1 month, 1 page, 1 goal.

The other day (the 21st) was one month from my committee's imposed "2 months of experiments". So, one month down, one to go! It has felt like forever, yet only just the other day I was starting these experiments... I believe I currently exist in some undiscovered spacetime warp which is capable of expanding and contracting time simultaneously. That's my theory.

As of Friday night, I have written (secretly) one page of my thesis. Well, technically two pages, as the page I wrote was single-spaced, and the thesis writing guidelines clearly state that the thesis should be written double-spaced. But wow, it might take a while.

The art of thesis writing varies from lab to lab, due entirely to one's advisor's opinion on how a thesis should be structured and written. A student's first reader and committee will also have some influence over how the thesis is written, but I think that they often respect the advisor's viewpoint on such an issue.

When you write your thesis, you first submit a draft to your advisor, who marks up every other word and fills every margin with red ink. After incorporating the changes, you submit your second draft to your advisor, who marks it up with red ink. Repeat ad nauseum.

Eventually, your advisor signs off on your thesis, allowing you to give it to your first reader, who is a member of your thesis committee. The first reader's only job is to quickly read the thesis and decide whether the thesis is sufficient to warrant a defense. What is a little odd about this is that your first reader is already on your committee and has therefore given you permission to write your thesis, meaning that your body of work is sufficient to warrant a defense. So they don't really need to read your thesis, since they know what it contains; they only need to tell you that it warrants a defense.

But what really happens is that your first reader pulls out his or her red pen and goes to town substantially altering your thesis. Even though you theoretically do not need to placate your first reader by making changes, in practice it is necessary. You go back to your computer and hack away at the keys for a few days and incorporate your first reader's "suggestions".

Once your first reader hands you back your thesis and says, "This thesis is sufficient to warrant a public defense," then you are allowed to hand out copies to the rest of your committee. (Note that those exact words must be spoken; if they are misspoken the Army of the Dead will awake.)

Fast forward to your defense, which is basically giving a talk to anyone that wants to go (mostly your department), and then you sit in a room with your committee and they ask you questions and discuss your thesis. Often, some committee members demand revisions to parts of your thesis. So you end up spending a few days (or more) completing the desired revisions.

That is more or less what usually happens. However, the amount of time the whole process takes depends almost entirely on your advisor's opinion of how a thesis should be structured and written. I will outline the extremes of opinions that exist among advisors, and the what thesis writing entails for those students.

THE BLESSED
First, the lucky ones. Some advisors actually are grounded in reality and know that the only people who will ever read the student's thesis are the committee members. On a rare chance, some other poor soul might mistakenly pick up a copy of the thesis and peruse it, but that happens to maybe one in a hundred theses; all of the pertinent information is always published in a short (3-9 page) paper, which is far better reading than a thesis, and easier to acquire. (Published papers can be downloaded as pdf files; theses can only be acquired by contacting the university's library, or a company that catalogues theses, and ordering a copy for like $50. Why pay $50 when you can read the "CliffNotes" version for free?)

These advisors don't put too much stock in the thesis, and usually allow the student to fluff up their already-written publications, expanding on theoretical points that aren't discussed much in the publication, and usually requiring delineation between experiments the student did versus experiments other lab members did. Often, such theses are between 50-100 pages in length (remember they are double-spaced, and most of the text is already written), and take anywhere from a weekend to 2 weeks to write, depending on whether the student is a good writer or is in the lab performing experiments while writing.

THE CURSED
Then there is the other extreme: advisors who cannot ever understand that excess time spent writing a thesis is time wasted. Often, these advisors think that everything a student does is a reflection of them, and therefore the thesis must be impeccably written. Impeccably. Like, Pulitzer prize-winning, Nobel prize-winning, Faulkner Award-winning (well, maybe not that last one; that award is for fiction)... You get the idea.

I suspect these advisors had to go through the same tortuous process of writing a "real" thesis, and feel compelled to make others suffer the same fate. Kinda like men who have awful names, but pass them down to their sons, only altering the number at the end of their name: Huckleberry Hackensacker IV; Timothy Tinkletop, Jr.; Dick Hertz III, etc. ("I went through the Hell of having such a name, and Gosh-darn-it, you will too, son.")

These theses often are in excess of 300 pages and take 2 or more months to write.

Unfortunately, my advisor and his beliefs on theses fall into the latter category. The two students from my lab who have graduated before me have had theses of 306 pages and 360 pages in length. The 360-page-length thesis was written by a student who desired to write a short, elegant, 100-page theses. I guess that plan backfired.

So here I sit, 1-page deep into a mountain of words that I will have to string together into cohesive sentences: my goal, starting April 20th when I finish lab work here at Columbia. Forever. :)