And I wait again...

So, I just sent off my thesis draft. Just for kicks, I went back and looked at my first one. Wow, what a major difference. That's why she gets paid the big bucks.

I know length has nothing to do with it but draft one was 35 pages, draft two was 45, draft three was 52, and draft four is 63. It definitely still needs finesse, but I think the bones are there. Last night (and the night before), I just couldn't think. My analysis and conclusions were just *poof* gone. Today, I was on a roll. Good thing, 'cause she wanted it back today. 

In other academic news, I got the last of four PPT presentations turned into my GIS professor yesterday. I spent the morning doing some research on the paper he wants me to write - my last requirement for my last class. Unfortunately, it's a 2500-3000 word requirement, which is roughly 8-10 pages. Bleh. However, it's on a topic I'm interested in (GIS in education - he wanted it to mirror my masters research, but there's no way to add GIS into my ability group thesis, so I went with a more broad topic) and there's TONS of stuff out there. (Which means I have a crap-ton o' papers to read!)

Oh! I just got an acknowlegement email from my advisor. She got it, will read it over, and get comments back this weekend.  She knows the deadline is coming up fast, and I hope the rest of her life takes a break for a day or two so she can focus on ME. 

She wants to have it out to the committee early next week and schedule the defense 5-10 days (ish) after that. But first, she has to approve it for committee. 

Why is it...

that the faucet closest to the hot water heater takes the longest to emit warm water?

Still some work to do...

Finally heard back.  

While there's quite a bit of work yet to do, I'm confident that we'll be able to get it together.  Hopefully by graduation, but I've been told I can participate in commencement even if it's not completely done.

Works for me, now let me get back to it...

A new kind of anxiety...

I emailed the first full draft of my thesis to my advisor on Friday.  She sent me a reply soon after, saying she'd look at it and get comments back the next day.

I hovered near my laptop all day yesterday.  No comments.

This morning, I emailed back: "Is it so bad that you're still writing comments?"  She replied that she's still looking through it and she'd respond in a few hours.

Those hours have come and gone...

This is an entirely new kind of anxiety for me.  Having never done this before, having no rubric (so to speak) on how to write up a thesis for this particular project, I have no idea if what I've written is even the ballpark with 'good enough'.

Is it just needing a bit of tweaking?  Does it need to be overhauled?  Do I need to delve into the statistics a bit more (please no!  I've had number nightmares for weeks now!)??

Please, just let me know.  The waiting sucks.

Why did the fault line cross the road?

*snicker*

Found here.

Sometimes I feel like a fraud...

But then posts like these (and this) remind me that I really do know quite a bit about geology.

I have to admit I've never heard the term nickpoints, nor Froude and Wheeler Diagrams, but I'm pretty good on the rest.

Recent pictures of the boys

One of Justin at the top of Pike's Peak.

And Kaden's new 'do...

Bribed with ice cream

Finally got Kaden's hair cut yesterday.  I'll try to get a picture soon.

It was moderately successful in that the hair got cut but he wasn't too thrilled with the idea.

We'll try again in three months.

Hmm.

Source: The Denver Post

Mind boggling...

You would think as a geologist, I'd have a pretty decent grasp of big numbers.  4.6 billion years?  Sure, that's a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time.  I get it.  

I thought I was ok with 'trillion' too until I just read this:

Courtesy the credit crisis and big bailout packages, the figure “trillion” has suddenly become part of our everyday conversations. One trillion dollars, or 1 followed by 12 zeros, is lots of money but have you ever tried visualizing how big that number actually is?

For people who can visualize one million dollars, the comparison made on CNN should give you an idea about a trillion - “if you start spending a million dollars every single day since Jesus was born, you still wouldn’t have spend a trillion dollars”.

Amit goes on, so please hop over there and read the rest.  Stretch your brain a bit.

From the CNN clip, a trillion $1 bills stacked up would reach a third of the way to the moon.

Wow.