Hi Girls,

Sorry for being away for some time, but have been stuck with work. Also I haven't been able to make much progress, I'm probably in some sort of post-crisis slump, but at least I haven't stopped. Tomorrow I have to go to work again, but will catch up during the weekend.

Pari and Rubyw, thanks so much for your messages and for keeping us moving forward, it's greatly appreciated.

Lara, you did it! you are my hero, just one more sleepless night and you'll be showing your supervisor what you are capable of. We all know it, but now it's his(her?) time to find out. Just go there with you thesis (which, by the way I'm expecting a copy of to stick on my fridge door ;-)) in your hands and demand that signature for your paperwork. You did a terrific job, you deserve it.

Talk again tomorrow 8-)

Dear Lara,

Congratulations for getting all chapters done. I did check the forum since this afternoon for your post.

I reckon that it will take you almost three days to print it out (10pm Friday - 3pm Monday) which is too long for A4 printing. The worst thing about the plan is that you can not do anything else after sending it for printing and this weekend will be wasted.

Depending on where you live, you can receive A4 printing within hours. Do not confuse with poster printing. I would suspect that they require 10pm to 3mm is for poster printing. Note that poster printing requires large machine while only standard printer is required for A4. I would look around in town for printing service which can help you out. Printing 300 pages on a good printer dose not take long. The one in my department takes about 15-20 minutes.

Do your department or your college have color printing service? Is there anybody can help you with that because printing takes only half a day if all file is in pdf? For example, if you are near to my department I would offer to print it for free.

As far as I know you can also do soft-bound version for submission so printing and binding can be pretty quick. You might want to check with your university about that.

Good luck with your finishing touch.

thanks Bov, that is EXCELLENT advice, as i was really nervous about sending them the file and for them to print and bind it all in one go, without me first looking over the printed sheets. cause u have to tell them exactly which page you want in color.and i just know sods law i will miss one page out and it will be printed in bw.

great stuff, i will find out about printing services. thanks so much. since im heading into town tommorow will find out :)
well im not an official student of my old department so they wont let me use their printer or ink cartridge unfortunately. but might try to find out if local shops do printing. thanks for the idea. i feel better about that.

you're a star!

awwwwwwww Thanks so much for your message, that really put a smile on my face , and woke me up!!
yah just one more night of this. i just gotta proof read my last chapter now, chapter 7, conclusions!!
and then references and table of contents.

thanks again for your lovely message :-)

Lara,
Iam sur ethat ur thesis is PREFECTLY PRETTY!!!!!!Gud luck with that!!! and printing!!!! Enjoy the momement ...u will never get to relive it again(...unless u wanna do anther PhD!!)
Ruby, how is it going on ur end???? And how r u doing Amendarf??? And W! Gud luck with the recruitment....And welcome to Alice and Bov!!!
Got to go to the lab now!!!!
Cya in the evening,
Bu Byee!!

Hi Everyone

Just a quick email to say good luck to everyone for the weekend. I am so impressed by reading everyone's posts and the progress made is just amazing. Well done and hope the weekend is also good. Lara: You are nearly there!!!! Brilliant news, just need to get it printed now so good luck with that and let us know when you have handed in your thesis!!!!!!!! We definitely need to celebrate once everyone has finished!! Armendaf and rubyw: Hope you are both well and good luck with your work. You have both done so much since i last checked in so should be really proud. Hope you both have a great weekend. Pari: the same also to you! Well done for getting so much done and keep going, you are doing really well.
Anyway, hope everyone is ok.
Lara: I have a feeling that when i next check you will have submitted your thesis!! How exciting!!!!!!!!! All your hard work will have paid off. Hope all the printing goes well and good luck with your last busy weekend!!!!
xx

hi pari thanks :)

well cut a long story short, i've been given an extention (i didnt ask for one!) i finally finished my thesis at 1pm today and sent it to my sup and my uni graduate officer, and asked my sup to sign my entry forms. but he refuses because he hasnt read my thesis.
uni graduate then arranged for me to get an extention, so now my ultimate deadline is 1st of nov, by which i have to submit no matter what! part of me is relieved because i can now relax and not worry about last minute printing and binding and missing the dealine, the other part of me is thinking, oh no what if i screw up and miss the nov deadline.and i got another month of this??!?!?!! lol

but im going for the positive and thinking its a good thing. so i can add more stuff to my thesis and have more time to prepare for my viva.

also thinking of getting a new printer as my own one is kaput. thinking of a laser printer.

im so sleepy, not slept for 2 days ! i know i cant even believe it myself. although i tell a lie, i did sleep for 2 and half hours yesterday morning, and for 10minutes this morning.

but ive learnt my lesson, im never doing that again. i feel sick and my body feels like its been put threw a torture contraption.

so this is my plan. taking the weekend off. and then start afresh on monday. and work regularly and consistently. and set myself an articicial deadline of one week before the actual deadline.

i wont wait for the feedback from my sup, as they are going to take 2 weeks, and that will only leave me 2 weeks for their corrections, so i will print out my thesis and go through it myself and seeing where i can improve on things and where i can add more stuff.

my final thesis was 238 pages, thank god i chose 1 and half space!! i couldnt decide yesterday so finally just asked my dad who made the decision for me. its ridiculous how much time you can spend on silly things like formatting!! and then for some really annoying reason, the spaces between headings and paragraphs were all unequal.

yah so my words of wisdom, whatever your official deadline. forget about that date and burn into your head a date one week before that. and dont just pretend, really believe that is your deadline. trust me. i've been trying to get my full thesis completed for 2 weeks now, so i went over my own deadline by 2 weeks!!

So Armendaf, its me and you kiddo!! your deadline is 1st of november right? or is it end of nov? you got two months?

well either way, you got me as company!!

i am feeling abit annoyed at my supervisor - but i will just let it pass. i really did try to get my thesis to final complete version a month ago, i just couldnt do it. and because he was always saying hes so busy. i took the responsibility and made sure of my thesis myself. anyways going to put that all behind me, and now focus on what i need to do. continue working on my thesis

see you monday folks! although i might miss this place and come back. its addictive!

have a good weekend everyone. and thanks for listening
i cant believe i can actually sleep , it feels like such an indulgence haha and i can take the evening off and watch dvds and relax after dinner.

Thanks TG :-) I was just thinking of you the other day, how you really really inspired me to get my thesis done!! as i really wanted to be in the stage one day to just be proof reading. but alas i have been given a month extention so more work for me!! but then i think its a good thing as it delays my eventual viva and i can have more time to prepare for it!

how are you doing? nice to hear from you :-)

======= Date Modified 27 Sep 2008 11:41:00 =======
Lara, that's a brilliant outcome for you!! Well done, that is a HUGE achievement getting the thing finished and handed in to your supervisor! (up)

Sounds an ideal situation - a bit of an extension so you can edit and tweak what you've already done, plus actually get a bit of sleep and have a mental break from it. You'll look at it with fresh eyes after that and will be able to submit a thesis that you're sure is as good as you can produce! Plus you'll have the reassurance of your sup's feedback so it won't be that weird situation when you're the only one in the whole world who's read your work and you don't know any more whether it's any good or not - could either be complete genius or absolute crap. Yours obviously isn't the latter because you've done so much work on it, but other informed opinions are so useful to reduce the anxiety as much as possible!

See you when you're back after the weekend- take it easy, you really deserve it!

I'll be keeping you and Armendaf company with the deadlines as my 2nd draft is due in mid Nov, if not sooner. Artificial deadlines are so useful, it's amazing how you can imprint them into your mind and panic about them as if they're the real thing. I find it a bit scary how you can convince yourself so easily that it's reality, if you did the same for other really negative things in your life you could end up in a right state.

Armendaf, how's things with you?

Pari, hope you had a good day in the lab!

Tractorgirl, it's lovely to hear from you, hope you've having a good break now!

I'm working today on PhD stuff. I've got 4 whole days to try to finish editing these 4 chapters, 3 are partially done but I haven't touched one of them yet at all. It was really stressful at work this week and last night I should have started looking at PhD stuff to start getting back into 'the zone' but I felt so drained that I just couldn't stop crying, a bit pathetic really but there you go. Anyway, today I am ok and will forget about annoying work stuff and switch my mind back to my thesis to pick up where I left it a few days ago. One of the profs said really nice things about my exhibition submission and that I'm a natural at writing.:-) That was nice to hear in my zombiefied state! Plus I ended up redoing all the pics layouts myself so that's all sorted as far as possible, can't do any more than that.

So my aims for today are: get back into PhD mode and finish the easiest chapter today so I can cross one off my list. That will cheer me up today and I need that.

Hi Rubyw,

It's probably just you and me today, I hope that chapter is coming along and that soon you'll be able to tick it off the list. I was also very busy with work this week, and only now coming back to PhD work. A programme I'm the director off started last night and I had to be there to make sure that everything went as planned, also another class I'm teaching from next week started on the same day, still working on some final details. That means I'll be lecturing Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays evening, so I'll need to adjust my writing hours around that now.

Lara,

I was so happy to hear your news. You and I now have the same deadline, but as opposed to myself, you have already finished the thesis. So basically the only thing you now need to do is to read it and correct anything that you think could be perfected. You can even do it on the document that you have already put together, so no more formatting hassle. You can even have the luxury of normal working hours. And, you have to do it as a preparation for you viva anyway, so you are already working towards that as well. As I said, fantastic news, congratulations!

Hi TG, is good to hear from you. How are things these days?

Pari, I hope you are having a good weekend... you do not have to work everyday, you know?

Talk to you girls later

8-)

Admin my message aint showing up. granted it was hella long! no worries, i saved a copy of it. and upload it again but split it up into smaller chunks (up)

Admin, do you really read every single message that we post? do you ever get bored of reading all the hundreds of messages we all post daily. or do you just do a quick search for key words such as *admin* and *swear words* teehee

Hello there, it's Sunday morning and I'm a bit embarrassed to show my face on this thread actually... not a lot of progress to report since yesterday :$

Still working on the so-called easiest chapter and still not done, ho hum, you've heard it all before yeah yeah I know... I worked on it very slowly till X Factor time yesterday, had my dinner and fell asleep. Hard working, huh? I was kept awake by the Hound of the Baskervilles style wailing somewhere round here last night but slept ok despite that and am now back in the same old spot and ready to crack on with it *again.* Definitely can't waste this day! :-s

Armendaf, you've got a hell of a workload to juggle at the moment, it will be difficult but worth it in the end if you can do it. Not long until you've finished!

Lara, I didn't expect to see you again so soon!! Have you discovered a new bug in their system? You could email/PM Pete and he might give you a helpfulness point for reporting it! If there's a character limit on replies it would be useful to know in advance. They can't read everything, surely??!! I have wondered that too. Waiting in anticipation for the next update on the I Am Bored thread? Nah, don't think so!

Anywaaayyy.... I'd better get off this forum before I waste more valuable time.

See you later fellow workers, if you're around.

Hi Ruby,

I know the feeling just too well. I can't waste today either. I worked until late last night, but didn't make that much progress. So, the only thing I can do, is to get at it again and just keep going. For the moment it is getting a little bit easier, since this chapter is all restructured and annotated, so it is like paining by numbers, but still very slow.

Anyway, Best of luck with your chapter

;-)

Thanks so much Ruby! :-) you're so right, it is good that i got an extension. now im feeling anxious and nervous as to what my supervisors will say and i hope i get enough time to get the corrections done. but tommorow i am planning on printing out my thesis using my poor little printer and then organise all my files and papers and organise everything. and try to predict what my corrections might be!

my brother has offered to print my final thesis at his work. so thats one less thing i need to worry about. so ive given myself a deadline of one week before i have to hand it in, to send him the pdf, so he has a week to print it at work. and one week before that, i will spend proof reading.
so basically i worked out i only have 1 week to do their corrections. if they take 2 weeks to get back to me. so the next two weeks i just gotta improve on the thesis and do all the research and writing of possible things they will tell me to include and correct.
=============
Thanks Ruby for saying i really deserve having the
weekdend off, that makes me feel better :) look at me, i cant stay away from this forum! lol im addicted to this thread
So glad to hear you're gonna keep us company with the deadline! hurrah!! it always helps knowing someone else is on the same train! that's great you got a mid november deadline, as i have given myself a mid november deadline also. so we're together on this!!!

Aww Ruby you're so good, working on phd stuff today at the weekend.
good luck! i know you can do it :-)

Ruby - It is very hard to start work on phd stuff when you had such a stressful time at work.

It must be so hard to switch off from work stuff back to phd stuff. as i know anything that is troubling you, part of that
brain that likes to remind you of it, perks up and says *hey ruby, sorry to disturb you, i know you're working on your thesis, but i just wanted to REMIND you of such and such and then such and such happened, anyways thats all -carry
on* lol i watched russel brand last night and he had this skit of how the manevelent evil side of you likes to wake you up in the middle of the night and remind you of embarrassing things you have done.

and CONGRATULATIONS Ruby - on the amazing praise you got about writing. that is absolutely brilliant!! what a lovely compliment. you shoud be very happy . as writing is VERY hard, and for them to say you're a natural. well that's just fantastic! see you can do it! yap its always good to draw a line and say, thats it , its *done* so good you got the pictures done! as Armendaf once said, nothing is 100% perfect just gotta make it, as good as is. everything in this world can be improved on. but that would take an infinite amount of time. and then nothing would actually be achieved and finalised and concluded from .

Lara, thank you so much for all your comments, it's really cheered me up!!

I've felt crap this weekend and it's so hard to get on with it, even though you know you've got time limits. At least I've finished one of my chapters tonight, including all the figures, so I suppose I can leave it for now and get on with the rest. I know there is another article I should read and stick in somewhere, sometime.... after feedback on the second draft I think, I'll get the argument for this one right first.

I was thinking I was starting to get 'forum fatigue' or something and I should keep away from here when I'm grumpy, so I don't get snappy online with spammy posts and the like, or I'll end up like a female version of golfpro, though I'm sure he is very nice really :-)

See you tomorrow anyway, and thanks again :-)