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Nearing the end...
posted : Friday, April 20, 2012
Another step closer to the end of university.
So I had my last "must-pass" exam today...well actually come to think of it everything is "must pass" else I wont get my complete 160 MCs to graduate...just that the more difficult and annoying paper has ended. Was more unprepared than usual, because of thesis submission yesterday..more on that later. Don't think I answered the first question well and complete enough and the second one was much worse. Wasn't expecting much from the paper, but it should be good enough to allow me to graduate, which is the only thing I am working towards now..it's like having too much fun chucking excess luggage overboard and now I am hooked to it. Maybe I am too short-sighted because few years down the road, if I am still in Sg and want to change job..it probably wont look very nice on the transcript unless (hopefully) work experience overshadows it. Accounting paper will be my final NUS written exam, shouldnt have problem preparing for it and hopefully it will give me my (only) second A+ in NUS? Haha. So thesis submission. Granted, it's still only a final draft, but unless things go horribly wrong in my presentation or my methods get shot down, it's unlikely that there are anymore major changes, so it's still kind of a milestone. Looking back, I started out not knowing much about the project and thinking it might be suitable for me because it doesnt involve experiments, which I perceive to be "dangerous coz you might not get the results you are predicting then you are screwed". I don't really remember what I imagine it would be like, but it turned out to be a lot of googling work and I didnt enjoy that a bit. Plus I thought I will grow to like the area of research, turned out I wasnt really very interested in logistics. Plus the weekly cycle of slacking/doing other work on Thursdays and Fridays while promising myself to finish up work from other mods first so that I can concentrate on FYP during weekend, then breaking the promise and delayed it to Monday, eventually ending up slaving through Tuesdays and waking up at 4am on Wednesdays so that I can have some findings to show prof during Wed afternoon meetings (this semester ended up as sleeping at 5am on Thursday mornings and waking up 3 hours later for my full day of classes with meeting sandwiched in betwen). Repeat. It's a horrible lifestyle and I don't know why I allow myself to live that way. Progress was slow, I admit I could have devoted more time to it but another thing is that the info I was supposed to gather wasn't as easily available. Different countries have different databases, some keep the data and some don't, some made it publicly available and some require you to pay, missing data here and there. Prof wasnt really helpful when I sometimes reflect this to him and so work continues...ended up having to remove another portion of research work because of time constraints. To top it off the interest was shrinking everyday and I simply can't see how beneficial my work will be. Promised myself that I will end all research work by 31st March and started writing proper, and as expected it didnt materialize. And the deadline was inching closer. Submission on 18th April and I sort of only officially started writing on 6th April, before which I had written small bits and pieces here and there and I firmly believe I wouldnt be able to finish it because HR is immediately after it and "I needed to study for that too". Even sort of hinted on extension and prof hinted back that I cant. Sort of resigned to fate and full scale thesis production began. The inertia to start was immense but once I got the momentum going...I finally had the belief. I can see the finishing line somehow, suddenly. It got me going on and on. Occasional concentration lapse but in the end I got there. Probably coz adopted the strategy of "living in a different time zone" which involves sleeping at 5am or later everyday because I accepted I am no longer a morning person I used to be 7 or 8 years ago. Can easily churn out twice the amount of text from 12-5am as compared to daytime. Set a modest target number of pages and far exceeded it, which for some reason made me more satisfied and driven. Looking at how I have behaved throughout the project I am glad that I didn't sink so low that my thesis was of crap quality. Could have been better, just like most of the other modules I took in university, but I was so used to it that it became a norm to me. Submitted first thing on Wednesday morning, which was a huge improvement as compared to the interim report. I was almost proud of it and myself, before reminding myself it could have been better and I could have put in more effort rather than last week work. You would say I should not be proud of mediocre and inferior work but I am never a perfectionist so yea. Not proud, but definitely glad. 
The final thesis draft. Main body: 69 pages; Cover-to-cover: 99 pages
Word count: 9765. Here are the common words in a word cloud.
Acknowledgments section: I remember one fine day when we talked about it and I scoffed. "I don't even have anybody other than my prof to thank! No PhD student or mentor to thank coz everything is done by myself only. Don't understand how some people can have so many people to thank!" Then one day I saw some people posting their acknowledgment page on FB, and another friend acknowledged me in his thesis, to which I am ashamed to say that I do not deserve because I played sub zero role in it, directly or indirectly. But it suddenly dawned on me...that I DO have a number of people to thank. Everybody who has indirectly supported me! I hope I have not hurt any feelings when I said aloud "I don't have anybody to thank!" I am sometimes careless with verbal expression and it never meant I didn't appreciate any of those gestures, just that in the heat of battle (against the thesis monster) it didnt occur to me to mention all those indirect help in an academic paper. But I remembered in the end. I was never good at verbal expressions, and for this I tried not to make it too personal (because I cant shake off the feeling that this is an academic paper) but in words, this is the best I can do. I think most of the names mentioned should be able to find their way here (other than prof, what horrors if he can find his way here)...so once again, thank you! :)
Of course there are names not mentioned here who I still deeply care about. It is simply because you havent been physically around, or even aware that I was battling the thesis monster, but I am pretty sure you would have supported me if you have known :)
Too early to wrap up university life still, I will probably have another entry on that after all is done and dusted (ACC paper, FYP final presentation, and FYP final submission with hardbound report, softcopy etc). To be honest a bit early to wrap up FYP too but was in the mood :) So will leave with some updates on life outside all the FYP nonsense.
Somehow confirmed future housemates and currently in the process of hunting for a house. With some twists and turns along the way but settled in the end. If you tell me two years ago, that I will be staying with this combination of friends during my first post-uni year, I would have LMAO. That is how impossible I thought things were. Even as recent as beginning of last semester, due to some reason (unrelated to the first one) I thought it wouldn't happen either. As recent as beginning of this semester I still have reservations. But I suppose things change for the better and I can stow away those reservations, sealed by my desire to have friends surrounding me. Being alone once in a while is refreshing but at the end of the day...it's rather sad. That said, hopefully things don't go wrong halfway through. :)
Random thought during shower earlier tonight: I am somehow always "affiliated" to gangs of 5 people! SLSTV since Sec School days. In JC used to hang out in class with Junyi, Xin Lin, Shean and Hui Kee. McNair room (not strictly considered lah actually in a way since we arent that close IMO). Then in uni found another 5 person gang in Chris, Liaw, Winnie and ML! And now another 5 person gang in future housemates! 5 seems to be my comfortable number. Haha!
See what I mean when I say these are my productive hours in terms of writing? This is 1500 words in less than 2 hours. Multiply by 6.5 and you have my thesis length already. Wow. Haha anyway off to catch some sleep! Next update probably about my latest specialist doctor visit (which was last month, gulp) and pre-work updates. |
