(September 24, 2014 at 6:46 pm)Keri Wrote:

(September 24, 2014 at 5:55 pm)pocaracas Wrote: Wow! One month for a whole thesis?!
My PhD thesis had a chapter in the appendix that, alone, took me a month to write!! (technically, it took me a month to research how to go from one mathematical expression to another in hundreds of little undocumented steps - writing was 2 days).

Congratz! New life ahead!
Enjoy!

It was a joint degree so the dissertation was only worth 1/3rd of my degree and therefore only had to be between 12,000 and 15,000 words. I'm a fast writer though. In my undergrad when they required 2000 word papers, I could write it in 3 or 4 hours start to finish. And mine was just 4 of those papers with a short intro and conclusion. The appendices were short as well only 5 of 1-3 pages each.

I couldn't imagine doing a PhD thesis.... I want to do a PhD but the thought of having to write 100,000 words on one thing just makes me nauseous. Well done to you!

Thanks!
Fingers crossed, it will pass.

hmmm... I find it odd that you have to count words.
I just wrote what I did and all the mathematical proofs required, then added a bunch of images (always cool when your PhD is in something that involves image analysis) and you know how each image is worth a thousand words!

The not-so-cool part was the cost of printing half a thesis in color (times 8)... ouch!

EDIT: and I have no idea how many words my thesis had... lots, I guess. Over 100 pages, but half were images.

(September 24, 2014 at 6:52 pm)pocaracas Wrote: hmmm... I find it odd that you have to count words.
I just wrote what I did and all the mathematical proofs required, then added a bunch of images (always cool when your PhD is in something that involves image analysis) and you know how each image is worth a thousand words!

The not-so-cool part was the cost of printing half a thesis in color (times 8)... ouch!

EDIT: and I have no idea how many words my thesis had... lots, I guess. Over 100 pages, but half were images.

Yeah, they're pretty strict at getting as close to the minimum as possible and not going over the maximum.

My dissertation was for an art history degree so it's required to be illustrated. I didn't over-use images though. Just when necessary when I talked about an artist or photographer that used the medium. Examples of their work.

I turned off my word count though so I didn't focus on it, it really helped.

@Keri

Nice! It is surprisingly painful to complete these things, isn't it. Although Ive done it twice, I found it at times unbearable, so I can absolutely understand people who give up halfway or even further in. Without my then-gf giving advice and kicking me in my behind I would probably still be working on throwing out the 1000th draft for the outline of my masters thesis 9 years later.

Though I didn't get the thing with focus you mentioned, what's that?

(September 24, 2014 at 5:55 pm)pocaracas Wrote: Wow! One month for a whole thesis?!
My PhD thesis had a chapter in the appendix that, alone, took me a month to write!! (technically, it took me a month to research how to go from one mathematical expression to another in hundreds of little undocumented steps - writing was 2 days).

Congratz! New life ahead!
Enjoy!

Meh, that's nothing, I had a chapter that took me a month to write, and then I discovered that my simulation had a factor 1/2 missing, all the results changed and I had to start from the beginning

(September 25, 2014 at 1:58 am)Alex K Wrote: @Keri

Nice! It is surprisingly painful to complete these things, isn't it. Although Ive done it twice, I found it at times unbearable, so I can absolutely understand people who give up halfway or even further in. Without my then-gf giving advice and kicking me in my behind I would probably still be working on throwing out the 1000th draft for the outline of my masters thesis 9 years later.

Though I didn't get the thing with focus you mentioned, what's that?

Well I mentioned 'focus' twice... first being my subject topic of focus. Polaroid was the topic focus. I wrote on a lot of aspects of the inventor, the corporation, the cameras, the film, the artists that used it and the current project that is saving it by producing film when the corp pulled out of producing instant film.

The other was just saying that I didn't focus on the word count.

I don't understand how people do drafts? I honestly just started writing, and went chapter by chapter. Mailed it to my supervisor, he noted a few edits of typos and told me to add a bit more to the conclusion. I didn't even proofread it before I sent it to him. I fixed what he said and printed. It's always been the way that I write. I write as if it was the final copy. I don't even know how people do drafts. I would totally overthink everything and freak out.

Congrats Keri!

The waiting game is the worst I think.

That's fantastic--congrats!!!

Wow!

Color me impressed!

Congrats!

(September 25, 2014 at 2:15 pm)Keri Wrote: I don't understand how people do drafts? I honestly just started writing, and went chapter by chapter. Mailed it to my supervisor, he noted a few edits of typos and told me to add a bit more to the conclusion. I didn't even proofread it before I sent it to him. I fixed what he said and printed. It's always been the way that I write. I write as if it was the final copy. I don't even know how people do drafts. I would totally overthink everything and freak out.

Congratulations! Mind if I mess with you?

When I wrote my thesis I did exactly what you did. Trouble was, that was a while ago and the computer I used was old for its time, even back then. As I was writing my fixes the damned thing kept giving me warnings that I was running out of room and should delete/close as much as possible. So when I was done I went through and deleted every copy but the final one, printed out a hard copy and brought it to the copiers to get all the copies bound.

When I finally heard from my first reader it was a rather curt reply. "I can understand why you might not respond to some of my suggestions but I've never had them all ignored before." Yep, I saved and printed the wrong one. I don't know if I've ever done anything more painful than going back through that draft with his comments and re-editing it. The desire to already be done was just so strong. Until I gave up one remembering how I had already responded, I made no progress. Finally slogged through it and finished in August, just days before school started back up.