I was my cousin Christins's graduation this past Tuesday so obviously when I turned up the conversation naturally drifts off to when will I get graduating. My stock answer is, of course, some time this semester. I was asked the same question last night by my town planner cousin Becks when I needed to ask her something work-related. Needless to say, stock answer. But apparently, my stock answer could very well be wrong.
Finally recevied comments from my new co-supervisor on my chapters this morning and they can only be described by 2 words - not good. I knew that there are some revisions that need to be done but had no idea (according to Scott) that I am THIS far behind. According to Scott (new co-sup), my chapters are nowhere need submitable state, for either PhD or Master (!!). The list of problems goes on & on (naive analyses, he doesn't buy my major concept, issues with fieldwork not addressed, expressions "substandard", ...). Like I said, I knew of some minor problems (eg, change some wordings so that the findings don't look so naive/one-dimensional) but not to his extent. But then again, I'm pretty sure 2 of my chosen markers would be pretty sympathetic towards my thesis, so the 'substandard' of my thesis is not as disastrous as one would think. Nonetheless, this process taught me 1 thing - that apparently I still care about the stupid PhD. I thought, after all these time, & especially since towards the end of 2nd year, I was way over this whole process of post-grad studies (& thoughts of discontinuing were never far away). Put simply, I thought I was ambivalent towards the outcome of this. But reading these negative comments, I realised that I actually still care about the outcome, and obviously not wanting to walk away (after 4 years) with (i) an outright fail, or (ii) an incomplete thesis. Many tweakings ahead. Many tweakings ahead indeed. Sigh......
Finally recevied comments from my new co-supervisor on my chapters this morning and they can only be described by 2 words - not good. I knew that there are some revisions that need to be done but had no idea (according to Scott) that I am THIS far behind. According to Scott (new co-sup), my chapters are nowhere need submitable state, for either PhD or Master (!!). The list of problems goes on & on (naive analyses, he doesn't buy my major concept, issues with fieldwork not addressed, expressions "substandard", ...). Like I said, I knew of some minor problems (eg, change some wordings so that the findings don't look so naive/one-dimensional) but not to his extent. But then again, I'm pretty sure 2 of my chosen markers would be pretty sympathetic towards my thesis, so the 'substandard' of my thesis is not as disastrous as one would think. Nonetheless, this process taught me 1 thing - that apparently I still care about the stupid PhD. I thought, after all these time, & especially since towards the end of 2nd year, I was way over this whole process of post-grad studies (& thoughts of discontinuing were never far away). Put simply, I thought I was ambivalent towards the outcome of this. But reading these negative comments, I realised that I actually still care about the outcome, and obviously not wanting to walk away (after 4 years) with (i) an outright fail, or (ii) an incomplete thesis. Many tweakings ahead. Many tweakings ahead indeed. Sigh......
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