Four weeks and counting!

Well okay to be honest not exactly four, less than four. Oh no, my defense is less than four weeks away. This feels a bit odd… but here we are I guess. It seems like I’m never going to finish, but there has been progress! Setbacks too for sure, but progress nevertheless! Since it’s so close and I’m in a huge panic ALL THE TIME! I guess (reluctantly…) we can discuss the progress that has been made and what’s left for us as I approach the first of the next major deadlines, the format check. Which is just a week away if my calendar is correct (if not, well than oops…).

As semi-usual a quick introduction for those who don’t visit often (why though?!). I’m a 5th year PhD candidate… for another few weeks anyway if all goes well! I’ve already got my BS and MS in mechanical engineering and my PhD will be in neuroengineering (two totally different things, trust me on this). I’ve had my ups, my downs, my losses, and a few wins. It’s been an interesting five years and most of them are contained within this blog. Well, except for the first year, which really set the bar for how the last four went. But that’s a story for a previous post (see what I did there?), so let’s talk about more current events.

Last I wrote, there was five weeks to defend, now it’s four. But last I wrote my defense date was in flux. I had one set, but at the last minute school-PI, I have two, one school-PI and a hospital-PI, since I work at a hospital full time, I did mention that in the intro, right?… anyway school-PI had a conflict. Thus my whole schedule was put in chaos and even now one professor has already declined the new date that was set and I need to figure out why, but to be honest I think it will work out either way since he marked that he was available that day. So I’ll be defending (hopefully) the 28th, bright and early (for me anyway).

The good news about that is that I can get it over with and move on with the day instead of anticipating the whole day. The bad news is that I’m not exactly a morning person these days. I would’ve preferred something a tad later in the morning, but whatever the time and day are mostly official and everyone has their calendars marked, except maybe for you! So as always if you want to attend virtually (and can), I’m more than happy to provide a link so you can watch as I try to overcome the early morning exhaustion.

Now normally I would say to email me (use the handy contact form if you don’t already have my email or don’t have it handy). HOWEVER!!! I would ask that you hold off on that for now since the request will likely fall in-between a flurry of last minute emails coordinating my graduation with the school. Plus I don’t have the link yet so you’ll be leaving the fate of my response on the ability of my brain to remember more than… well I can’t remember much these days I honestly forgot it was a holiday today. Oops. So yeah, give it a week, but at least you know the date so you can mark your calendars to match mine!

I also had some testing I still needed to do. Specifically I had one person with a spinal cord injury that we were going to do some tests with last I wrote. That SHOULD have happened last Friday, but it got bumped to this Friday due to some health issues. They were saying cold, but it sounds more like COVID (which is still a thing people and way more common than the “common” cold). So all that to say, we didn’t get to do the aim 2 stuff for my dissertation… yet. It’s going to be close and this weekend will probably suck soooooo bad if it does happen, but hey at least I did it.

I’m actually kind of happy they had to reschedule due to the nature of the testing we’ll be doing, I had to build a whole bunch of stuff (well code a whole bunch of stuff) from scratch and most of it was “finished” the night before. We ended up testing with someone else to see if it worked and it failed miserably! Like barely got started, so I had to debug while the person was sitting there waiting for me to finish so we could test again, and again, until it worked. We didn’t get it, but since I’ve had this time I’ve been hard at work debugging and I’m fairly confident I’ve got it now (As confident as I can be I guess!) so we’ll see how it goes, but with any luck this Friday will mark the end for that.

If not, as I joked recently, my dissertation will be a lot shorter. Well okay it will still be close to 100 pages, but not nearly as long as if I had the data. Instead I’ll just have to cut aim 2 out completely and as school-PI said when I told him the bad news about the rescheduling, ” it happens.” As in, it was a good attempt, but it isn’t absolutely needed to make it to graduation. THANKFULLY! I already have all the software stuff (again mostly) figured out so that was a whole aim all on its own (really) and now I can make the fancy figures for the dissertation with the results from that.

So what’s left?

Well I’m ~80% done with the dissertation writing. I haven’t had a chance to get further along (I’ll be working on it this evening), because I’ve been working on getting all the code written that I need to finish for these tests. Even if we can’t test with our participant, I can still test with people in the lab, so that’s what we’ll be doing. Just to see how well it works and to get some last minute photos and things for the dissertation.

I have approximately one week to get my dissertation format checked (literally it’s called a format check), but I don’t have to have it completely written (or so I’m told) to get it checked, just mostly written. That’s the good news because, if true, it’s mostly written now and they can hopefully sign off on it! I also need to get it to my committee two weeks (minimum) before my defense so not a lot of time between now and then, meaning the final version (or rather the one going to the committee) will be the one going for format check (most likely anyway). There just isn’t enough time between the check deadline and the deadline for my committee to see it. I do get a week or so after the defense deadline to make any changes that are needed (committee will be the ones to tell me that) or to fix the inevitable typo’s, spelling mistakes, grammer, etc. But I’ll be happy if it’s coherent enough to be understood at this point. It’s a lot, but I think I keep saying that…

Once the defense is done and over, there’s still several things that need to happen. One they need to sign the form saying I passed (wooo!) the next is going to be getting my dissertation printed and bound, because apparently at this school we do it ourselves, my previous school didn’t do that, we sent a digital copy and they printed it for us. So I’ll need to make time to go get that done and I’ll need to have it printed on specific paper (because we’re fancy like that I guess). Which involves making sure I get the right paper between now and whenever I get the chance to print it. Just one more thing to add to the to-do list I guess.

Overall things are moving forward at the right pace, I just need to keep going at this rate for the next four weeks (well 3.5 but who’s counting?!) so I can make all the deadlines. None of this includes actual graduation stuff either, there’s still robes that need to be rented, forms to fill out, etc. Thankfully since I am finishing in the summer, my graduation is in the fall (winter? I’m still not used to the semester system). I say thankfully because it will give me a bit of a break to plan all that stuff, I’ll be graduated, don’t get me wrong, I just won’t get the “full” experience. The whole ceremony stuff that is. Which I’ve never done, but I’ve decided to do it this time around since it’s my PhD and dare I say it… my final form!

And that’s the update (long! Wow, I didn’t realize I had to much to write). I do wish I could update more regularly at this phase, but as rushed as my PhD has felt in the past, this is just an overwhelming amount of work to be done. But as I’ve been muttering under my breath every five minutes, the only way is through. Almost there, almost…