Tuesday, April 07, 2009

Ending with a whimper

Posts have been few and far between again, the result of teaching writing and reading papers and midterms. I have a longish post in process that hopefully will be up by end of the week.

In the meantime, I thought I would share that the paperwork hoops (in their own way far more exhausting and frustrating than a 400 page dissertation) have been completed successfully, deadlines met, fees paid, and I have the graduate school's stamp of approval and they want to know where to send the diploma. 10 years and way too much money in loans, and 15 years of angst, life, and preparation before that, not including undergraduate years and so on. The end of a long journey.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's really hard to know when a Ph. D. has actually ended, isn't it? You seem to have finished long before actual graduation but in some sense it's not official till then, and then on the other hand you don't stop working... Congratulations on passing another hurdle, anyway!

theswain said...

It is. I finished back last Sept, defended in October, then a period of editing and getting some things in line, then submission, and finally, all fees paid, all things in order for the bureaucrats, etc, acceptance of the final copies and graduation scheduled. The important parts are of course finishing the work and successfully defending it, but the other milestones in the American are worth noting.