Finish my PhD

Hurray, I successfully defended my thesis a couple of days ago!! With only minor corrections! So now all I have to do is incorporate those corrections (shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours), print it off again and bind it, and hand it in. And there was much rejoicing!

Of course, I’m not officially Dr. Xen until I go through the ceremony and get the correct bit of paper, but the hard part is over :D

I have submitted…. I bound the thesis yesterday and sent it off… and then I made the mistake of looking at it, I think there is a mistake in one of the diagrams! I am already quite scared about my defence! I can’t afford to fail this

I should be able to finish the last bits of the thesis today… then I will have time to read it through one more time over the weekend…

I’ve been working on this so long, it seems like forever- I want it to end, but at the same time I am scared to hand the damn thing over in case I find a load of mistakes in it after I’ve submitted :D

His supervisorness has agreed to start organising examiners for me… so he can’t be about to give me 3 months’ worth of corrections to do on the last 2 chapters…

I hope…

I am so close to doing this… thesis is at 165 pages now. I just need to finish up the last chapter and then whinge at my supervisor to get him to get around to reading the last two chapters, then do his corrections, write the twiddly bits (acknowledgements etc) and then it’ll be done!!! I hope I start making progress on one of my other goals (finding a job) soon !

The last 20% of my thesis is taking 80% of the time. I’ve got 3 chapters done, one almost done and one half done… so all I have to do is finish those and then write the experimental chapter, and then I will be FREE!!! But it’s taking me ages to finish the last few bits!

I am deep in “second-year blues” at the mo. It doesn’t help that I’ve been feeling depressed lately and my concentration and motivation are at an all time low. A few months ago it was kinda going OK, was doing several experiments per week and getting some results. For the past few months, it feels as though every experiment I’ve done has sodded up and I’m losing motivation to be in the lab at all hours. I’m not in the “cross-hairs” of my supervisor’s attention at the minute either.

D’oh need motivation need inspiration need a theory that fits the data need coffee….