Tag: masters

Thesis Published Online (sort of)!

I couldn’t figure out what the hold-up was with ProQuest in publishing the Open Access version of my Masters Thesis. I’d received the hardbound copy (and a paperback which I’d ordered for dad) and yet the online version still wasn’t up at their Open Access site. So I e-mailed them the other day and got a response back saying it takes 10-12 weeks to get the info up on the site & indexed, but that she figured it would be available within another day or two.

Well, it’s up now. I think. The trouble is, I can’t access it on my Linux box. Dunno if it’s because I’m using a non-Adobe program for opening PDFs or whatever. Who knows, it may not work even on Winders machines. (I’ll try it on my Winders partition tomorrow.) Whether it works in Winders or not, I’m going to e-mail ProQuest and ask why something that is supposedly Open Access can’t be accessed from a Linux machine. (I paid lots of money to make this sucker Open Access. I want people to be able to get a hold of it! Not that anyone would want to, but still! Knowledge should be FREE! Heh.)

If any of you want to give it a look, feel free to check it out. (Hey, at least the Abstract works.)

Trina’s Masterpiece Masters Thesis.

It’s Official!

I've got a degree!

My newly awarded degree! Awarded yesterday, even. So when the folks came over last night for Dinner and a Movie (dinner, cheese ravioli with (home-made) aglione sauce, cheesy bread, salad, and strawberries; The Princess and the Frog), they also brought along a “Congratulations Trina!” cake and some Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. The cake & ice cream (and card with moolah in) were a surprise. And to continue my “It’s Official” celebration, my free upgrade of Adobe CS5 Web Premier arrived today. Yay!

Dinner and a Movie (with added dessert) was good all around, too.

Defended!

As I just tweeted, like planet Earth, my thesis IS DEFENDED! 🙂

Apart from a bit of “oh was I supposed to call you?” going on at the start, I connected with my adviser and his consultant (who’s the director of the Science and the Public program). I presented an Impress presentation (think open source PowerPoint) and then answered questions. They want me to have the university publish my thesis and even suggested sending an article or two to Science and Children, a journal for intermediate level science teachers. Woohoo!

It was rather fun. I did the presentation on mom’s laptop since she’s got an onboard webcam. I did it in dad’s den with his bookshelves as the background (excellent background). And afterwards, the folks and I went out to celebrate with some etouffee and bread pudding at LeDoux’s. Since LeDoux’s is one of the few restaurants too far away to walk, we went for a walk after supper. Now I’m home and still a bit high from the experience. Woohoo!

This has been a good March!

Happy First Day of Spring! May your daylight equal your night time today!

I tried to tell the seniors that after the holidays, time was gonna FLY. They didn’t believe me then, but I think they are beginning to. March is just zipping by. Though the days may seem normal (or even slow) you quickly realize how fast the months themselves are flying.

So here we are just past mid-March and things have been especially good to the Short household.

Last Thursday, as I reported here, I turned in my Thesis. (Thanks to all you well-wishers! Being done has lifted a huge weight off my shoulders!) My adviser has reviewed it and pronounced it “overall in good shape.” After this weekend, I’ll make the changes which he suggested and get a better discussion section (most of what I’d put in Discussion should have gone in the Findings, apparently).

On Monday, mom and dad closed on their old home. Yay, they sold it! And on Wednesday, they closed on their new house. And then on Thursday, Amy drove into town!

I’m currently at the parentals’ house with Amy. I took yesterday off work in order to hang with the family. (She’s worth getting a sub for.) We’ve been having mucho fun. 🙂

Thursday, I got off work, did a bit more cleaning in my house (litter box, for example), then headed to Troy. Amy’s car (well, really Rachel’s car) was parked outside the house. Yay! Amy & Jason were there (she picked up Jason in Chicago and they drove down together). We took a walk around the neighborhood, then had supper. And then spent the evening playing games – Rummikub and Banagrams. Amy and Jason kicked butt.

Friday morning, Jason headed up to Shelby County to visit with his folks (in my car) and we headed to my house so Amy could look over the stuff she’ll be taking back with her. She sorted through her stuffed toys and we got 2 bags of stuffed toys to give to Good Will (and added a box of similar toys from my closet). Then we headed to Kent’s Wood Fired Steaks for lunch.

I’d told the folks last weekend that we needed to celebrate our recent successes and I wanted to take us all out for dinner. And we decided to wait til Amy was with us. So yesterday’s lunch was my treat. We all ordered steaks and an alcoholic beverage and the meal, as always, was lovely. Amy asked if she could contribute the tip, which I agreed to.

We popped into Kohl’s for a bit of shopping – Amy got gym shoes, I got travel PJs, and mom bought some outfits for our upcoming cruise (oh yea, we organized one of those this week too…) Then we dropped the stuffed critters at Good Will and headed home.

Amy filmed some old family photos with mom describing the people in the photos. And we discovered mom’s great at remembering uncles’ names, but aunts who married into the family, not so much. (I was just glad mom & dad had few siblings and thus Amy and I don’t have as many relatives to remember as they did.) We also went on another walk and this time got a couple of movies to watch from a Red Box in the Kroger’s behind their house.

Back at home, we watched Inglourious Basterds, which was a bizarre but entertaining (albeit icky at times) movie. Then we started Duplicity, but as people started to pass out due to exhaustion (or, rather, fall asleep), we decided to stop the movie and continue in the morning (or as it will turn out, afternoon, probably).

Today we’re off to Piqua for a little more shopping, then tonight we’ve invited mom’s brothers around for supper. Looks like neither may make it, but my cousin Patty ought to be able to. Tomorrow will be another game day with Aunt Becky and Deanna coming to play games, with Jason returning as well.

We know how to have fun in this family!

It’s off!

I have just e-mailed my Thesis draft to my adviser. Here’s hoping I did what I was supposed to do! I actually feel pretty good about the paper (except for the conclusion paragraph – I suck at those). Hope my prof agrees wit me (and more than just on the sucking conclusion).

Time to back it all up!

I know you are all curious…

The Thesis is WRITTEN!

Still need to finish editing, but I’m pretty sure it’s written in its entirety (with maybe a sentence or two in the conclusion if I think it needs ’em).

Tomorrow, I finish editing and then I turn the sucker in!

WHEW!

Calamity Day #3

I imagine that our superintendent really didn’t want to have to call off school today. We need to get out the first week of May so that they can tear our old building down to make the parking lot for the new one. Making up calamity days will not help this. Still, student safety is his first concern, so he makes the decisions with that at the forefront.

So, today we had our third day off due to bad weather (or gas transfer, as happened on MLK Jr Day). And we’re under another Winter Storm Warning beginning late tonight until Wednesday. I’m sure he’s hoping to at least get us into the building tomorrow, even if he has to later release us early. It’ll all depend on when the storm hits and if it’s actually what they’re promising.

The time off has been good for me in terms of my Master’s Thesis. I’m now down to my last book to read and evaluate. I should be reading it right now, but I decided instead to type this up. Yay for procrastination.

I was just thinking how nice it would have been to have played WoW or CoH all day today, but, alas, not until I’ve finished this paper. Maybe we’ll get a few snow days next year and I can faff about playing video games. 🙂

Oh, I took some photos after the storm, which I may post later this week. Perhaps with photos of the results of the next one. (OK, so I still like the stuff – even after shoveling a bit of it today. In March I may be less inclined to like it.)

Thesis Update

Although I met my first deadline for my self-imposed schedule on my Thesis writing (well, missed it by 1 day – that’s good for me!), I’ve been behind ever since. For some reason, I thought I’d actually get a lot of work done over the holidays. Ha!

However, I do think I’ll be able to get this done. As of tonight, I am more than halfway through the books I’m evaluating for my thesis. (9 out of 17 read & evaluated.) I intend to read book 10 tonight – maybe even get it evaluated too since it’s pretty short. There are a few long books yet to come, but also some short ones.

My new deadline for completing the book evaluations is February 12. The Olympics start that date, plus it’s the month before my university-imposed deadline of March 12 for the receipt of the final paper. My goal is then to watch Olympics while writing up my findings, fixing and updating the proposal portion, and finishing up the thesis paper. I intend to mail it to my adviser by March 1st. (Though you can see I’ve got almost 2 weeks from that date to still Git ‘Er Done!)

The university also says I need to defend my thesis by April 9th. And then, for the most part, I’ll be done. If I want to have the thing published (I’ll decide when it’s finished if I do), I’ve got until early May to finalize things. But I’m figuring, early April and I’m done!

Currently, Linus and Lucy are draped on my lap and sleeping (well, Lucy’s opened her eyes and is looking around, but I’m sure she’ll be sleeping again shortly). We all agree that we like spending quality time in the comfy chair in the library. Definitely going to get a lot of reading done for fun in here once this is all over with. 🙂

Regular College Classes? Done for now!

Phew! I finished my final essay for History and Philosophy of Science and turned it in. elsaf was nice enough to proof it (in its nearly-done state) and gave me many useful suggestions & corrections. Thanks again, hon!

I managed to complete both final papers on time, despite City of Heroes once again celebrating its anniversary by offering the game free for a week. Thankfully, I didn’t discover this until around midnight on Friday. So I spent a bit of time Friday night (OK, by “bit of time” I really mean “I got onto a task force team and got to bed after 4:30am”) playing and likewise on Saturday night (though not for nearly as late). I managed to curb the desire enough on Sunday to simply fiddle about with a couple of ‘toons rather than rack up hours of play time.

Anyhoo, feels good to be done. I had a fun time (sometimes too much fun – read too much, didn’t write enough) researching the history of the atom and showing how the scientific method also changed during the time. Hope the grade was sufficient to get me an A (or a B – anything less doesn’t count). 🙂

Nearing the End

I intend to come up for air next Wednesday. But for now, thanks to procrastination and my weird problem with closure (in that I avoid it), I’ve got two final papers to write and turn in (one due Tomorrow, the other next Tuesday) and then I’m done with my last proper semester. Everything after this is just thesis.

So anyhoo, I’d better start my paper that’s due tomorrow. (OK, so it’s started, but so far it’s nothing more than a few quotes and the beginning paragraph.) Who knows, maybe I’ll even finish it tonight. Then I can let it sleep and look over it tomorrow to see if it’s shit or not. Heh. (Thankfully, I’ve only missed 1 point in the course so far, so hopefully I can do well enough on this paper to get an A.)

My other final paper (min 15 pages, 10pt font, double spaced) is currently only an outline. I know what I’m doing this weekend!* 🙂

*Yeah, yeah, procrastinating so that I wind up writing the bloody thing Monday night…