Dissertation -- Done ?!!

[Lazybones]

Kudos. I remember how it felt when I finished mine. I didn't have a lot of choice for my committee (few faculty in my area), and one started to cause trouble for me (demanding rewrites that I couldn't do without another research trip to Germany). Fortunately my sponsor was a very powerful guy in the field and I think he had a conversation with her.

I went to the library once a few years later and saw that someone had actually checked it out. It felt good. I ended up leaving academae (0 for 85 on the job search) before I could fully mine it for articles (and maybe a book), but I've settled down and gotten married, and like many Ph.D.s work in a government job where I'm hugely overqualified for my current position.

Enjoy the moment, and remember, a Ph.D. is a rare thing.

 

[Achan hiArusa]

Rarity of PhDs

From what I know about 1% of the world's population has a college education, out of those only about 1% have a PhD. So, PhD's account for 0.01% of the world's population or about 600,000 people. I think there are more vampires in the world of darkness, heh.

 

[nakia]

Enjoy the moment, and remember, a Ph.D. is a rare thing.

I have to keep reminding myself of this. Being in academia, it's easy to forget that not everyone has the opportunities I have had, or not everyone cares about the sort of things that seem so important to those in the ivory tower. I had a conversation with a police officer friend of mine awhile ago, and he was telling me that it (the PhD) was certainly a feat to be proud of. Being immersed in it makes one loose a little perspective.

In other news, I received another nibble about a job yesterday. Apparently, I made it to round two of the search at Winthrop University (in South Carolina). They will be calling my references next week. That's exciting.

Thanks for all the kudos, folks. I'll be sure to keep you posted on how the defense and search go.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

In other news, I received another nibble about a job yesterday. Apparently, I made it to round two of the search at Winthrop University (in South Carolina). They will be calling my references next week. That's exciting.

YES! I've got my fingers crossed for you!

 

[MonsterMash]

Nakia, best of luck with the defense and with the job.

Reminds me to get back to studying for my masters (Msc course).

 

[the Jester]

Good luck, Nakia!

Sounds like an interesting dissertation- one of my friends just finished his first draft a few days ago.

 

[mythusmage]

Now, how does this apply to the near universal revulsion goblinoids are subject to in the typical game of Dungeons & Dragons®?

(Be happy I don't know anybody on the committee. )

 

[nakia]

Now, how does this apply to the near universal revulsion goblinoids are subject to in the typical game of Dungeons & Dragons®?

Actually, I am glad you asked . . .
(Insert two page answer where the words "judgment," "metaphysics," "reification," and "traditional fantasy literature tropes" are used repteatedly, as in "The traditional tropes of fantasy literature suggest a metaphysics in which moral status (i.e. alignment) is reified, thereby making judgment merely the discovery of moral staus, rather than its construction through inquiry.")

If I could have written my dissertation about D&D, would my life have been easier, or would I just be sick of D&D?

 

[Achan hiArusa]

Probably

I guess it would just depend. I find that playing the game is very different from analyzing it.

I find rules analysis much easier to deal with than physics problems. I can spend eight hours working on a new prestige class, converting Kult monsters to d20 or World of Darkness, modifying the Massive Death Threshold/Wound points system to my liking, or any of that stuff easily and think "where did the time go?" But when I spend eight hours trying to find the electric field inside a grounded sphere with a dipole just off the center or trying to find out how to make a cyclochloroalkenol from an alkene, I count every minute and I have to be away from my computer and my roleplaying books to do it. And doing my thesis has killed most of my interest in Astronomy. But I will say that I had a problem on probability curves and finished it in record time because I was used to determining die probabilities by hand and for some reason I spent sixteen hours working on a multiplication table for a 26 element group with three cycles and loved it.

 

[nakia]

I find rules analysis much easier to deal with than physics problems. I can spend eight hours working on a new prestige class, converting Kult monsters to d20 or World of Darkness, modifying the Massive Death Threshold/Wound points system to my liking, or any of that stuff easily and think "where did the time go?" But when I spend eight hours trying to find the electric field inside a grounded sphere with a dipole just off the center or trying to find out how to make a cyclochloroalkenol from an alkene, I count every minute and I have to be away from my computer and my roleplaying books to do it. And doing my thesis has killed most of my interest in Astronomy. But I will say that I had a problem on probability curves and finished it in record time because I was used to determining die probabilities by hand and for some reason I spent sixteen hours working on a multiplication table for a 26 element group with three cycles and loved it.

I have no idea what you just said. Yet, I think I understand. There's some philosophy for you.