26 The dissertation has left my desk and begun moving into the welcoming hands of my readers. (ha ha) It’s a very beautiful document, IMHO, which was generated using LaTeX – the bestest of all type setting programs.
As is tradition, I now wait for 2-4 weeks while my readers thumb through the thing and agree upon a date when they can, for the very last time, get me into a room by myself and beat me up. What have I learned? Well… hm.
I normally upbraid these forced hurdles that are so arbitrary, but I feel good about it. Unlike my other exams, the culmination of 5ish years of work took time and effort to build into something that wasn’t pure dog shit. I spent about a month, at first learning the ins and outs of LaTeX and then moving images around, and writing a few paragraphs here and there. I was aided (or hindered) by the fact that I was writing a paper whilst writing my thesis (which was convenient because that paper just became chapter 5). I took the blogosphere’s collective advice and essentially copied my papers into the dissertation.
You know, going to grad school wasn’t a one off decision I made in a bar while drunk and fondling myself – I had made the decision to get a PhD in the 5th grade. I have skipped every graduation I have ever had waiting for this.
It’s really a great feeling. I still think the dissertation is stupid and time consuming and we can all agree no one reads it but it brings closure and, to turn a quote, the long answer to the question: “What did you do in graduate school?” Definitely wouldn’t want to see an end to that.
The oral defense… on the other hand… well. Let’s just see how that goes. Hate to be the first one in the department to fail that. What an ignominious feat that would be.
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Congratulations! I’m sure you’ll make a great Dr. Finchsigmate.
Congrats man! Must feel pretty good to hit save for the last time on that document. Or compile it to a PDF for the last time, however Latex works.
I have a question regarding people reading theses. One of my TA’s in college just won an award for his thesis. One of those “Best Thesis” awards. How does that process work? I’m assuming someone has to nominate your work, otherwise there’d be a torrent of shit just fishing for awards. Anyone have any insight?
Best Thesis award? OMG I should SO WIN THAT AWARD. My dissertation was insanely pretty. I mean… unless you read it, you’d be convinced I knew what I was writing about.
The IUPAC gives out Best Theses awards every year. I think your department has to nominate you.
Sorry for the huge text dump.
Each year about 200 candidates in the faculty graduate with a research higher degree. To recognise the achievements of this select group of students, the Dean’s Award for excellence in a PhD thesis has been established. A committee appointed by the Dean selects the top five students on the basis of examiners’ reports and research outputs.
Nominations must be made by the thesis supervisor, with written agreement of the thesis-writer. Nominations must include the completed nomination form (see below), the recommendation of the supervisor (or head of Department or equivalent in case of unavailability of supervisor), with copies of the examiners’ reports. In addition, a hardcopy (printed) version of the thesis and a PDF of the thesis, with an abstract of up to 500 words must be submitted. Students who believe that their work may be eligible are advised to approach their supervisor to secure a nomination.
Taken from my institute website
The actual process is thesis gets passed on to two senior reviewers from outside the discipline but in the institution (i.e. my supervisor is senior marker for chem and has recently marked a maths thesis). If both markers approve it goes to the Dean of science department for final approval.
I think there was a C&EN article of what reviewers look at for this sort of things, but basically it is all over by the end of Chapter 2.
Sounds like a similar process as the one I mentioned, which was given by a company in Sweden (hence a 15000 Euro award) that sought work in the field of high performance plastics. I think the key is nomination by your thesis supervisor, which might come down to a balance between how easy it is to apply and how likely you are to win. I’ll look for that C&EN article. Thanks.
I take it back. It appears as though there is such an award and I’m being nominated for it. How interesting…
Haha, awesome! I hope your first two chapters are excellent. Good luck.
Don’t worry, you won’t be the first! Rumour has it someone did actually fail their dissertation defense about 10 or 11 years ago. I vaguely remember our bald headed mutual friend talking about it.
I thought that was someone in biology. It doesn’t make me feel awesome nonetheless. I have a hard time seeing anyone presently sitting in this department being a big enough douche bag to let someone get all the way to their defense and then fail them. Someone clever enough to game the system to get that far at least deserves a pity PhD.
Besides, how the fuck do you fail a dissertation defense?
I have personally seen it happen to a few unfortunates… more than once.
Don’t worry, I have a strong feeling it won’t be happening to you.
A big congrats Candidate Finchsigmate, you all growed up now
I had heard in grad school that Prof. Buchwald had gotten held back for six months in his thesis defense because he couldn’t remember some formula or other from his thesis and one of the professors (Westheimer?) was somewhat intransigent about it. It would suck, but it doesn’t seem to have harmed Buchwald so much in the long run.
Congrats, and since you have your postdoc lined up already don’t forget to take the well-deserved vacation in some nice place (where you can forget about chemistry for few weeks). It won’t do to start in the new group with the acute post-grad school burnout.
4th grade. Sorry. On the other hand I have barely started on my thesis.
Congrats anyway.
Is there a song chip when the cover opens?
I like this. I will do this.
Or a Hollywood-style bomb timer display, flashing red LEDs, beeping and counting quickly from ten to zero.
I will not do this.
But your thesis is the bomb! (though the bomb squad probably won’t appreciate it so much).
Congratulation.
Is “Blinded Me With Science” too obvious?
Re: Buchwald
He got into an argument with Knowles about remaining experiments for his thesis and blatantly said he’d write up immediately – that it was sufficient for a PhD. Knowles stonewalled him for another 6 months at least then let him graduate.
Fast forward 20 years and he still makes light of his PhD in seminars.
That would be a better explanation. Sorry.
Hey I know I said I wouldn’t post again, but would you kindly share the .sty files or what not that you used for your thesis?
I’m not finding a suitable one for my thesis at the moment.
never mind. I found one, the University of Pittsburgh ETD set (http://www.pitt.edu/~graduate/etd/) is quite nice, easy to manipulate, but tough to install. It also automatically uses hyperref (which hyperlinks the references to the reference). I’d recommend using natbib as a bibliography styleset for this, it’s the only compatible system that allows reference reordering and contraction (which my graduate program requires).
Good luck to the others out there who are writing theses.
the buchwald story is pretty funny, from what i heard he basically told knowles to f-off
i know this is off topic but does anyone know where chulbom lee went?