Is there a Dr. in the house?

After many months of waiting, I finally heard a few days ago that the examiners have finished with my thesis and have decided that my research is worthy of a PhD. This is great news, and I only need to make some typographical edits to the thesis and return it to my uni.

Once it is signed off by the head of school and my thesis supervisor, the university will grant the degree and I can finally call myself a Dr. We are all happy to have this long journey be coming to an end.

Dave and the kids are all doing well in their studies also.

Eventually, I will be able to wear a silly hat like the one below.

And I may have to get this T-shirt as well!

The end

Of the thesis I mean. :)

After many last minute corrections, and the editing of far too many uses of the word "however", my PhD thesis is finally written. Next it goes to the Graduate Research School, and then out to the examiners to be graded.

Fingers crossed that it will be a good result!

So, what have I learned from doing a PhD thesis?

• It takes a long time
• It could easily take much longer, but I ran out of time
• Coming up with new ideas, or new ways to use other people's ideas is surprisingly hard
• Research is fun, but academic writing is hard
• I'm glad that it's done!!!

Procrastination ahoy

Yes, you can tell that procrastination is in full force when I start taking pictures.

This is one of the lovely things my mother-in-law sent up to us. It's a brass holly leaf, so we can have Christmas year round.

It actually has cute little feet under it to keep it raised off the surface of a table or shelf.

And then that wasn't enough procrastination so I pulled out my cookbook and made a pineapple upside down cake. My excuse is that tomorrow is my birthday, so I deserve a little brown sugar.

Yum!

So, remind me what weekends are like?

Lately I've been writing, writing, writing. I just realized in the last three weeks I've written three chapters, adding up to 88 pages! Yikes! No wonder I'm tired.

This weekend while I'm huddled up with the computer at my desk, the kids and Dave are downstairs cleaning out the basement. We have company coming, so we've moved up the annual spring cleaning by about three months. I must add that I am using the 'Royal We', as moi (to  quote Miss Piggy) is not lifting a finger. Other than to continue to type madly.

Periodically I hear crashes and muffled yells. And sometimes the odd remark, as things are carried out to the pickup for loading for the dump.

My favourite so far is Chloe's lament, "How did we get so much crap!"

To make up for having nothing interesting to write about, other than my thesis which would bore anyone to tears, I've decided to take you on a tour of my narrow little world...i.e. the desk of a PhD student.


Starting from the far left we have the most dedicated laser printer you will ever find. Having a house full of students (count 'em 6!), being able to print and not worrying about running out of ink is a real necessity.

In front of the printer is my usb cable to connect the digital camera to the computer to upload the picture you're looking at. It has a label on it that says Olympus which is not the brand of camera I have, it's a little one Dave uses. But, somehow I lost mine in the move to this house. However, it still works.

Among the random pile of stuff to the right of the printer is my glasses case. My reading glasses I mean. Yep, I have to have two pairs of glasses not just one. It's very funny when the kids come up to ask me a question. Drag off the reading glasses and pop on the regular glasses, and try to be unobtrusive while doing so. Did I mention that none of the kids need glasses? It's very strange.

In the middle of the pencil "bucket" (I'm sure there is an appropriate stationery term for it, but it escapes me at the moment) is a flower Bryn made me for mother's day, my very first. There's also a pair of scissors there that I have to guard with my life because they develop feet if you don't watch them closely.

Next to the pencil thingy is a glass, that if I were a good person would be filled with water. Alas its usually holding diet Coke or lemonade (Seven-up). The glass is sitting on a coaster turned upside down.

This is a very Australian kind of advertisement. As everyone knows, bull is not true, therefore the reason for the ad. In very small print at the bottom it says "there's bull, and John Bull".  Its the slogan for a line of work boots.

And finally there is the computer. I spend more time with it lately than I do humans. Sigh.

To the right of the monitor is a faithful notepad that bears the brunt of my scribbles and ideas. The latest thing its had today is the horrible realization that I had that even without a discussion and conclusions chapter, I've written over 200 pages.

Hopefully some of it will be worth reading!

Passed the exit seminar

Before they let students submit their thesis at my uni they require the students give a half-hour talk about their research. It's attended by as many big-wigs as they can get, and the student is evaluated on how well they have done the research and on a piece of writing the student submitted (usually a chapter of the thesis).

I had my exit seminar on Wednesday and was very nervous about it. The main issue that was bothering me was that I had about 40 minutes of powerpoint slides to get through in 30 minutes.

What really happened was much worse! I arrived about 20 minutes before the seminar and tried to get set up. The technician that was hooking everything up found that my laptop wouldn't connect to the projector. So we tried two other computers which failed as well. Finally the tech went back to his desk and got his laptop which seemed to work. So, one problem solved.

The talk was being video-conferenced to Cairns. We could see the room, but there was no-one in it. For quite a long time. As it turned out, my other supervisor was locked out. She called security to come and let her in, but there was an emergency nearby that required an ambulance so no one came to unlock the door until the seminar was nearly over.

Meanwhile I started my talk but the laptop I was using wouldn't show the same thing on the screen as the projector was showing. So there I sat at one end of the room trying to squint near-sightedly at the screen at the other end of the room. And try to act cool and collected. And try to sound smart enough to be getting a PhD.

At the end I got a lot of good comments from my friends and colleagues, and some advice from the bigwigs about how to finish the writing up of the thesis. Whew!

Now, back to the writing!

The countdown begins

The subject line for this post comes from a quote by my PhD supervisor when I told him that my exit seminar is scheduled for the 10th of August. Yikes! That's only a week and a half away!

It's exciting though, because it's one more sign that this long, long job of writing a PhD thesis is almost done. The seminar is a basically a half-hour long speech that I give in front of members of my school and other people important to my research. Then everyone gets to grill me about my methods, results and conclusions. It's supposed to show that I've done a good job, and that my thesis has a reasonable expectation of passing.

Fingers crossed, but I feel pretty secure that everything has gone ok. I just need to explain 4 years of work, in a half hour. Hmmm, hope I'm good at summing up!

I just realized that if when I finish off my thesis at the end of August, that my birthday will be in a few days after that. What a good way to celebrate a birthday!

OK, no more procrastination on my part, back to it.

Oh, I meant to mention how supportive Dave and the kids are being down this home-stretch. I actually got kicked out of the kitchen the other morning. Dave said "Why are you doing the dishes, get back to work on the thesis!"