9 and a half weeks

[spoonless]

I turned in the forms a few days ago to apply for finally receiving my Ph-Dizzle. My defense is tenatively scheduled for May 26th... yup, that's right. After nearly 6 years of work, I am exactly 9 and a half weeks away from being done. That is, assuming I stay focused and get it all done. Oh yeah, maybe it's a good time to start writing my dissertation soon! Seriously, I initially budgeted myself about 2 weeks for that, but now I'm starting to get paranoid that it may take longer.

Oh yeah, and PhysRev has finally accepted the paper I submitted in December. In February, they sent me a notice saying that they were rejecting it (because the first referee was a dick)... and I had to fight them on it, but fortunately the second referee agreed with me, so it's all good now. I may make a friends-only post with more details on this... I was pretty worried about it for a while, but it feels really good to have been vindicated in the end. Apparently, when you try to publish without someone else famous on the paper, they have a much tougher time believing that you're saying anything interesting. My faith in peer review has been considerably shaken by this whole incident... at the very least, I have realized how subjective the whole thing is.

As ikioi said to me recently, anyone who has come up with anything really important or world-changing has been told at least once that their ideas are completely worthless. So perhaps the best reaction to being told that is just to say "oh good, now I've got that one out of the way." :)

Comments

[fermi.livejournal.com]

I wish you luck in your writing. I had to have my dissertation done before my defense, which had to be finished one month before the final version was due. That month was for corrections my committee was sure to want, and I just finished. The actual writing took me 3 months of 7 day weeks and 12-15 hour days of just endless typing.

My advise, start early. Better to be done early than not finished in time.

[spoonless.livejournal.com]

Yeah... I realize this is more typically how things work. I do think I am cutting it closer than I should, but the reason I am not all *that* worried is because I have a lot of published material already (4 full papers, the last of which I am still finishing up) that can pretty much be taken directly and stuck in there as chapters in it. The only thing I really need to add is an introduction and conclusion. So in a sense, I have already started... it's just that I wasn't calling it a dissertation when I was writing it.

But yeah, I am a bit worried about all those last minute corrections.

[moonaysl.livejournal.com]

I would take that last minute stuff seriously. Someone we both know couldn't leave to start their postdoc for almost a month and a half later than expected because their committee kept coming back with little comments. That part is the part that is time consuming, not necessarily the writing.