Boy have I been busy

Things are really moving along now. I initially picked a snail for the countdown thing because it felt like finishing my PhD was taking forever but now that snail is really making his way to the end of the pencil in a hurry.

I've been meaning to update my blog more often but just haven't had the time. The formatting of my thesis took way longer than I expected. I managed to make friends with Microsoft Word though so it would do my table of contents and my lists of figure legends and tables for me. Every so often it likes to try to anger me though but for the most part we get along. I've figured out it's quirks. I still don't like when Word tries to read your mind though and format things how it thinks you want it. It's a freaking software program not a psychic!

I sent my thesis to my committee today for the preliminary read before it goes to the external. That was exciting but I'm still worried there may be some glaring errors in it like where I typed some comment saying [change this, it makes no sense]. Oh well, things can still be changed before the final defense version goes to everyone.

Now that the thesis is done (for the most part) I figured I'd do some thesis stats...

• Number of pages in whole thesis: 232
• Number of pages in the body of the thesis (not the table of contents, etc.): 214 - I figured that was important to point out because as my friend pointed out to me that the total of the digits adds up to lucky number 7!
• Most references in one chapter: 115 (in the intro). I joked with my supervisor that I wanted to break 100 in the intro not thinking that it would actually happen
• Number of figures in thesis: 48
• Number of tables: just 1
• Most figures in one chapter: 14 (in chapter 5)
  
• Number of times I used words that annoy my supervisor (hee, hee):
• As such: 16
• Being that: 7
• Therefore: 21
• However: 29

In one of my chapter edits my supervisor wrote in all capital letters highlighted yellow "I really hate when you use the words "as such" and "being that". I did remove a number of those words but a few won't hurt. He has also told me before that I use "therefore" and "however" way too many times. Honestly I thought the numbers of annoying words would be higher.

So now what is left to do before the defense:

• make my oral presentation
• read over the thesis a few more times to make sure there are no glaring errors
• brush up on some things I should know for my defense
  
• print out versions of my thesis for my committee members
• have a margarita to celebrate my thesis going out for preliminary review

Hmm... what else?