The catch on writing a thesis.
Wednesday, 27. February 2008, 16:56:18
Finally!
The thesis is out. All seven copies were delivered, not exactly on schedule, but they are out of my hands, and that's the important part.
There is something funny about writing a thesis that you really cannot predict.
I could write 60-pages reports in a couple days, no stress. So, writing the thesis should be a piece of cake right?
Not really...
You begin thinking it will be a piece of cake, then, after the first couple pages you realize you can't remember half the stuff you did 4 years ago... Naturally.
Well, a week going through old notebooks and graphs and you are finally good to go.
And it does.
For a week you write something like 80 pages... Wonderfull progress although you are completely exhausted. Except, you need to fill in a few gaps here and there... Shouldn't be too hard.
But those few gaps can take months to fill in... Nobody really told you about it, right?
It took me around 3 months to fill in the here and there gaps. A nightmare.
And you never really finish writing, you simply give up correcting it. If there is something you missed the guys on your promotion committee will certainly find it and let you know in a usually unpleasant way.
But hey, never forget, that is their job!
There is also another piece of advice, given to me by Karl Gschneidner himself (he is something of a legend in my area, take a look at Ames lab website). We were at the dinner party after a conference and he asked me how my PhD was going and everything else. I told him I was almost done, and then he gave me one of the most important pieces of advice ever: You are the specialist on what you did. Nobody, no matter who is in your committee, knows more about what you did, than you.
And this is mine: if you screw up, so what? Science is about making mistakes and correcting them! And you must have the guts to do so!
The thesis is out. All seven copies were delivered, not exactly on schedule, but they are out of my hands, and that's the important part.
There is something funny about writing a thesis that you really cannot predict.
I could write 60-pages reports in a couple days, no stress. So, writing the thesis should be a piece of cake right?
Not really...
You begin thinking it will be a piece of cake, then, after the first couple pages you realize you can't remember half the stuff you did 4 years ago... Naturally.
Well, a week going through old notebooks and graphs and you are finally good to go.
And it does.
For a week you write something like 80 pages... Wonderfull progress although you are completely exhausted. Except, you need to fill in a few gaps here and there... Shouldn't be too hard.
But those few gaps can take months to fill in... Nobody really told you about it, right?
It took me around 3 months to fill in the here and there gaps. A nightmare.
And you never really finish writing, you simply give up correcting it. If there is something you missed the guys on your promotion committee will certainly find it and let you know in a usually unpleasant way.
But hey, never forget, that is their job!
There is also another piece of advice, given to me by Karl Gschneidner himself (he is something of a legend in my area, take a look at Ames lab website). We were at the dinner party after a conference and he asked me how my PhD was going and everything else. I told him I was almost done, and then he gave me one of the most important pieces of advice ever: You are the specialist on what you did. Nobody, no matter who is in your committee, knows more about what you did, than you.
And this is mine: if you screw up, so what? Science is about making mistakes and correcting them! And you must have the guts to do so!
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