Well, I handed in the dissertation almost two weeks ago, and have spent the time since then de-stressing and preparing for the PhD. I’ve spent some time tidying our study, clearing away the reams of paper lying everywhere, and finally got round to throwing away most of my undergraduate engineering notes (me, a pack rat?!)
The PhD is due to start with induction on Monday; after much prodding of universtity admin I seem to have completed all the registration I can do ahead of time, apart from (what else?) getting my grant payments sorted, something that will take priority when I arrive.
I don’t actually get my formal MSc result until the exam board meets in mid-November. This is slightly annoying, as I technically have a conditional PhD offer, but my supervisor should have seen the dissertation by now and he hasn’t raised any issues – in this case no news is good news. I’m not entirely happy with the dissertation as submitted; another week to let it mature and add more analysis would have been nice, and another month would have allowed me more time to look at more materials at the National Archives, but it should do. I’d like to think about getting some of the info published somewhere, but I’ll have to discuss this with my supervisor, as I suspect it will need serious re-drafting. Anyhow, onward!
Tags: MSc
September 19, 2009 at 6:14 pm
You will find, I think, that things like this are never finished — another week/month/year would always have yielded something better. The trick is to identify the point of diminishing returns, and make the result available to others. Deadlines are healthy in this way.
September 19, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Oh, absolutely – as a serial procrastinator, I fully appreciate the importance of deadlines! In this case I’m not sure I was quite at the diminishing returns stage, but I’m glad I got it done.