kareina

I had ever so much fun in Vienna, and would love to post about it. However, I also really need to get to work on papers for publication. Can it really be 10 months already since I finished my thesis and moved to Milan, and coming in on five since my degree was awarded? And yet I've not submitted papers for publication about my PhD research! Today I saw an advertisement for a very interesting sounding job in a location which is topographically uninspiring (read: flat). I'm considering applying. However, before I prepare an application packet it would be nice if the cover letter could mention that I have submitted an article for publication on that research and would be happy to provide a copy of the submitted manuscript if they cared to look at it. Guess I'd better get writing. Therefore, please read racaire1's journal (and many of her other recent entries) to get an idea of some of my adventures while visiting her.

While I've made an effort to post here on a semi-regular basis recently, I haven't been doing the sort of daily progress reports which were so helpful keeping me on-track and working whilst doing my PhD. Today's arrival of the "testamur*" in the mail, combined with the vague feeling that I'm not making fast enough progress on my work (both for the post-doc position for which I am being paid, and for completing papers from my PhD project) prompts me to resolve to return to doing daily progress reports. It is my hope that the need to report "no progress today" if I don't do anything will, once again, keep me actually doing things. Therefore, to that end:

Today I returned to a task ( I should have completed three weeks ago ) Given all of those complications, it is no surprise that I didn't complete this task weeks ago. Today I gave it another try, then gave up and e-mailed my boss asking what I'm doing wrong. A bit later he stopped by my office with a packet of mail for me (including the above mentioned testamur!) and I asked him about it in person. I showed him the files and ran the data through normj (using one of the options available) and he agreed that it isn't working right, and asked me to please send him the files so that he can play with it later and get back to me. That much has been accomplished.

This evening, after taking a walk with clovis_t and helping him make a pizza for his dinner (and setting some bread dough aside to bake rolls in the morning for breakfast), I returned to uni, where I added a few more words to the draft of the paper summarizing my PhD research, and did some work on a figure to illustrate that part of the text (the version of the figure as it appears in my thesis isn't suitable for publication, but the revised version is just about ready to go). That paper is now up to ~2500 words, and it shouldn't exceed ~5000 total. I'm not really certain how I'm going to get the rest of the information that I think needs to be there into that small of a space, but I guess that is why they call it a "draft".

I've done some work--this month's average hours per week spent on uni work is currently at 32.8 hrs/week, I've read my 1000 words a day (40 days in a row, this time), now I just need to go home and do my yoga and get some sleep before tomorrow, when I hope to accomplish more and encounter fewer challenges to the tasks at hand.


*I learned a new word today. I'm accustomed to the word "diploma" for the offical pice of paper one obtains from a university proclaiming to all and sundry that one has comepleted one's degreen. However, the letter accompanying mine refered to it as a "testamur", which, according to the on-line OED is:

testamur: In University use: A certificate from the examiners that a candidate has satisfied them. Also, A certificate generally.

1840 J. T. J. HEWLETT P. Priggins xvii, Balamson and Drinkwater..though it certainly was a ‘shave’, got their testamurs.
1860 J. BATEMAN D. Wilson I. vii. 115 The result was a refusal to grant the required testamur.
1863 W. C. DOWDING Life & Corr. G. Calixtus xxvii. 269 A formal testamur from the leading Lutherans at the Congress.
1897 ESCOTT Soc. Transf. Vict. Age xiv. 182 In the place of the ‘Smalls’ testamur..the special student was tested closely.

So, It finally occurred to me to log into the UTAS web page where one's student records are kept (in my defence I pretty much never needed to log in there--only one time each year, when I needed to fill out my "Annual Report", which I didn't have to do in 2009, as they aren't required for people who have submitted their thesis, so no surprise that I didn't think to do it sooner).

Right there, on the bottom of the screen, were the beautiful words:

"16 Dec 2009: Admitted Doctor of Philosophy"

The degree didn't quite get awarded on my birthday, but I'm ok with it being on my father's birthday. Besides, only six days late means I can still claim it as a birthday present, right?