Friday, June 18, 2004

Sent off the thesis to my committee members. My advisor called this morning with very few revisions and said it looked good. The defense is in 13 days, so I am sending it out only 1 day late. (Whew!) After years of work, that doesn't seem too bad. I'm happy to have actually found some results, even if they weren't exactly the ones I was looking for, which is typical of research anyway.

So when my defense date comes, if anyone wants to send me flowers or a nice, artfully arranged basket of (live) lab rats, I will accept them graciously as is my due, for then I will be the Supreme Galactic Mistress of Science!! (Simon suggested the "Galactic" part. Come to think of it, he also suggested the "Supreme" part!)

I feel pretty tired after being up all night finishing it, but that's fine. I treated myself today by ordering from Amazon a brand-new scratch-and-sniff book and two used children's books ($20). I do feel a little guilty, because I actually have negative $250 in the bank at present, but if I don't reward myself when I do my masters thesis, then when the heck would I?

9 comments:

liz said...

Oh yes, the comment my advisor made yesterday was that I was going to be proving that it doesn't necessarily have to take months and months to write up one's results.

She's right--I crammed mine into about 5 weeks! (Especially these past two.)

Of course, I had to pretty much not do any other work at all, and work on it every day. And it wasn't easy.

argotnaut said...

So how many pages is it, excluding appendices? Well, OK -- how many pages in the appendices, too?

argotnaut said...

Oh, wait -- I knew I had seen it somewhere. "Less than a hundred pages."

Andrew said...

I'll say all there is to say:

YAY!

Good luck on the defense. Of course, you don't need luck because you are both galactic AND supreme!

YLBIL

liz said...

The weird thing is, without having seen this post, Simon mentioned he dreamt that to celebrate I had gone out and gotten myself a new rat. Later, of course, the conversation degenerated intospeculation about sending me a dozen red rats...(if only there were red rats!)

argotnaut said...

I guess you could dunk them in food coloring, but I don't think they'd like it!

liz said...

As you might imagine, that exact idea already came up. I vetoed it on the grounds that they would spend all day licking it off.

Gwen said...

Am not a rat, but as the representative rodent, I would argue against red food colouring. Perhaps instead, a bevy of rats in tiny red costumes? Maybe a barbershop quartet of similarly dressed singing rats.

My congratulations on your accomplishment. Am very curious about gender-based food choices. Example?

liz said...

Well, as my BF keeps vainly trying to get me to entitle my presentation, "Blokes eat ribs, chicks eat salads."

He's right, although it vastly oversimplifies my 2.5 years of research!

(Technically, however, "ribs" was *not* one of the mock-menu items. "Steak" was the closest item.)