and then again ...

[truepenny]

This means that I must give my committee the ms exactly one month from today, buttons buttoned, laces tied, citations cited.

*shriek*

Comments

[libskrat]

And the day after that... :)

[heresluck]

Dude. No worries. I'll read it this week, we'll talk about it, and then you can wash its face and clean under its fingernails, or whatever the appropriate extension of your metaphor is, and it'll be all good.

I think you need renenet to be Lloyd Dobleresque at you here for a minute.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

(Tho' the Say Anything allusion would be even more cheering if I'd ever actually seen the movie.)

I'm giving myself this evening to spaz and goof off and whinge, and tomorrow it's back to the gerbil wheel.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

You mean there'll be a day after that? Boy, I'll have to deal with that when it gets here. :)

[oursin.livejournal.com]

'When a man is about to be hanged it concentrates the mind wonderfully'

[malinaldarose.livejournal.com]

Is it too early to wish you luck?

Dissing the dis

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Bah. Lady, you write fiction.

This is just a little old thesis paper. It don't even have to break my heart.

*hug*

support from a new reader

[rutemple.livejournal.com]

Linked to you as a friend of friends; happens I edit dissertations for a living.

My therefore experienced advice is: Have at it! Since you're getting into that final polishing mode,
here are the most common errors I come across in editing this level of stuff, to keep an eye on:

Use EndNotes if you can possibly get it, to keep your citations/refs in order - this will save you from date typos in citations, or from citing sources you forgot to list in the references, or from listing references you forgot to cite.

Format a style guide for your title headers, to make sure they're consistent across the entire manuscript. If that H1 header at the Abstract is all caps, center, bold, then it needs to be that way for the Chapter titles and the References and Appendices' titles, too. In the past year and a half of doing technical reviews as one of the vetted editors of a small grad school in SF, and the past 22 years of doing editing and pre-press production, this is surprisingly the most common source of errors in this type of manuscript.

Use APA or MLA formatting if they'll let you - the Chicago Manual has all the details, but - bless their pointed little heads, they have all the details for preparing any kind of manuscript that might ever appear at the doors of the Chicago Press shudder and it's still basically the same pile of notes it started as 97 years ago. twitch

And while it takes its final, formal form, step back and breathe from time to time.
Yes it's this big, tedious thing you've spent X number of years on (what's your topic?) and it will be Done Soon.

Doing the flavor of technical review I do, the piece that surprised me is how emotionally engaging the process is, sort of a technical midwifery.

Breathe.

PUSH!

Re: support from a new reader

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

I'm familiar with the perils of formatting from trying to get my novel chapters to be consistent (for my own satisfaction more than anything else), but it's good to have a heads-up to know what I ought to be double-checking.

Happily, MLA is preferred in my department, which makes everything so much easier.

My topic is ghosts in Renaissance revenge tragedy. Somewhere back here ... *rummages* here (http://www.livejournal.com/users/truepenny/104900.html) I have a smallish rundown, which is accurate except that Bussy D'Ambois has been replaced by The Second Maiden's Tragedy, which is a great relief to all concerned.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Definitely not. :)

From here until I deposit, I'm gonna need all the luck I can get.

As the baseball players say, I'd rather be lucky than good.

[skalja.livejournal.com]

*hugs* Best of luck.

[renenet.livejournal.com]

You must see the movie. As h.l points out, everything seems to be well in hand, but for what it's worth I do encourage you to relax — by force, if necessary. Lloyd Dobler indeed said it best when he was accosted by Jeremy Piven (http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0005315/)'s very drunk character, Mark, at the end of a post-graduation blow-out of a party. Brace yourself for shouting and click here (http://www.oberlin.net/~renenet/mustchill.wav), please.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

You can do it! Go you!

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

But I don't want spoilers!

[pameladean]

Shriek now, by all means; be cool as a cucumber on the Day.

All the very best of luck to you on the last little leg of this race.

Pamela

[libskrat]

Yup. And it's a Tuesday. Really. I checked.

[renenet.livejournal.com]

Gah! Sorry!

Slightly belated good wishes

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Good luck with polishing the dissertation. You know you can do it! You've almost made it, just the final furlong, last lap, one more push (or whatever metaphor you favour). Keep taking the deep calming breaths.

[magentamn.livejournal.com]

I only had to do orals on an MA, not a PhD, but I went into it regarding the process and somewhere between an initiation and hazing. "I went through this, so you have to, and mine was tough, so yours will be tougher" seems to sum up the attitude.

You can do it - you're a professional!

Best of luck!

[malinaldarose.livejournal.com]

Well, then, good luck and lots of it!

[calanthe-b.livejournal.com]

~hugs~ Good luck. I'm sure you'll get there. But I understand the panic--hell, I've got three months to get mine done, and I'm panicking already!

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Luck luck luck of goodness to you!

[jcalanthe]

Congrats on getting the Dissertation Conference scheduled, and much luck finishing up! I have every faith in you. *cheers you on*