Why? Because I submitted my thesis on Friday!!!  Now I graduate on May 31st.  I don't necessarily want to go.  It's going to be huge, a couple thousand of graduates at Radio City Music Hall.  My high school and college were both very small, with nice small, short, intimate ceremonies.  This is going to be one of those stand-up and sit-down jammies.  Oh well, Ma really wants to go so she can scream like a fool.  After my thesis defense, I took a few days off so that my brain could decompress.  Then I had to get crackin' on my revisions.  Of course I had a few issues. I had to add some graphs and some additional info to all of the graphs.  I definitely learned some valuable lessons about formatting graphs between Microsoft Word and Excel.  I especially had problems trying to print 3 copies of a 55 page paper on thick, high quality, acid free, 100% cotton, 24 lb. blah blah blah, paper.  The printer in my research lab is painfully slow and it kept picking up the pages two at a time, thus f%$king up the print.  And that paper was expensive!!  One box of 100 pages for $13.50.  I had to print at work using the laser jet printer.  I offered to pay my boss for all the toner I had to use, but she was pretty cool about it.  I think she was just so glad to not see me looking like I was going to vomit all the time.  Needless to say, even though the defense went well and I was told many times over that it was very good (my prof actually said that the other thesis she had to read was "shit", yes her word was "shit", compared to mine), I was still terribly stressed out, at least that's what my stomach keeps telling me.  And being told that it was really good was almost a bad thing because then I became paranoid about making it perfect.  I had to give up that dream for my own well-being. 

 

 

Well Tuesday it will be the 6-week anniversary since my booby reduction. Can you believe it?  I can't!  My second post-op is this Thursday the 17th.  I'll be sure to share the experience. 

 

Lata!!

 

Well I passed my thesis defense on Tuesday!!  Woo Hoo!  I still have some "tweaks" in the actual paper, but my committee felt that it was good enough to pass it on the spot. They were very complimentary about the study itself and the paper, which felt nice, especially since I usually felt that I was pulling stuff out my ass 3 quaters of the time.  The grad department head was also there. She forgot to send out a mass e-mail about my defense so she was there and my two committee members were there, and that was it.  That was much more relaxing, not having a bunch of other people there (not that many show up).  I have the signatures of my second reader and once I make the revisions, my thesis sponsor will sign and then I can submit it to the Dean's office.  I have to do this by May 11th.  I'd say my timeline was looking pretty good especially since there are quite a few students in the department that haven't even defended yet.  I'm so relieved.  When I was in Baltimore recovering after the surgery and was trying to finish up my paper at the same time, I was really beginning to stress and think that maybe I was nuts for trying to do that all at once.  But now I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and I'm catching up on missed sleep.  Hopefully I can just enjoy the next few months. 

I knew that having graduation on my birthday was a good omen!!

 

Lata Folks!!

No, seriously, I really did.  So as I've mentioned my IRB proposal was due today.  So I take my butt up to school in Manhattan (or "the city" as we natives like to call it) first stopping along the way in Brooklyn Heights to go to a copy shop to review a proof of my camp brochure (yay! camp!). Well, the proof looks good.  The pictures are great (very diverse, we look like a UN poster), which I find funny considering that our camp is in a primarily white yuppie neighborhood .  There's a typo in the brochure, which I already knew about (knew about it when I submitted it), but I don't really care since we had "pubic' transportation instead of "public" transportation on one of our camp forms and it took about 5 years for someone to catch it.  People don't truly read.

 

Anyhoo, I get up to school thinking that I just have little to fix and I can turn in my proposal and get my butt to work by 2:30 in order to do after school.  Well, my professor decides that she doesn't like the layout of our survey and tries to make the changes herself.  This would have been nice, BUT,  I made some of the survey in Excel so that the numbered responses would be nice and even and then I put them in the survey word document.  Well needless to say, she had never done it that way and it got royally frigged up.  So at 2:30 when I should have been at work, I was literally cutting and pasting (I mean scissors and tape, people) pieces of the survey together.  I'm doing all this knowing that we have tons of people out of work today and I am going to be terribly late so I'm having chest pains and my hands are shaking with these scissors and I'm thinking *&$#*&@!!!!

I'M GONNA CUT MYSELF AND BLEED ALL OVER THIS PROPOSAL!

 

Well finally, I finish.  I get to the IRB office and the nice lady there (I think the woman who runs the department), decides to take a look at it to make sure I'm not missing anything.  Well, I was missing the 12-page cover sheet.  I'm thinkin', that ain't no cover sheet, that's a cover dissertation.  Well she says to me, "Nothing will be done with these today, would you like to bring it in tomorrow?"  I said, "without penalty?". 

"Without penalty", she replies.  I was so relieved that my eyes welled up and I asked if I could hug her.  She said yes.  I gave her a hug, had a nice laugh with everyone else in the office, then booked my a** out of there to get to work. 

 

So I'll be back at school AGAIN Tuesday morning togo  'round on this carousel, one mo' time.  Let's see who I hug tomorrow. 

It better be a handsome man, cuz I deserve one at this point.

So I'm a thesis away from my Masters Degree in Psychology.  Sounds close, huh? Wish it were that easy.  My IRB (Institutional Review Board, the people that make sure that I don't damage any humans with my study, like I"m really clever enought to come up with something truly detrimental) proposal is due 2/27.  I should be finishing up last minute details, but no, I'm writing a blog (Thank you very much, Tracy).  So I'm sayin' all kinds of prayers to all kinds of Gods/Prophets/Idols... Jesus, Jehovah, Muhammed, Buddah, who ever floats your boat, that my proposal passes.  If it doesn't, I may not be able to collect data unitl the semester is almost over, then I'm definitely looking at one more whole semester.  Sucks that the outcome of all my work and money lies in the hands of just a few people.  C'est la vie!

 

Not to mention that I'm doing all this while trying to plan for my summer camp, work that I probably should have started back in October.  I'm getting ready to do a job in which I'm overworked, underpaid and underappreciated. I swear sometimes, that people think I'm nothing more than a glorified babysitter.   You would think that people would realize the commitment involved in taking on the responsiblity of someone's else's child for 8 hours a day, sometimes more.  I didn't even get to have the fun of making the little bastards, but I'm going to make sure that they a GREAT SUMMER!!

 

There, whew, my first ridiculous attempt at keeping up with the electronic times.

 

 

Maybe next time I'll write about all the gloriousness of oral examinations and thesis defenses!  Oh and don't even get me started on the NYC Department of Health (or the DOH!!, as I'm prone to calling them).  My paperwork for my camp permit just came in the mail.  How appropriate, yet another group of people who  I must try and convince that I will not damage or psychologically scar anyone.

 

Thea

(Whose job and school work are becoming eerily parallel)