Miss Shirley Sees Things

Would you ever have foreseen the final edits one makes in the days immediately prior to one’s thesis submission deadline being terrifying and anxiety inducing?

I MEAN, WHO’DA THOUGHT, RIGHT?

/whimper

Dear Tumblr friends and followers,

If you are not connected to me on other forms of social media, you may have missed me crowing it about since this afternoon:

My thesis presentation went fabulously. Wonderfully. Ideally, even. Never in my wildest thesis-presentation-imaginings did I imagine it going so well. 

Lemme tell you about the harshest criticism I got: Because of how I structured it, putting some things together in certain ways, my chapter titles are misleading. Why are they misleading? Because I accomplish so much more in the chapters than the titles suggest I do.

That was my harshest criticism. It came up twice. That’s it.

Mostly we all just chatted. Heck, mostly my committee chatted, about all the things I made them think about. It was a lively and fun conversation. Oh, man oh man, I wish I coulda been a fly on the wall while they were discussing me, oh, because if they were so wonderful to me to my face, what did they say when they didn’t have to couch their words in professordom? What vanity-curiosity they have inspired! I’ve been gleaming, floating on air. 

They gave me recommendations for continuing it, for publishing, that they tell me they normally would only give to doctoral students. They have ideas for me. They- god-

when they shook my hand at the end, they looked proud of me. Proud of me! Even Mr. Cranky Curmudgeon! He looked proudest of all! 

I’m euphoric. 

I was going to take the afternoon off to work on my presentation, but instead I’ve taken the whole day off. (Sorry, Supervisor.) I’ve got the visuals all planned out, now I’m just going to head to school to A) no doubt get frustrated in photoshop and B) see if I can actually connect my laptop to the projector in my reserved room, or if I’ll be doing handouts instead C) figure out the words to go with the images.

I may be back to cry over photoshop later.

There. It may not be much, but it’s an outline. 

And Only Person I Know Who’s Done This sent me a really supportive nice response to my casual please-help message, along with a pdf of his presentation, which gave me ideas of how to actually present this presentation, and basically, I anticipate quite a bit more crying, I’m sure, but I’m calming down, and I have something to work with, and that’s a WHOLLLLLLLLLE lot better than the panicked nothing I had not long ago.

I am going to be ok, this is going to be ok, I know it, I just have to get through it, just have to survive myself long enough to get through it, you know? 

Ok. 

A bunch of things:

• I submitted my thesis to my entire committee today. I thought it would feel like
  
  and
  
  but it actually felt like
  and
  .
  Someone lovely told me that it’s possible to have postpartum type feelings after finishing a dissertation, and I figure my emotionally overachieving ass could totally pull that over a thesis. So, I’m giving myself time.
• Speaking of feeling shitty: it occurred to me that I’ve very likely been pretty anemic lately. No doctor’s diagnosis or anything, but you come to recognize the signs. Hello Anemia, you ol’ regular, you. I’ve been trying to bulk up my iron intake, but after days of concentrated effort, I still felt like I was liable to collapse any minute. So, I gave in, and picked up some supplements after all. I was trying to fix myself with food, because food>supplements, but multiple days of worrying that I was going to be sick and faint pushed me over the edge. Took one a few hours ago, and I’m already feeling a bit more clear headed. And I still have my new stock of iron-rich foods to lean on. So, that’s better than earlier.
• And now I’m doing laundry. 
• I’d say more, but I’m still pretty exhausted.

Waiting until morning time to send off my “thesis attached” emails. I have actually zero idea, right now, of how this will go over. I suppose sending it at 1 or 9am doesn’t actually make a difference, but I feel awkward and unsure enough right now to wait until a business hour to send it off anyway.

I CROSSED MY CAFFEINE THRESHOLD. NOW I’M LIKE THAT DOG IN UP, ALL SERIOUS-SERIOUS-SQUIRREL?!?! AND IT’S NOT HELPFULLLLLLLLLLLLL.

I’m eating a plethora of snack foods in an attempt to even things out.

Seriously, I’m going to finish my thesis tonight. Like, not even “except for those parts.” I’m literally only a few pages away. I just need to focus a bit longer. SOMEBODY LEND ME YOUR FOCUS. I NEED IT.

YAY COFFEE

WHO CARES IF I’M ALMOST WIGGIN OUT

WHO CARES

THERE ARE PAGES BEING WRITTEN, YES!

The current combination of stress and hunger and hormones racing through my system has left me exhausted.

Like, that should have been in all caps, but the letters falling over in italics is more appropriate.

Ps, I’m about to turn in my advancement to candidacy/graduation forms, like a big girl grad student, like I’m done or something. And my advisor/chair has agreed to meet with me after office hours today, and told me she has been reading my thesis, but that she’s not quite through due to being incredibly busy, and that’s when I fled the room, because a classfriend was letting me cut into her meeting, almost 80% of which had already been stolen by the person before. But yeah, so, meeting about my thesis, which she has partially read, in… about an hour and a half.

I should eat something and lay down for a while beforehand, otherwise I may collapse mid-meeting, and I’m certain that would concern her.

/so tired