Comedy Of Errors
I can honestly say that I’ve certainly put characters through the ringer before, but I’ve never ever written anything comparable to what happened to me yesterday with my thesis.
First was the six hours I spent panicking about how to pad my script to make it longer… I’d been informed that it needed to be 120 pages long and it was more like 107. After spending the entire morning working (rather futilely) on that, I got official word that it only needed to be 100 pages and I was fine on length.
Then I figured out the margins were wrong on my signature page. For those who have never done a thesis before, the margins are far more important than the actual content of your thesis. Unfortunately, my committee had already signed, and my reader was flying out of town in less than two hours. I needed to reprint the page, run to the school from Cambridge, get it copied on the special magic thesis paper, and then rush to his house back in Cambridge and have him sign. Unfortunately, I couldn’t connect to my host’s printer, and by the time I got it printed, he had been gone for over an hour. And of course I’d forgotten my cell phone and wasn’t able to call him and let him know I wasn’t coming. Fortunately, the department chair was willing to forge his signature. Apparently, he thinks the graduate office is as insane as I do.
I won’t even get into the printing problems. Let’s just say it involved many building, even more computers, even more printing errors, and the use of all seven semesters worth of print credits I still had stocked up.
But now I am done. Done done done. And no more thesis. Unless I someday go get another degree. Don’t want to think about that right now.