The concept of a thesis as "centralisation of ideas" is not an excuse to not finish your thesis.
You know who you are.
phdchat (16 out of 21)
OH: "my hypothetical thesis is an extension of my insanity"
My sister just emailed me asking "should I do a PhD?" hahahaha <3
I worked to overcome the initial PTSD-driven reaction before trying to come up with sound advice.
In reply to: https://rhiaro.co.uk/2017/11/actually
I'm not done with this topic yet.
Spending all day every day either working dedicatedly at one thing, or feeling overwhelmingly guilty about not working dedicatedly at one thing, seemed to make complete sense at the time and had a kind of honour associated with it. But in hindsight it was really stupid and more often than I think I even realised, especially towards the end, I was hellishly miserable.
Don't get me wrong, I loved doing a PhD, and I got a lot out of it. I got travel opportunities, and great friends, and fantastic mentors, and learnt a lot about myself. One thing I always tell people I love about postgrad was the freedom to work under my own steam, on topics that interested me. I could work when I wanted, how I wanted.
In hindsight.. I should have used that freedom to not work all the time.
That makes it sound like I worked all the time. I did not. I spent an awful lot of time not working, but because most of that not-working time I could have been working, I felt terrible about the fact I wasn't working. On and off over the years I tried a schedule - to build in non-work-not-guilty time. Sometimes it worked. And sometimes I'd go off on an adventure (a walk around a new city, or climb a mountain) and tell myself I need a break and it's okay not to work that day. Sometimes it escalated, and I'd spend an entire day watching Star Trek and tell myself it was okay and I needed a break. Then I'd do that a few days or even up to a week in a row, and realise that I could no longer justify this as a mental-health preserving break, and all the good energy-saving would be undone in one fell swoop of crushing guilt. Then I'd watch Star Trek for a bit longer out of misery.
The lesson here is probably something about better time planning.
In reply to: https://rhiaro.co.uk/2017/11/sometimes
Actually I think what's nice is just that I spend a lot less time watching netflix whilst drowning in crippling guilt these days.
Sometimes I take a moment to just revel in how much more free* time I have with a full time job compared to doing a PhD.
* time for decentralised social web stuff** and Nanowrimo.
** what was my thesis about again?
I read, made notes on, and wrote a small literature review on some papers yesterday. Part of me loved it, it's been a while. Part of me suffered greatly from PhD PTSD I guess.
Okay, I went out for lunch, went to the market, sat in the sun, uploaded photos from the last week, took a nap, and made chocolate muffins. 7pm seems like as good a time as any to start the day's thesis corrections.
I'm doing my thesis corrections.
As you may know, my whole thesis writing process has been public on Github throughout, in the interests of #OpenScience and #LinkedResearch. The feedback from my examiners during my viva is documented as issues with the 'viva' tag, and I also opened more issues from my own notes during the defense.
If there are bits of my thesis you've read on the past or are particularly interested in, now would be a great time to file any other issues you've spotted for things you'd like to see updated or fixed in the final hardbound copy of my thesis which will, I presume, live in the University of Edinburgh library, survive the impending technological apocalypse, and generally outlive all of us. I aim to print the thing by the 31st of October.
I passed my PhD viva yesterday, subject to minor corrections! Just call me Dr. Guy.
Thanks to my intrepid examiners Dave de Roure and Mark Hartswood for reading my whole thesis and spending three hours on a really interesting discussion of my findings and the implications. I don't even have words to express how grateful I am to my supervisor Ewan Klein, who has humoured me faultlessly for the last five years.
Fun fact: I haven't written my thesis acknowledgements yet because every time I try to think about all of the amazing people who have supported me over all this time I cry.
Finally, we did something right.
Publishing your article as HTML doesn't damage your chances after all :)
This looks quite heavy.
My thesis is, and always has been, online at dr.amy.gy. You can read it, and you can even annotate it with dokieli, or open github issues, so long as you acknowledge that I rushed a lot of parts (my own fault). I will continue to improve it over the coming months, and my defense/viva will be in September, after which I expect lots of corrections and to republish a better version. So don't feel bad if you want to wait until then to read it :)
How do I have so much left to do with two days remaining?? Seriously what have I been DOING for the last four years??
I have revolutionised my productivity by ordering the tabs in my text editor by chapter number. Rad-i-cal.
Okay after like a week of hermitting in my room, not changing my clothes (pyjamas), minimal interactions with other people in the house, oversleeping, and forgetting to eat... I finally left the house and today I'm working from coffee shops and maybe the library in Joondalup. I realised after I got on the bus though that I should probably have showered before I left the house oh well at least people will leave me alone.
all i want to do is sleep, and nothing tastes good.