God Damn Thing Took Damn Well Long Enough

A piece of good news for everyone: I have finally finished off a complete thesis draft. And no, despite today's date, this is the real truth.

I have been hung up on finishing the conclusions section, introduction, and abstract for about the four past weeks--when I returned to full-time employment, my progress rate went down precipitously. Of course, I made a chunk of negative progress when I realized, "Man... I really need to run a few more simulations to address this question I brought up in the conclusions," and therefore added an additional 4 pages to the hygrothermal modeling chapter. Argh.

Anyway, I was previously just eking out a few pages over weekends, typically a few hours at the end of Sunday. I realized last weekend that this was a sure plan for disaster, so this past week, I did a final push--no TV, fucking around, or anything but making dinner after getting home from work: just buckling down and writing.

So the current page count is at 283. Good friggin grief.


However, the wickets left to negotiate before I am done are still significant:

• I have to get my advisor's edits to the thesis, and incorporate them. Editing a 283 page document is likely to be painful (although not as painful as writing it). My advisor also unfortunately has another student who is at least as long-winded as me--he submitted a 150 page chapter a few months ago. And I think he's trying to finish this semester.
  
• I need to submit the draft for review by my three readers (my advisor, and two other people); they will have some edits.
  
• Incorporate these thesis edits
  
• Give a presentation of my thesis, back up at school. Note that this is not actually a defense, like PhD theses--as far as I know, it is not a pass/fail item. It seems like these are typically only attended by your advisor and some other folks in the group.
  
• Complete various set of paperwork over long distance, including submitting printed copies for binding.

However, they're doable, and I have the benefit of a graduate group that takes care of their own pretty well (in terms of dealing with stuff up in Canada). But in the meanwhile, I'm friggin' glad the draft's done. Time for a beer.