Serotonin
17 May 2005, 08:07 AM
It's been about three weeks now since I've handed my honours thesis in. I was still posting on here in the days leading up to handing it in due to my monumental inclination for distraction. So much so that I didn't hand it in on time, instead handing it in 2 days late, incurring a penalty of 1% on my final mark (lenient!). I've wanted to write a spiel on it, basically for fodder for talking about how an INTP deals with the real world and real people, or at least the politics of academia. Naturally I didn't post something straight away on it since after weeks of writing on the same-old same-old topic, I was mightily drained (as you can expect) and wanted to do nothing but sleep, and possibly, in the next few days, drink copious amounts of beer. Which I did :)
In the 3-4 weeks leading up to the due date I was in a 48 hour cycle. I'd work all day, evening and throughout the night on a draft, finish, send it to my supervisor, go home in the morning and sleep all day, get up for 2 hours or so to have dinner and watch TV, then sleep all night, get up in the morning and start the cycle again.
This wasn't enough. My supervisors (both INTJ) had major issues with each draft, and the final product looked a lot different to how I would have done it with minimal help. But INTJs know the game, and they are willing to play it, and since my mark reflects on them, they wanted to get the best possible piece of work (in their eyes) out of me. Every rebellious bone in my body bristled, but I wanted this degree, so I put up with it and changed what they told me to change.
On the day before it was due, it became apparent that I had not done the best statistical test on my data. Instead of straight regression, I needed to do a 2-way ANOVA. My supervisors strongly advised that they wanted me to postpone handing it in, otherwise I'd get a shitty mark. That hurt, because a celebratory pub session with the other honours students in my cohort was scheduled at the local about five minutes after the due time for handing the thesis in. As you'd expect (since I was the only "P" in the group), everyone of that cohort handed it in on time, except for me. Tuesday 4:05 p.m. They're drinking to freedom, I'm still writing. Ouch. I did the ANOVA, changed my results, acted like a good little SJ and ended up handing it in at 3:50 on the Thursday afternoon. At that point I had stopped caring about the mark I had lost.
Stats
Nights spent sleeping in student office in last week before handing in (Saturday-Wednesday night): 5
Sets of clothes: 2
Showers: 3
Oporto meals: 3
Doner kebab meals: 2
Meat pie meals: 2
Healthy meals: 0
Vs (like red bull but tastes better) drunk: about 10
Strong lattes drunk: about 5
Moments of anxiety: too many to count
Moments where I broke down crying: 2
Callous criticisms by supervisors over tardiness: 7-8
% of time in office over 5 days spent sleeping: About 10-15%
Thesis length: 12 203 words (sans appendices), 65 pages (with appendices and references) plus about 15 diagrams.
Uninterrupted sleep portion post-handin on Thursday afternoon/night/Friday morning: 14 hours
Volume of beer consumed on Friday night: 2 litres
So yay, I'll be graduating in November with a BSc (hons) in bioinformatics. Now to join the welfare queue...
In the 3-4 weeks leading up to the due date I was in a 48 hour cycle. I'd work all day, evening and throughout the night on a draft, finish, send it to my supervisor, go home in the morning and sleep all day, get up for 2 hours or so to have dinner and watch TV, then sleep all night, get up in the morning and start the cycle again.
This wasn't enough. My supervisors (both INTJ) had major issues with each draft, and the final product looked a lot different to how I would have done it with minimal help. But INTJs know the game, and they are willing to play it, and since my mark reflects on them, they wanted to get the best possible piece of work (in their eyes) out of me. Every rebellious bone in my body bristled, but I wanted this degree, so I put up with it and changed what they told me to change.
On the day before it was due, it became apparent that I had not done the best statistical test on my data. Instead of straight regression, I needed to do a 2-way ANOVA. My supervisors strongly advised that they wanted me to postpone handing it in, otherwise I'd get a shitty mark. That hurt, because a celebratory pub session with the other honours students in my cohort was scheduled at the local about five minutes after the due time for handing the thesis in. As you'd expect (since I was the only "P" in the group), everyone of that cohort handed it in on time, except for me. Tuesday 4:05 p.m. They're drinking to freedom, I'm still writing. Ouch. I did the ANOVA, changed my results, acted like a good little SJ and ended up handing it in at 3:50 on the Thursday afternoon. At that point I had stopped caring about the mark I had lost.
Stats
Nights spent sleeping in student office in last week before handing in (Saturday-Wednesday night): 5
Sets of clothes: 2
Showers: 3
Oporto meals: 3
Doner kebab meals: 2
Meat pie meals: 2
Healthy meals: 0
Vs (like red bull but tastes better) drunk: about 10
Strong lattes drunk: about 5
Moments of anxiety: too many to count
Moments where I broke down crying: 2
Callous criticisms by supervisors over tardiness: 7-8
% of time in office over 5 days spent sleeping: About 10-15%
Thesis length: 12 203 words (sans appendices), 65 pages (with appendices and references) plus about 15 diagrams.
Uninterrupted sleep portion post-handin on Thursday afternoon/night/Friday morning: 14 hours
Volume of beer consumed on Friday night: 2 litres
So yay, I'll be graduating in November with a BSc (hons) in bioinformatics. Now to join the welfare queue...