What it takes to finish the PhD, part 1

1.  Perform studies for three years.  Work on projects in five different areas.  Get lectured about not responding to emails fast enough.  Learn many clever tricks to locate code snippets to patch into your own work.

2.  Create a thesis outline.  Watch your adviser rewrite it.  Rewrite it again as you begin working on your thesis (it's just a guideline, really).

3.  Read several other dissertations trying to get a sense of how one puts together such a document.  Puzzle over what in the world makes your adviser say the one packed with grammar mistakes is well-written.  Come to the realization that dissertations are unofficially ranked first on thoroughness and second on originality; writing style is far less a consideration.

Writing a Dissertation: a Word of Caution

I can virtuously say that writing my dissertation started several months before I intended to finish, as I located a suitable template and began copying and pasting chunks of other papers I had written back in November of last year.  I then didn't touch it again for a couple of months.  Hey, I had started it, and I had an outline and everything.

Writing recommenced in February, when the bustle to put out conference notes in early March had larger passed away from this lowly graduate student performing studies and become a thing of editorial boards and professors.  I ended up having a couple of weeks at CERN during which I could focus on writing, but this lovely time ended at the beginning of March when I had to pack up and move back to the United States, to complete my dissertation and prepare for my defense in a place where people couldn't come lean over my desk in my not-cubicle and ask more questions.  At the time, I had drafted about five and a half chapters of my thesis*, two of which my professor had seen.  I anticipated writing at eight total.

I despise moving.  I have nightmares about airports and air travel.  This move was putting some significant distance between me and my fiance.  It was a stressful time.  But I survived the apartment-emptying and stuff-packing and luggage-weighing and goodbye-saying to find myself arriving at the Geneva airport very early in the morning after a painless taxi ride and handing over my luggage with no complaints at all about weight.  It was marvelous.  I settled into my seat for the nine hour flight, and allowed myself to watch a movie before thinking that I should really be good and convert some more of notes into actual dissertation text.  I opened my laptop bag (which also contained my headset, webcam, camera, and several books and other electronics; I was moving after all) and saw this:

What's in a year

 

(You come to the blog and enter upon a scene of colossal clean-up.  The air is cloudy from dust.  In the midst of this, you see our host, hard at work.)

Oh, hello.  Welcome back.  It has been a while, hasn't it?  But I have two very good excuses for that.

Excuse 1:

 

 

Excuse 2:

 

Yup, I finished my PhD (wrote-defended-revised-submitted the thesis) and got married all in one year.  I also moved four times and counting, since I am not done settling in yet.  It's been a busy year. 

Time-out for cake

Sheeeeeeeeee . . . don't tell; I'm supposed to be writing my thesis.

But thesis-writing has the amazing ability to make one both quite hungry and suddenly full of inspiration for every other writing project one has ever contemplated. Ever. So allow me a little cake-writing before returning to my technical design reports.

I am not the baker of my family. Shocking, I know. But growing up I was never as eager to be attached to the oven as my little sister; the attachment to baking came later, when I had to start consistently feeding myself. 'Twas her who collected cookie recipes and could time every element of a meal to be done within minutes. I could . . . well, I could turn out a decent batch of brownies, but more ambitious projects tended to run into problems.