1. I turned in my thesis today. You would think I would be ecstatic about this, but I feel pretty numb about it on the whole with a heaping side of emerging anxiety. I’m not going to get into that right now, though.
2. I was planning on turning it in by 2, and I was asked to get it in by 3. I brought my USB key to FedEx Kinko’s to print off four copies of my thesis (375 pages). I arrived at 1:45, assuming I would have it all printed out by 2:30. They messed everything up royally. I was there for two hours. I got a call from the administrative assistant at my program, and I explained the situation. He was just calling to inform me that he had to run an errand and wanted an ETA so as to know when to expect me. He laughed and told me not to worry about it, kindly reminding me that these things tend to happen at the worst of times. Yes, they really do. To me. Ridiculous.
3. I haven’t slept but for an hour and a half nap early Wednesday evening. I have to wake up by about 5:30 for an all day women’s retreat. I probably won’t get back home until about 8 or 9. However, at this point, I’m wondering whether it’s even worth going to bed, because it’ll just give me a sleep hangover and make tomorrow difficult. Then again, I’ll be reaching my hallucinatory point tomorrow evening around the time the retreat ends. Cost-benefit analysis at work.
4. I went to my sleep consultation yesterday. After an hour of talking about my symptoms, my health history, answering questions and submitting to a brief physical exam, the sleep neurologist sheepishly smiled and told me that I’ve got her baffled. She gave me a prescription for Ambien and suggested that finding a medical cocktail that works may be my best bet for the future. She also told me that sleep studies aren’t usually done for insomniacs and that insurance companies don’t tend to cover sleep studies for insomniacs anyway. I joked that it could be my first taste of my soon to be nonexistent health insurance. She also told me that I definitely suffer from a particularly bad case of it. I’m glad to know that she was willing to put that together for me.
5. In the meantime, I am to keep a sleep journal to record a few things. I am supposed to meet her again in two months.
6. Jessica and I went to see New Moon tonight. We went to a 6:45 showing, which is perhaps indicative of why the movie-going population was what it was, but we were one of maybe ten people who were over the age of eighteen. There were less than five men in the theater, and it seemed like 85% of the girls were blondes. That struck me as odd. The high-pitched screeching, though–oh, geez. It made me want a Blue Moon. Or ten. I was greatly amused by the fact that Jessica was the same size as most of them. It makes me think of those Just-My-Size Barbies they had when I was little.
7. It occurs to me that I never again have to read the book upon which my thesis is based. I love the book, had when I initially read it, even though I find it morally reprehensible, but the number of times I’ve read it makes me want to rip it up and burn it. It occurs to me that I could do that now too if I wish. However, I won’t. I might regret that, though I am dubious that I would anytime within the next decade. Plus, it has an unbelievable amount of highlighting in it (color coded, of course); I can’t just get rid of that. I need that so that I have a physical reminder of how effing insane I am. It seems like a good motivator. But now–now I can read what I want. In theory. Another mental revelation! Alice is 3 months old today.
congratulations on having submitted!!!
Yeah! Happy Thesis Day! You rock!
And Happy 1/4 Alice Day!
Congrats on the submission! Keep the book for now–it’s an interim trophy of sorts.
Dying to know what you thought of the movie. You reminded me to try to see it when there will be fewer screaming girls in the theater.
Your doctor must be a blundering idiot, as it’s really not that hard to figure out “insomnia.” If she is that baffled by insomnia, as many individuals suffer from it and go in for these ocnsultations, perhaps it is time for her to go back to school.
“You have insomnia?? Wow. How baffling. No one has EVER come to me with insomnia before.”
Second opinion!!!
P.S. I don’t know what a “ocnsultation” is, but I hear it sucks alot. Almost as bad as a consultation.
Hurrah! It’s IN. Well DONE.
And now, I shall tell you about what happened the day I submitted my thesis.
It had to be in by 5 pm. I finished writing at 7 am, slept for two hours, spent two hours proofreading, had a shower, and was off to get it printed and soft bound by 12. Plenty of time! Ha.
There was a short queue in the university print unit. Not a problem. Except, oh no! The print room’s computer went down, and they couldn’t print for me. ‘Go to the library’ they said. So off I toddled, with a very stressed Music PhD trailing me. The library print room was closed. Music man and I sat and chatted for half an hour (I say ‘chatted’. I mean ‘grumbled’). The nice library lady came back from lunch, looked at my thesis and said, ‘That’ll take about a day to do. And it’ll cost you £100 per copy.’ Er, no.
Back to the print room. Begging. Eventually, they started printing it for me (£15 a copy). Hurrah! As I was checking the copies, I found a bit of someone else’s thesis, and A PUBIC HAIR in amongst my pages. I decided to go back to the library to get it bound. On the way, I noticed two mistakes in the contents page. ARSE. Back to the computer lab, change mistakes, back to the libary lady who printed the corrected sheets, but looked at my thesis and said, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t bind that. It’s too fat’. Aargh! Back to the print unit. Binding would take 30 minutes. Hurrah.
Sat in my supervisor’s office for half an hour, fielding questions about when I would be publishing the darn thing. Back to the print unit. Pick up thesis. Off to the submission office.
Phew.