The longest document I have ever written

My thesis draft has now exceeded 100 pages! A few people have asked me if I have a page goal, and the answer is no. I’m writing as much as it takes to explain what I need to explain. I imagine it will be about 150 pages of actual text and maybe 30 pages of appendices. Hitting 100 pages was just cool because it’s a round number and I’ve never written anything this long before.

When I was looking at different graduate schools, I found that several places offered non-thesis options for the master’s degree—it was just based on coursework. While that appealed to my laziness, I suspected that a thesis degree would carry more weight with potential employers. Now that I’ve finished my job interview circuit, I still can’t say for sure whether more opportunities have been open to me because I’m doing a thesis, but I like to think so. :) There had better be some payoff at the end of this mess! In any case, it’ll be nice to be “published,” I guess. Bonus if my advisor and I can put together a conference or journal paper afterward.

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I was washing my hands in the bathroom after lunch today, along with this woman who’s in there practically every afternoon re-applying her makeup. She looked at me and said, “Are you a student here?” I smiled and said yes. “Okay,” she continued. “I looked at you and thought to myself, ‘she can’t be old enough to work here!’” Apparently I’m 25 going on 12.