For the next few weeks everything\u2019s going to be a bit rushed and my mind may be a tad wayward. I have, you see, put in my notice to submit my thesis. This is my least favourite part of doing a PhD, normally, and a bit worried because right now I am kinda enjoying it. What\u2019s wrong with me? I don\u2019t sleep at all well, and I want it finished, but right now, the revision and thought is rather fun. When it stops being fun, then I\u2019ll know I\u2019m nearly finished.<\/p>\n
While our dissertations are not that different to US or UK or European dissertations, the Australian examination process is its own thing. This is because it was set up at a time when distance and cost prevented committees from meeting in person and before modern technology allowed online meetings. Because of this, most Australian PhD examinations are still done through three examiners evaluating the written text. That\u2019s it. I\u2019ve been an examiner, and you are sent the document (it used to be a printed and bound document, but these days printing and binding mostly happen later) and read it and fill in a form and that\u2019s that.<\/p>\n
I enjoy examining others\u2019 theses, but do not at all enjoy mine being examined. You sit and wait and sit and wait and sit and wait. Mostly, everything is done within three months\u2026 except for my first PhD examination, which took three years. It was also fraught. It left emotional scars and also cost me my first career. It\u2019s very hard to get job interviews when your PhD has been under examination for about as long as it would take to do a whole new PhD.<\/p>\n
I have maybe two weeks to finish writing the thesis, then a few more weeks for all the various other stages to be complete. Ticking boxes and jumping hoops.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s very good training for fiction writers, actually. I am much pickier about sending manuscripts to publishers because of this training. I don\u2019t wait for an editor to sort my grammar and check for typos and ensure that the house style is met: I do it myself. I\u2019m not as good at these things as I used to be, however. I miss the days of more energy and better eyesight and being really annoyed at stray split infinitives or commas. My thesis still has to have all these things sorted, along with proper citations and formatting. Several of the weeks before I submit, then, are to allow a copy editor to take a look. It\u2019s part of the system right now, and good for me\u2026 but I\u2019m determined to see how little work I can leave for the copy edit: it\u2019s a matter of pride.<\/p>\n
This leads to some odd moments. I was supposed to rewrite a paragraph yesterday, and instead I spent ten minutes analysing the text and seeing if I really needed my second footnote. This is not a document with many footnotes, unlike my History PhD. Different disciplines have quite different requirements. I used to have so many footnotes that I wrote 103 footnotes into my first novel. The editor had me take some out\u2026. But it is still a footnoted novel. Back then, we had to assess the space for footnotes on each page: it wasn\u2019t automatic. It\u2019s ironic that now the word processor does this, I only have very occasional footnotes.<\/p>\n
My first PhD was formatted by me, myself and I on a MacSE. Two floppy drives and much blue screen of death. That machine cost me 25% of a year\u2019s scholarship. It was that long ago. I would print my drafts out on a dot matrix printer, and took discs into the university printer to print the final and photocopy it. The printed copies were then bound and sent to examiners, one of whom was in Canada. My then-thesis contained a vast amount of Old French and a little Latin, which totally thwarted any spellcheck by anyone who was not me.<\/p>\n
Everyone was so impressed I was working on the computer all by myself back then. That\u2019s how long ago it was. Desktop computers were exciting and new and I was able to do all the things myself. I typed other people\u2019s theses in the last year of my undergraduate life. Not many theses, but I was a fast typist and accurate and now\u2026 I\u2019m neither.<\/p>\n
I wish I could claim age for this loss of skill, since I was an undergraduate over forty years ago, but the sad reality is that when I joined the public service it was at a time when there was much mistreatment of young women with typing skills. So many of us developed RSI. In my case, my supervisor was really annoyed that I had a PhD and he didn\u2019t, even though I was still waiting for the examination results. He would give me pages of typing at 5 pm. \u201cIt\u2019s urgent,\u201d he claimed, which is how he skipped sending it to the typing pool. I was a policy analyst, not a typist but he would give me the work and then go home. A small sliver of his personality helped make up the composite boss-from-hell in one of my novels. So, so many people who read that novel tell me that they had that boss.<\/p>\n
I am wittering, aren\u2019t I? This is avoidance. I need to finish editing the Introduction and Literature Review. By the end of today, I have to apply one set of comments to the whole thesis. Then I have marked up text to sort out. Then another set of notes. I have until the weekend to have done all of this and I am, right now, procrastinating. Most of my Monday was spent clearing urgent stuff so that I could immerse myself in sorting out the thesis. That was also procrastinating. I\u2019m nervous of Chapters Two and Three and Four, you see. Very nervous.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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