Today I submitted my thesis!!!!!!!
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!
It has been an epic four years and two months. The PhD thesis is complete after nearly a week of swearing at it trying to print the damn thing, (which I could only do when Miranda was asleep since she sat on the printer tearing up sheets of paper as they emerged from the machine….). I wasted an entire tree (nearly 1000 sheets of paper) due to a formatting fuck-up that was no fault of my own. And then when I submitted it, I was so excited I completely forgot the fact that it was supposed to have a DVD included in the back of it, so I had to run all the way back up the hill to the pub and collect the damn disk out of the bottom of the pushchair whilst Ol and Liz minded Miranda. DOH. Oh and the girl on the Graduate Research Office Reception Desk recognised me from going to Highworth school together ten or eleven years ago. Freaky.
So, in four years and two months, (including the six months I had “off” for maternity leave) I wrote 82,000 wordsof thesis (not including all the words written on this blog), which turned in to 334 pages, 52MB of PDF file and two copies of printed document both 3.2cm thick, £37.50 in express service binding. Ouch.
The four-year-two-month timescale has meant I have beaten Dr Brian May of Queen (36 years), Jo’s Dad, Dr Land (9 years) as far as I know, my uncle Steve, Dr Morton, and our friend Mike, (M Phillips, MPhil, currently 5 years and counting) .
I have a date for my Viva, which will be 24th January, and with any luck, I will be moving to Canada not long after. So, assuming I don’t have any major corrections or completely fail the whole thing, that will be The End. No more PhD. Wowee!
Handing the damn thing in comes as more of a relief than anything. The immense hassles I had with printing it kind of made its ending rather more bitter and frustrating than I’d hoped. It hasn’t really sunken in that something I’ve been working on for so long – a book, and something far more than a book – is finally finished and over with. Maybe when the dull realisation that this part of my life is over really dawns on me, I will be more bereft, but for now, it is still a welcome relief. Much celebration has already occurred, meeting with felllow post-grad sufferers and those that have survived the experience and moved on. There was even Pollards Coffee Stout in the pub!! It was an omen, I think.
So, the Viva is in about 5 weeks time, and after that I/we are moving. The Canadian coffee saga has already begun over at The Regina Monologue Blog. Which leaves the question, should I end this blog here? It was supposed to be a research journal… that research has been completed, at least, I’ve done my bit of it for now…..
I think I will leave it open and see if anything exciting happens in the coffee world between now and my viva. Or official graduation or something,
TTFN and “see” you in Canada!
love,
Dr Coffee. (nearly).
