Because this quarter was the last one for my Master’s Degrees, it got pretty out of hand.
Things were actually going very well for the first half, and I was actually ahead of schedule on everything.
Then it all fell apart.
About a month before my thesis defense was scheduled, my advisor came back and said she wanted to squeeze in another revision (surprise!).
I needed to have the thing in my committee’s hand at least two weeks ahead of time so that they would have enough time to review it, so I had two weeks to overhaul my thesis yet again.
I put off all my course work and concentrated almost solely on that.
Well, I got it in one time, and expected fairly smooth sailing.
A couple of days later I took my exams.
That consists of going into a room with an empty laptop and answering two questions for three hours.
I did pretty well on that, and spent the next two weeks trying to get some of my course work done.
Finally the day for my defense came, and I sat in a room with four professors and got grilled for a couple hours about my thesis and my exam answers.
All in all it went pretty well, and they suggested a few revisions before it was completed.
They all signed the forms except my advisor who was to make sure I got those revisions done.
Again I put off all of my course work and worked only on my thesis, and got it turned around in five days.
That’s when my advisor decided to surprise me yet again with another revision.
The reason this upset me so much is it made me miss the deadline for submitting the thesis for graduation in the spring quarter.
Needless to say I was extremely upset.
I know my thesis was at least as good or better than many that had been approved and signed off on by my colleagues.
Additionally, my parents were flying out to see my graduation, and by missing the deadline, I was not allowed to walk.
By now I had to get to all the coursework because the quarter was over, and I had a lecture I was giving at the library I had to prepare for.
So I didn’t get to her “final” revisions for a week or so.
There was a loophole that still allowed me to turn in my thesis during spring quarter, but they wouldn’t process it and let me walk until summer.
This was crucial because I didn’t have funding lined up for the summer and in order to graduate otherwise, I would have had to register for classes which would have cost more than I could have hoped to pay.
I did, however, get her revisions done and turned it back into her several days early, but instead of signing off, guess what—she wanted more revisions (we’ve now gone through about 9 revisions or so).
This left me one day to make all her revisions and print it out, get it approved with the graduate school, and get her to sign it.
She did sign it eventually, and I got the thesis turned in 45 minutes before the deadline—talk about cutting it close!
As you can see, the process was absolutely no fun.
Tina’s parents were kind enough to fly her and Xana home during much of this process, which was good because I was working 14 hours a day for over a month to make sure this happened.
The good news is I’m done.
I have now completed both Master’s Degrees—one in the History of Art, and one in Slavic and East European Studies.
This should make me a little more employable when all is said and done.
As all of this came to a close my parent’s did come out which was great.
I loved being able to just hang out and play for a week after all of that.
Of course, Xana loved having grandma and grandpa here to play with the whole time, and still asks us to drive over to their hotel to play.
Thanks mom and dad.
I’ll try to post the thesis on line once I get it converted to pdf if anyone (probably not) is interested.
