Life, Writing, Weirdness

So the plan is for me to defend my MSc thesis in early December. This being the first day of classes means that defense is about three months away. And that probably means I’m no more than two and a half months from having completed the last round of edits and adjustments and switching my focus completely to prepping the presentation part of the defense.

And I’m not stressed about it at all.

That last sentence is the largest lie I’ve told in recent memory.

I have started writing. I’ve actually written about half of the thesis report overall, but it’s the easy half: background, theory, methodology. And that half still needs a bunch of citations (about half) to replace my “insert citation here” notes, and some diagrams and pretty pictures. I’ve just started into the second half: the actual results and analysis, discussion, and conclusions. Oh yeah, and I’ve defined the need for four separate small appendices for things I don’t want to burden the reader with in the main text unless they really want to know the tiniest of certain details.

And after I do a round of edits and put the final touches on each chapter, I then turn it over to my supervisor so she can tell me all the things I don’t need, all the things I should provide more detail on, and all the things I’ve gotten wrong. Likely two or three rounds of successively finer details. Then I turn it in, then I defend, then I make any adjustments needed that come out of the defense questions and comments.

Finally, for a big chunk of next term, I’ll work on turning it into a real science paper for publication in a real journal somewhere, probably while I’m also laying the groundwork for the first big chunk of my PhD project.

Because, yes, I am just a bit crazy.

And the rest of my life needs to hold together properly to maintain that schedule and not have me asking to move the defense to it’s latest possible date in January to keep the overall plan intact. That’s probably a coin flip at the moment, but I’m hopeful.

Be well, everyone.