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My MSc thesis is due next Thursday. I'm on the home stretch.
My work day today consisted of:
\begin{itemize}
\item{} Meeting with supervisor (45 minutes)
\item{} Formatting 20 questionnaire result summary tables for \LaTeX{} (in only 90 minutes, by doing weird and unnatural things with Excel --- columns of &s everywhere!!)
\item{} Putting copies of all the bits of paper I stuck in front of my test subjects into an appendix (15 minutes)
\item{} Pulling up a couple of reference papers for part of the work that I can't find many appropriate references for (30 minutes)
\item{} Writing 80\% of the chapter on the data classification/visualisation tool I wrote because the screen couldn't tell which participant was touching it (2.5 hours)
\item{} Wrangling black--heavy images into a form that will print nicely while still illustrating what the image was about in the first place (1 hour)
\item{} Writing emails to supervisor and co-supervisor, including latest draft of the thesis and up--to--the--minute progress report and game plan (30 minutes)
\item{} Looking at graphs and the "short answer" sections of questionnaires to formulate the skeleton of my conclusion chapter (3 hours)
\end{itemize}
So, only a ten-hour day if you don't count all the percolating around in my brain that was going on while fetching breakfast (savoury pinwheel, $2.50), cooking and eating dinner (bacon sandwiches, can of fruit salad, fresh mandarin courtesy of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
keltickat, who looks sternly at me if she suspects I haven't been eating properly, so you don't have to) or napping on the couch for a half hour.
Current page count is around 97 (double spaced) if you're counting what's properly written up, rather than in note form. Also includes some pictures, but I shan't be counting each as a thousand words because that's just cheating.
Now it's time to wind down for a bit, and hopefully go to sleep sometime around 3:30, so I can get up some time in the late morning or early afternoon and start writing again. I figure that I have a couple of days of writing ahead, then a couple of days of proofing and sense-checking, a day to sort out printing, and early Thursday can be my day-spare-just-in-case-anything-goes-wrong. Friday will be a day of sleeping, most likely. Or possibly drinking. Then I'll have to try to remember what is was like to have a life outside of thesis flow state.
I can't remember if the little kid was walking the remote-controlled robot around near reception and making funny noise today or yesterday. I think it was yesterday.
[Once more the playlist gods have a sense of humour.]
My work day today consisted of:
\begin{itemize}
\item{} Meeting with supervisor (45 minutes)
\item{} Formatting 20 questionnaire result summary tables for \LaTeX{} (in only 90 minutes, by doing weird and unnatural things with Excel --- columns of &s everywhere!!)
\item{} Putting copies of all the bits of paper I stuck in front of my test subjects into an appendix (15 minutes)
\item{} Pulling up a couple of reference papers for part of the work that I can't find many appropriate references for (30 minutes)
\item{} Writing 80\% of the chapter on the data classification/visualisation tool I wrote because the screen couldn't tell which participant was touching it (2.5 hours)
\item{} Wrangling black--heavy images into a form that will print nicely while still illustrating what the image was about in the first place (1 hour)
\item{} Writing emails to supervisor and co-supervisor, including latest draft of the thesis and up--to--the--minute progress report and game plan (30 minutes)
\item{} Looking at graphs and the "short answer" sections of questionnaires to formulate the skeleton of my conclusion chapter (3 hours)
\end{itemize}
So, only a ten-hour day if you don't count all the percolating around in my brain that was going on while fetching breakfast (savoury pinwheel, $2.50), cooking and eating dinner (bacon sandwiches, can of fruit salad, fresh mandarin courtesy of
keltickat, who looks sternly at me if she suspects I haven't been eating properly, so you don't have to) or napping on the couch for a half hour.Current page count is around 97 (double spaced) if you're counting what's properly written up, rather than in note form. Also includes some pictures, but I shan't be counting each as a thousand words because that's just cheating.
Now it's time to wind down for a bit, and hopefully go to sleep sometime around 3:30, so I can get up some time in the late morning or early afternoon and start writing again. I figure that I have a couple of days of writing ahead, then a couple of days of proofing and sense-checking, a day to sort out printing, and early Thursday can be my day-spare-just-in-case-anything-goes-wrong. Friday will be a day of sleeping, most likely. Or possibly drinking. Then I'll have to try to remember what is was like to have a life outside of thesis flow state.
I can't remember if the little kid was walking the remote-controlled robot around near reception and making funny noise today or yesterday. I think it was yesterday.
[Once more the playlist gods have a sense of humour.]
