Free at last!

For the past mumble nine years mumble I’ve been working on my PhD thesis, either in a full-time, part-time or less than part-time capacity (read: at night and on the weekends). As Julieanne, my family and friends all know it’s been a very long and sometimes torturous journey. At certain points it wasn’t clear that I’d see it all the way through. Fortunately, and thanks to the aforementioned friends and family, I managed to stick at it.

This time last week I had almost finished making all of the major corrections to the final draft. After that, all I had left to do were the large number of corrections found by my diligent proof-readers - Julieanne and Malcolm. The Italian and French soccer fans were just getting warmed up a couple of blocks away on Norton St while I flipped over page one and started making the final edits. By 4am I was over half way through and the World Cup final had started. At 6am I’d finished and the game had gone into extra time. I wouldn’t be the only one at work that Monday with bleary red eyes at least.

I did one last run through the whole thing with a spell-checker on Monday night. Given the two hours sleep the night before I felt surprisingly alert and happy, probably the result of some weird combination of anxiety and anticipation. Saving a print-ready version to my keydrive and this server (yes, I’m paranoid) was a kind of letting go. There was no chance to make any more changes, a feeling made all the more real when I printed out five copies and took a box of some 1100-odd pages to the binders.

Since then things have been strange but also quite anti-climatic. I don’t think I’ve had much time to reflect on it all so the realisation that I’m done will take a while to sink in. There’s also many years of mental habits to break. I no longer have to feel like I should be at my desk working when I’m out walking the dog, relaxing over the morning paper, hanging out with Julieanne or friends on the weekends, messing about on the web. I have to try and make my default answer to invitations “yes” instead of “no”.

The party we threw last night has helped the adjustment some. From about 1pm onwards we had people dropping by to say congratulations and see me out of hermit mode. Julieanne had a t-shirt made up to avoid any awkward questions such as, “so, have you finished?” or “what was it called again?”.

Now that that is all out of the way I’m slowly figuring out what I’m going to do with my new-found free time. The weekend after next I’m heading up to the snow for a weekend. At the end of next month I’ll be catching up with Julieanne in the Greek Islands for her friend’s wedding. In between all that I think I’ll try not to do too much, relax and think about what to do after the trip.