Well, if I thought the defense was the second hardest part of this process, after writing the Monster, I was wrong. The last two days have seen me sweat the details, but the Monster was finally approved by the graduate school today, so I'm now official, for real.
Of course, doctoral candidates no longer turn in the dissertation as a Word document. No, that would be too darned easy. We have to turn it into a PDF file and then we have to upload it to OhioLink and then we have to wait to have it approved by the graduate school.
Well, out of 349 pages in that dissertation, a grad school official found that I'd spelled out Three, as in, Chapter Three, instead of writing Chapter 3, like the instructions for preparing the document say. Thus, I was told via e-mail this morning that I had to make the correction and resubmit.
That's after having spent about an hour yesterday with my recently PhDed friend, Dr. C, who was kind enough to take time from her packing and getting ready to move, to help me PDF my Monster. And that was after waiting in line for about 20 minutes at the graduate school to turn in the final forms that say I'm official.
But nothing would make me official for real until the Monster received the grad school's stamp of approval, and I had to wait until about 9 this morning to find out that Three was, indeed, the charm.
Thus, I rushed shortly thereafter to the university to work in the department's computer lab to fix the style error and re-PDF the whole darned thing. I only had until tomorrow for the end-of-quarter deadline, and missing that would've meant that I'd have to register and pay about $900-plus to enroll in summer quarter, which is precisely what I'd set out to avoid when I planned the whole dissertation calendar year a year ago. Needless to say, I was a little concerned.
Still, correcting that "mistake" gave me the chance to airbrush it here and there, and make my Monster more presentable, so I got it PDFed again and resubmitted, and after having lunch with my lovely pregnant friend, KG, I checked my Inbox and found an e-mail from the grad school waiting for me with the one word I wanted to see: "Congratulations!"
Now I feel official. Now, like the actual Monster told Victor Frankenstein, I can "Rest, Victor, rest."
5 comments:
Oh, the stories I could tell (and probably have told) about things that go wrong at the last second for dissertation submission. In my case, it was a double-hit of missing the closing time at the grad school by about 5 minutes--the night before the deadline, so that was okay--and then the whole Northeast being hit by that freak blackout of August 2003. Then I was missing a page number on my epigraph page (there wasn't an epigraph page in the sample book, and it didn't occur to me to make sure I had multiple versions of that page). The Thesis Advisor kindly did some presto-chango photocopying onto acid-free paper, and I was good to go---with a letter that said I'd become a "Doctor of Philosphy." That's my favorite detail ever.
I'm so, so, so happy for you. Rest indeed.
And I can't believe it's taken me until now to say it:
IT'S ALIVE! IT'S ALIVE!
(cf. here...)
You've made me laugh out loud and for that I thank you from my heart's little bottom!
Hi, Congratulations! Takes a lot of work and determination to achieve your level of success.
I am the father of a friend of Maruca. Her name is Susie. And she introduced me to your site. I'm interested in politics, and especially the viewpoints of people all over the world. Unfortunately,I can't read or speak Spanish (wish I could), so your site is good and can help me sharpen what little Espanol skills I may have.
Susie is here with me in Hawaii.
she says hello.
Aloha,
Bob
Bob,
Thanks so much for your comment! It is very kind of you. I definitely know Susie, and truly appreciate what a great friend she is to my baby sister. I very much look forward to going to Hawai'i sometime in the future to do research. Please do say hola to Susie for me, too! Thanks for reading the blog!
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