After almost two years of research and writing up—a process hampered somewhat by needing to combine both tasks with running a freelancing business or having a full time job at the same time—my thesis is ‘finished’. At 121 pages, it is quite a substantial tome, containing about 80 pages of solid text, 30,000 words and 118 references. Including the supplementary technical reports, the whole thing grows to 150+ pages and 40,000+ words. Alas, it will probably only be read by five people in the entire world (myself, two supervisors and two examiners). 🙁
I’ll be handing it in for binding tomorrow, and hopefully collecting it to hand over to the graduate office towards the end of the week. At that point I simply have to wait for the examiners to decide whether they want to bring me in for a viva or pass me on the basis of the thesis—either way the timetable indicates that I should definitely have a decision by Christmas, and in theory it could be as soon as mid-November.
The only question is, what do I do to fill the enormous gap that has been left by handing in the thesis?
Go on holiday????