Yesterday I achieved what I had been waiting for so long to do - thesis submission! Here's how it happened:

Firstly, I went through and did a final check for minor errors e.g. spelling. It was a good thing I did, because there were still two that I had missed. I didn't work off the pdf for this. Instead, I went through all of the words in the WinEdt files that were underlined in red. I could ignore the vast majority of these because they were acronyms or Australian spellings. It's amazing how much you skip over when you just read the printed product, and especially when you've been reading it over and over for months.

My supervisor had emailed me the signed Submission of Thesis form overnight. All I needed to do was to sign it myself (easy) and get the head of school to sign it (not as easy). For that, I needed at least one temporarily bound copy of my thesis. Thankfully, we have a good printer and binding facilities in our building, so it was a DIY job. My first mistake was to forget to set the printer to double-sided printing - I think I was just so nervous about things. Once I had rectified that, it was off to the binding machine. It's one where you punch a line of rectangular holes in the margin of each page, then slot the plastic coils through the holes. Unfortunately, I wasn't careful enough and a batch of ten pages had a line of holes that...well...weren't holes as they went off the page. So, I had to reprint those ten pages. But in the end, it was done.

Then it was off to the HoS's office. Another setback was that he wasn't actually in. I had to leave the thesis and submission form with the secretary. This gave me time to manufacture the other three copies. Thankfully, the production of these went smoother. The only other mistake I made was that I picked up a batch of eight pages with my non-preferred hand, and turned them over before punching them without me realising. Eight pages in the reverse order and incorrectly punched was the result. So, back to the printer again.

Just as I completed the other three copies, I received an email saying that the form had been signed. I hurried back over to the HoS's office, just in time to catch the secretary as they were leaving. They kindly went back and retrieved the signed form. Then it was back to my own office to do a final check that all the pages were there, and all were in the correct order. Thankfully they were. It was 3:50pm by this stage. For some reason, I had it in my head that GRSO closed at 4pm or 4:15pm, so I hurried over there (although of course I hadn't needed to, since they don't close until after this time) and dodged the approaching shower, trying to keep my thesis copies dry.

Once inside the GRSO, it was a really simple affair. There was no problem with the paperwork. I handed over the four large volumes, and in return I received one of the highly-prized PhinisheD mugs.

and here is a larger shot of the mug itself (what a mugshot hehe).

And that was that. I carried that mug very carefully back to my office. And so what am I doing today? Cleaning my office up. Getting rid of anything that I can't see a need for when it comes to corrections...plus, we're apparently moving soon, so I need to clean my office out anyway. But speaking of mugs, I think it's time for a cuppa.

There will be a shift in my priorities over the next few days. I finally got all of the page breaks sorted out. It took an entire day to deal with. In a lot of cases, I would try and try and try to just shave off a millimetre or half a millimetre anywhere I could, all in the hopes of getting an equation to appear on the previous page...but it would never get there. Instead, I would end up removing all such space-saving statements and try to add in extra spaces so that it filled the entire page. Of course, all of this effort may have been useless, depending on how many comments my supervisor is going to throw back at me early next week, which could mean a whole lot more changes. Hopefully, that won't be the case, as we are aiming to submit next week.

So...this has given me a few days to look at something _other_ than my thesis, which should be good. Instead of focussing on consistency, I'll be focussing on cleaning - my desk, that is. It is a real mess at the moment, covered in drafts of chapters. Plus, I've heard that we have to shift offices soon, so that will be good preparation. I also hope to devote some time to my career, applying for jobs, etc. which I have been neglecting for the past few weeks.

Time for another update on the state of my thesis. Over the last week, I've read through the whole thing (in print form) and scribbled down what final-ish changes needed to be made in the margins. Then I set about actually making those changes on the computer. As I dealt with each one, I highlighted it on the printout. Then I went through the edited version on the computer screen and made sure that each one of the highlighted items (I didn't bother to count them all, but there must be a couple of hundred of them) had been dealt with correctly. I really needed to do this, because up until now, I had been reading chapters individually, with no proper idea of the entire product. The "Find" feature in WinEdt has really been getting a workout!

This morning, I have gone through and made sure that there are no mathematical expressions that have been split in unfortunate places over two lines of text...fortunately, there were only a couple of these to deal with. This really leaves only one task for me to do before sending the whole thing off for my supervisor to read - deal with the bad page breaks! LaTeX might be all fancy when dealing with where to take a new page, using guidelines on how much of a page can be taken up by figures, etc., but there are still some cases where it produces less-than-desirable results. This is possibly more evident in my case, as I have a lot of 'bulky' equations which are likely to not fit where you want them to go. The result is a lot of chunks of white space. So, this afternoon I'll be using \vspace a lot to try to make things look more presentable. This is an important quality for a thesis, since the last criterion on the Examiners' Recommendation Form is "The quality of English and general presentation are of a standard for publication". You don't often see big spaces in a journal, and nor should you see them in a thesis.

At long last, I'm finally at the stage of reading through my entire thesis as a single unit. I had been thinking that I could submit soon after that, but alas, no. One of my supervisors is jetting off overseas and won't be in a position to sign off on it for almost two weeks *sigh*. This morning's info at the Research Careers week seemed to ring true - the date you specify as the submission date almost never eventuates into reality. In my case, it'll be about a month after that *another sigh*.

But this need for me to read through the whole thing...in short, it's a tough ask. I haven't read it all at once before. I'll be making notes in the margins of the little things I need to change - a different preposition here, a forgotten symbol in the list of symbols there. Then, I'll go through and actually make those changes, and then I'll fix up the page breaks. But, back to the reading I mentioned. I'm considering using the library. It's just too noisy here, with people talking loudly and other students typing overly loudly (I've mentioned the Mavis Beacon thing before) - it's too hard to concentrate here when I need to concentrate the most.

I am however interested in the "Generic skills" seminar at 4pm, so I might find a convenient point to stop reading and go to that.

I was shocked this afternoon to discover how easy it would have been to exceed the word limit for my thesis. I took one page (full) of text from my thesis and counted the average number of words per line: 14. Then I counted how many lines there were on the page and adjusted for the "half-lines" at the ends of paragraphs: 36. I've got around 200 pages in my thesis, so

14 x 36 x 200 = 100800.

This would exceed the word limit of 100000 words! Fortunately though, I have quite a few figures in my thesis, so those pages would not be full of words. Additionally, I have over 500 equations (!) which means that the space they take up is not being used for text. So I'm under the 100K limit. This of course begs the question, how many words is an equation equivalent to?

Today marks 500 days since I officially began writing my thesis. Notice that I didn't say that I've been writing for 500 days, because there are some weekends in there when I didn't do any writing. I really had hoped to have submitted before the big 500, but alas, yet again, the dream has died. In fact, when I mentioned to one of my supervisors that 500 was closing in, they said "Good, you should aim for 600 now". This kind of thinking really does have a negative impact on me. Honestly, they keep moving the "phinish line" further and further away. I've heard a lot of talk recently about perfectionism and how you shouldn't fall victim to it. But what do you do when your supervisor is the perfectionist and you no longer are?

Yesterday, I had to ask for yet another extension from GRSO, beyond the submission date that we had agreed upon less than three weeks ago. It appears I don't have to submit any paperwork this time as it is a relatively short extension. Yesterday I was informed that yet another student who started well after I did was going to be submitting before me...their entire candidature was less than twice the amount of time I have spent writing! And instead of celebrating my 500th day in thesis mode with an easy day, what did I find in my inbox this morning? Corrections to be made on 19 out of 24 pages of a chapter. This, despite my supervisor telling me just last Friday that he was really pleased with this chapter. It is little wonder that I sometimes find it hard to believe what people say. And little wonder that I find it harder and harder to come in here every morning.

I never cease to be amazed at how most other students in our building appear to live at uni. They return here (after being here all day) after dinner at around 8:30pm, a bit before I leave for the day to have my own. Presumably, they would then work for a considerable amount of time as there's not much point coming to uni for half an hour. I really can't comment on this, as I appear to be one of the few people who actually goes home at night. After yet another night of having time for nothing except dinner, sleep and a few minutes of television, I return here around 9am. And of course, they're all already here waiting for me with expressions which seem to say, "what took you so long? You're such a slacker". You know, when I signed on for this gig, I thought it was for working a minimum of 30 hours a week, not a minimum of 70 hours, which everyone seems to be doing. I'm really starting to have had enough of this "life"style, because I am just watching as the years of so-called life get sucked away. I'm not really living life.

So, does anyone else "live" like this, or have other people in their building who seem to be chronic workaholics?

I'm sorry to say, but today marks my 4 1/2 year mark of being a PhD student. And I am even sorrier to say today that my scholarship expired. So, I'm going to be 'roughing it' until I can find any sort of employment, the search for which is still being unfruitful.

I submitted my nomination of examiners form this week, so that should be on its way to the GRS if it is not already there. Of course, the morning after that was submitted, my supervisor flung a whole heap of changes to one of the early chapters at me. This may impact later chapters as well, especially the names for objects I refer to throughout the thesis...definitely not happy about this. This should have been dealt with months ago, not now.

I do however feel I have a team working for me. SupA, as I said above, is reading through and sending me comments. I am also reading through and commenting on my own work. I was also fortunate enough to get a proof-reader. They are a fellow student, with the deal that I repay the favour later on when he is about to submit. And of course, there's SupB. SupB has had 3 of my chapters sitting on their desk for quite a while now, but they don't seem to want to read them. My guess is that they are just going to wait until I am forced to make changes to those chapters myself, so that they can claim that what they have is obsolete. Not really fair - but at least that's one less set of changes to have to integrate into the whole at the moment. Though obviously, they will be required very soon.

I have to say I was disgusted by the behaviour of a group of UWA students on the bus last Friday night. It was the 102 from here to the city. This was not just a once-off thing because I have had to endure their shenanigans before...it has just become worse over time. And this time, it basically reached breaking point. Ok, I can't prove that they're UWA students, but there were about 50 of them, and they always board the bus at the Trinity/St Catherine's College stop, and they come running over from the buildings of Trinity.

It was bad enough that they had to use their flash photography cameras every couple of seconds. This caused the bus driver (quite rightfully) to stop the bus at the traffic lights. And walk along what little room in the aisle was left to yell at those responsible. Another prank they always use is to press the button for every stop, even when they have absolutely no intention of alighting from the bus until Wellington St. In response to this, the bus driver stopped at the bus stop, squeezed out the front doors and made sure that nobody was exiting from the back doors. Upon returning inside the bus, another lecture. We were then informed that the bus driver would not stop the bus again until we reached the city, and that security guards would be brought on board.

But perhaps the worst thing was the noise. And this is what gave them away to me that they were the same crowd I had heard before. They sing this song which is rather derogatory towards women. Something to the effect of "I wish all the women / were picture frames / so I could mount them". Not nice at all...but oddly enough the females in this unruly lot were singing along with it! It was late, I was tired from working, and I just wanted to get home. But this lot caused the bus driver to stop the bus again due to excessive noise. Apparently the last time the song was sung, the driver had gone deaf for 1 1/2 days. He refused to move the bus again until the noise stopped. Of course, this delayed the bus significantly so that I missed the connecting bus.

That was one of the very few times I have been ashamed to be a student at UWA. Those idiots have really brought the UWA name into disrepute, and it could lead to cancellation of the bus service, which is unfair on the majority of people who are trying to do the right thing.

This post contains some non-major spoilers.

Last night commenced the same as most Tuesdays of this year had done - I settled in to watch the crime-fighting brothers on Numb3rs (it's edutainment!). I have to say though, that they stretched credulity a bit too far in that episode. I mean, really, Charlie arrives at the conclusion that Colby is being led around the city by the perpetrator as if it is a maze. From just four seemingly random locations, Charlie is able to construct the entire maze and determine where it will end. And of course, he is right. Seems like just a lucky guess if you ask me.

I thought that was going to be the end of my television viewing for the night, but I decided to check the television guide just to make sure. I had been a little peeved that Channel 10 had replaced Monday night's episode of Torchwood with something about the tomb of Christ - I had always set aside 9:30pm Monday for Torchwood. Anyway, checking the guide for later Tuesday night revealed that Channel 10 had moved the episode "They Keep Killing Suzie" to midnight on Tuesday. (A quick check now reveals that even more SVU is moving into the 9:30pm Monday slot, continuing the 8:30pm slot...so I guess Torchwood is yet another example of a sci-fi-type show that has been relegated to the midnight slot.) So, I decided to stay up and watch it. One thing was noteworthy - the ISBN (international standard book numbering) code was used to get the Torchwood base out of lockdown. When this happened, I did a figurative leap of joy. I thought, "hey, I know about that...I talk about it in my thesis. Maybe I could reference the episode somehow?" I'd write something like

...is designed to detect one error per word, and was also used to reverse Suzie's lockdown of Torchwood in [1],

where [1] would be the reference in my bibliography. But I think that's going a little too far. Using fiction as references in a serious thesis would be straining the credulity of the examiners, I feel.

I had to seek sanctuary today, and it could have resulted in a bad situation, but thankfully it didn't.

Today I started the very long process of reading through my whole thesis. This won't be the final version, but it's converging to that point. I really needed to be able to concentrate to make sure I wasn't missing any tiny details, but that became impossible when it sounded like a fellow office inhabitant was setting out to break the world land typing speed record (Ms Beacon would have been jealous). At one stage I tried putting my headphones on and listening to music, but I could still hear the typing, and the music was a distraction in itself. I had to move somewhere else to read, but where? The weather outside was too cold and unpredictable. Instead, I settled in to the student lab down the corridor, which was thankfully vacant.

Ah, the quietness...

Then, SLAM! A minute or two later, I went to investigate. The Ms Beacon wannabe had turned off the lights in the office, shut the door and left. They had obviously (but incorrectly) assumed they were the last one around, even though my bag and everything was still out. Thankfully, they had not locked the door, as I had left my keys inside the room. That would have been awkward. So, here I am, back inside the office, which is sanctuary in itself because the typing's not happening now. I think this is why people relish working outside normal business hours - it's bound to be quieter. Of course, if everybody was like that, there would be no point in it!

But it's amazing how many little things I'm noticing I'll have to change whilst reading the thesis through as a whole. This could take a while...