cannot deal with all the shiny red balloon and flowers commercialism of it in the stores here. Today I got an email from a prof on my committee asking me how the revisions are going, and wishing me luck, and he is a person that I am convinced thought that I was a flake until he read my dissertation. Since this is someone whose work I admire more than possibly anyone I have met in person, I am delighted that he is now being so supportive. In addition to that, a person who has been helping with my writing for the last six months, more so than anyone, this person has got me through some very stuck times, is supporting me now with my revisions in her usual, stunningly fabulous way. All of that might have been enough to make my day, but someone very close to me, that I have known for ages, who had never told me they loved me, did so this morning. I'll spare you the sappy feelings, suffice it to say, I am feeling loved today, and no-one spent a dime on me!!
the end is in sight
The light at the end of the tunnel is streaking in, and giving me energy to get through these last revisions, and emerge into the sunshine of post-dissertation glory!! Then the angels can descend, trumpets can ring, and bolts of enlightenment can strike me from the heavens, right? Like what was supposed to happen at my defense. But, this time, it will, right?
I'm a working mug *3
I am not sure how my adviser conned this mug (me) into working for another month on my dissertation even though everyone has signed off on it. Its not as though I can really refuse to, but I wish I could have said no to some of these revisions that I don't agree with. So now, here I am, my mug in front of the computer all the time, working again, on the same old dissertation.
Is this another post about dissertation venting? Not really. I actually started out writing about my coffee mug. You see, I am seriously into coffee mugs, and I vary them each morning depending on what is going to happen that day. For instance, weekends call for a tall skinny mug that I can drink leisurely without the coffee or tea getting cold too soon. On days when I want to put on my serious work persona in the hopes that it sinks into my head and makes me work harder, I have a hefty blue mug that makes me feel like a hardworking person. The blue mug hasn't been run through the dishwasher all week, I've been handwashing it and re-using it every day lately. It is a sign of how hard I am forcing myself to work this week.
Is this another post about dissertation venting? Not really. I actually started out writing about my coffee mug. You see, I am seriously into coffee mugs, and I vary them each morning depending on what is going to happen that day. For instance, weekends call for a tall skinny mug that I can drink leisurely without the coffee or tea getting cold too soon. On days when I want to put on my serious work persona in the hopes that it sinks into my head and makes me work harder, I have a hefty blue mug that makes me feel like a hardworking person. The blue mug hasn't been run through the dishwasher all week, I've been handwashing it and re-using it every day lately. It is a sign of how hard I am forcing myself to work this week.
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