Fannish Argosies

I'm finished.

Sort of.

The main text is finally tweaked to my liking. All the pictures, illustrations, tables, maps, and other figures are in place and labeled properly. References have been checked and double checked to make certain they're all there. The appendices, which took me all damn night and half of today, are finished. I have a table of contents and an abstract. Working on the lists of tables and figures now, thankfully just a copy-and-paste job. Still have to do acknowledgements and page numbering, as well as make sure in what order all the fiddly bits at the beginning are supposed to be.

Sadly, I can't get it to the bindery until Monday, but that will give me time to triple check everything. I need to find a good place in town to get it printed, on good paper so the photos will turn out. And maybe get someone, like my mother, to give it a read-through. I hate the thought of there being any little typos I've missed, things I won't be able to fix b/c it'll be hardbound and out of my hands and future students will read it and catch these things and shake their heads and go "tsk" at it.

Or I could be just paranoid. Either one, really.

95 pages. God, that's the most massive thing I've ever written.

The goal here is to get at least 72% on this thesis. I forgot to post about it before, but we finally had those external examiner meetings, so they finally gave us our results back from the taught portion of the course. I got a B - 68% with the possibility of a distinction. So close to an A, dammit. Happily, the thesis can make up for those percentage points. I need a 72% to get a distinction for the master's degree overall. And, while I'm happy to get the degree at all, now that it's tangible and has a number to it, I do want the distinction. Probably won't mean anything to anyone later on down the road, but it'll mean something to me.

Just hit 11,000 words! Woot!

Yesterday was highly unproductive, as hours fiddling with stats on the cuttlebone section I'd skipped and saved for last led to no end of frustration. I think I know what stats I need; however, once I added the data for the juveniles to the adult data I'd already tested, my data set suddenly became both not normal and of unequal variance. Both log and square root transformations didn't help, so I'll have to either take out a few outliers somewhere or use nonparametric testing. And for that, I'll need a macro the stats department wrote, which means a trip to the library before my access runs out. Argh. I just want to finish that one section. It's pissing me off greatly.

Today, however, has been highly productive so far. I've been able to incorporate more of my literature review than I thought was going to be possible, which pleases me. Yes, I still have graphs and maps to add, some diagrams to draw, and my references and appendices to sort out, but that's just filler. I know what those are, I just have to organize them properly. And that could be done after I turn the draft in, if needed.

Anyway, I'll make it in time for my personal deadline of handing in the draft tomorrow. I have a meeting with my supervisor to talk about my work, which is nice but most annoying. The bastard emailed me on Wednesday saying he'd gotten the initial stuff I'd sent him and asking me to come by to discuss it. The annoying part? I sent that data over two weeks ago. He went on yet another holiday without telling anyone, after only just getting back from the US the week before. I even told him the Friday before that I'd be sending some stuff his way that Monday, but did he say anything about going away? No, of course not. He said great, lovely, good job. I like the guy, but right now I could strangle him. I had to get the news that he'd gone away from his daughter, as no one else seemed to know where he was. I'm sure he had email access, so even a short note saying he'd gotten my email would've been nice. Did he really expect me to sit on my hands for two weeks until he replied, doing nothing? I had to keep going on my own just hoping I was on the right track, and I truly hope he won't sit there tomorrow and say oh, you should have done this and this and oh, how about this as well?

Perhaps I should be grateful. If anything, this project has taught me that if one is going to get anything done in research, one just has to go and do it one's bloody self. I've done most everything by myself this summer and although I'll be expected to list my supervisor first in the acknowledgements, if I were going to be fair I'd list the PhD student I worked with and all the technicians first, as they helped me more than anyone else did.

I need more caffeine...