The final countdown…

What a week, long experiments, surprise experiments, way too much writing, but we’ve done it! Done what you ask, well let’s get right into where things are at the moment and some of the final things that need to happen. Because there’s a list, there’s always a list and when you’re getting ready to defend the list feels incredibly long and never ending! A quick recap for the week and what’s left to come.

Ever feel like your insides were scooped out with a rusty spoon? No, just me? We started the countdown at six weeks. It’s been 16 hour days, everyday without stopping. It’s been more than 16 hour days, it’s been days without sleep, days where the stress was so high it was physically painful. It’s been a fight to survive and I’ve only made it by counting down the days because thinking any further ahead just wasn’t an option. I’m told a PhD is a marathon, not a sprint. I’m told a lot of things, but that wasn’t what the last few months have been. It’s been a painful weeks long sprint with unexpected obstacles at every turn. But we did it…

It was horrible timing, but at work things have been slammed. Normally I would get at least a day to quietly work on writing/ data processing/ etc. Instead it’s been 12 hours or so a day for the last few weeks. We have four long experiments, experiments so long they often start the day before for me and run ~36 hours non-stop. There’s a lot of setup and double checking things and of course the past two Fridays (yesterday included) we had them on the schedule. Things ebb and flow at work, we do research with human participants and humans have schedules, but the thing about humans is that oftentimes we find that everyone has a similar schedule so generally holidays are slow while summer and other times traditionally thought of as more “free time” are when we really get people into the lab. I wish this time was the former, but it’s the later, so experiments wall to wall leaving very little time for other things.

If that were it then it wouldn’t be so bad, do the job, go home, eat, sleep, and repeat. But there are graduation things I need to do and a bomb was dropped by school-PI who said I needed to successfully perform one experiment for my third and final dissertation aim. The previous (here), didn’t work out, but thanks to five years of working with MATLAB non-stop it was fairly easy to debug and fix. Unfortunately the experiment relies on other people, I can’t just do the experiment with people from the lab, we needed to get someone particular in and there was no guarantee that we could get the same person back in. School-PI tried to reassure me that it wasn’t a big deal to push my defense back by a month or so and I could get the data needed. I had other ideas.

Thanks to a few military friends, we widened the search, school-PI reached out to several of his contacts, but in the end it was the original participant who saved the day. We got her back into the lab, the experiment was done and didn’t work out quite as well as I had hoped, but we did it. I got the data I needed as of mid-last week after work and I’ve had the chance to incorporate the findings into my dissertation. I’ll probably have to do some rewrites after the fact, but school-PI has agreed that I’m ready, the defense announcement has been sent out and the committee has been given the update, so this upcoming Friday will be the second to last hurdle I need to make to graduate.

The last would be any edits and submitting my dissertation for binding, which is due the week after I defend. I’m defending just a couple of days before the last day and the deadline to submit the final copy is the week after so I’ll get like 10 days instead of 7. I’m hoping it won’t be a huge issue and that will be the easier part of the whole thing, but we’ll have to wait and see what happens. I’m optimistic at this point and my dissertation is going off to school-PI for early review later today and to the rest of the committee Monday in preparation for the big event.

All that to say if you want an invite to the defense, I officially (finally) have my zoom link to send out so feel free to drop me a line via email if you have it or the contact form if you do not. It will be bright and early Friday, 9am eastern time or 6am pacific time. I already had a few requests so I will be emailing those of you who asked in the next day or two (before Monday really). Now me, I don’t typically wake up before 7-8am if I can help it, but since I cannot help it, we will make it work. Just one (or at most two really), weeks and with any luck I will finally, finally have my PhD. Okay, five years isn’t THAT long, but it does feel like it. I’m glad to be so close to finishing, theoretically anyway. I guess I’m afraid to say anything for certain right now since I feel like every time I get close to being finished something else pops up.

As usual, I want to thank everyone for following along and providing support. It’s been a super surprising to me that so many people have shown interest in my journey (even though it felt like my posts were very repetitive). It didn’t feel like I would ever make it to this point and having people cheering me on, even just virtually, was a real life saver. So thank you all, I don’t think I would’ve made it this far without that unexpected, but very welcome support.

Small update: Apparently WordPress has informed me that I’ve been with them for 11 years now, wow time flies. While this specific blog has existed maybe 9 of those years, I’m thankful for the journey I’ve had and the chance to work on my freeform writing. Today is my anniversary date apparently. Fun super secret fact, I started because my therapist at the time suggested I try writing down what I was going through and suggested making a private or public blog to keep track of it all. I do miss that therapist, but hey I’m still at it… intermittently as it were. Not so private these days though, which still feels odd…