10 days until my thesis is due and I've lost all sense of anything resembling a diurnal cycle. I wake up, I work until I feel tired, I sleep until I wake up. Right now it's almost 8am and I've been up since 5 after going to bed at 3. I'll probably work a few more hours then nap in the afternoon, then work all evening. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been outside my apartment in the last week.

I didn't think anything could be as bad as my undergrad exam periods were, but this definitely tops them. I don't even have the energy to rant properly.

Come the 26th I plan to drink enough to erase everything I've learned over the last 8 and a half years.

When people tell you, "Don't do a PhD unless you really love what you're going to be researching," they're not kidding.

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Been there. Not to PhD extents but you'll get through it all the same. Keep on truckin!

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I believe in Peter.

The amount of gooseberry fool you have to do to get a phd in America, jesus christ. I won't have enough money to last until October anyway but I'm having to spend $500 to just to meet all their bloomin' requirements. Still, could be worse, could have 10 days left 'til my thesis is due

Thanks mate. I just feel like I'm in some kind of Twilight Zone at the moment - the days have never seemed longer, or shorter.

Sounds like one day you will be where I am now :p

One other bit of advice: learn LaTeX. Start now so that you're familiar with it by the time you get to writing your thesis. You do NOT want to be dealing with Microsoft Word's formatting bullshit on top of everything else when you're trying to write a hundred-plus page document with diagrams and tables and all the rest. I decided to teach myself by writing every research report and lab discussion paper over the course of my PhD in LaTeX, and I cannot stress how much of a lifesaver it's been for my thesis.

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I applied for University today!

University of Northampton, yeah?

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strawberry floating bitches left and right my dick is ambidextrous

Of course

I've been there once and it was gooseberry fool. No way I'm going anywhere near it again.

Nice one. My UCAS is also in the system.

Glasgow, please let me in.

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Where did you apply to mate?

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Handed in my thesis draft.

I shall now sleep for approximately one million hours.

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Congratulations.

Three exams done Two more to do next week

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One exam tomorrow.. then no deadlines/exams/presentations for 5 weeks

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Decided to chuck some more money at the OU and do three more modules. Done one (Heritage, Whose Heritage?) which was nice and short at 15 credits, going to do Archaeology: The Science of Investigation (10 credits), Making Sense of Material Culture (30 credits - bit pointless really considering that was what my degree involved but it'll look pretty on my CV) and a non-credit bearing course on the Nebamun Wall Paintings, which gets you a nice certificate from the British Museum.

Just trying to keep sane while doing my day job really, not aiming for any sort of qualification as I already have a degree in Ancient History, but I don't want to get swallowed up by the pharmaceutical industry and forget what I really like doing. And fees are going up so I need to get in there before September or I'll not be able to afford anything again.

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๏̯͡๏)

Timetable for this semester...

I'm in two days a week with an average of four hours, earliest start is 11... I'm going to be so ready for the working world

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Blog: http://tacklingsport.blogspot.com/

Finished my exams

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De Montfort
Lincoln
Sheffield Hallam
Edge Hill
Southampton Solent

Only really planning on going to DMU and Lincoln, if I don't get in there, I'll have to think about what to do then.

GOOD NEWS: I got an offer from DMU
BAD NEWS: I don't think I'll get in. It's 300 points. I can get 280 (BBC) max excluding the ucas points from an AS I'm doing at the moment. It doesn't look like they're accepting AS grades but if they are, I'll get 300 hopefully. Anyone fancy helping me out?



Might shoot them an e-mail to check. Was going to send them my portfolio anyway. I'm doubtful they will accept AS grades though.

I'm waiting on one uni still from my UCAS (I sent mine in at the start of November I think).

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Lego Grand Theft Auto... You KNOW you would buy it.

I keep thinking up courses that I think I'd prefer/be better off doing over the one that I'm doing now. I'm not sure why. Right now, I think I'd be better off doing Architectural Engineering (International) MEng. Despite knowing nothing about architecture or engineering. And hating maths.

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strawberry floating bitches left and right my dick is ambidextrous

I've transcribed about 9,000 words for just 5 out of 9 tutorials for my last project, so that my tutors can't strawberry float me over by randomly complaining in the assessment feedback (so you have no chance of correcting it) about how I didn't make my own strawberry floating artwork in a way they would do it. For my 1st out of 2 30 credit major final project units I've actually taken on board almost all of their feedback. Having a black and white record of what they said to me, and it being evident in my project that I carried out their recommendation, should save me from that bullshit.

That's more than the minimum dissertation word count for my BA, and I've only written a 450 word introduction for that so far.

I will get a first though because my essays are amaze. I got 75% for a formal analysis of cityscapes and representation of cyberspace in Blade Runner and Ghost In the Shell, strawberry floating cool topic really. The next essay was a fine art one which I wasn't quite as sure footed in (I don't really know why I produce sound installations in a fine art context but my best theory is in film ) but I still managed 70% despite dictating most the essay in one 45 minute recording and working on that document for just a week.

I don't know how the strawberry float I would manage if I couldn't belt out decent theory work, given the sheer motivational effort I'm having to put myself through to build installations/sculpture every day all semester. Collating documentation (about 900 RAW photos for this, maybe a hundred audio recordings many hours long, and over 2 hours of HD video footage) for an extensive practical coursework is a strawberry floating nightmare, especially when they want it all printed and filmed onto DVD, at least if you want them to actually bother looking at half your work.

Never EVER EVER try to use Adobe Encore to put together a rough cut clip DVD using HD Motion JPEG files and Mother of God you'd be better hanging yourself than expecting to throw your 3GP mobile videos into the mix. I've spent almost 2 weeks just getting my footage into a format my tutors can be bothered to look at (one of them can't even work out how to open a video file in VLC player) because of a hellish degree of program crashes, random infinite program error loops, running out of hard disk space, waiting 2 hours for one MPEG-2 to encode despite running on a 2.66Ghz Core i7 and then realising everything always strawberry floating defaults to NTSC video standard instead of PAL so there's a chance it might not work on whatever random POS DVD player the staff spend 5 minutes working out how to turn on. Now I'm using Final Cut Pro I'm okay but strawberry float strawberry float strawberry float, I'm not actually producing any work, I'm just making it presentable for assessment.

Science/maths grads (with all due respect since audio engineering and programming all come into my work) who think art degrees are a doss can get strawberry floated.

Also my girlfriend has gone on a street photography trip to Berlin for a week. While it's true you're more likely to get laid at an art school, your productivity plummets when you suddenly can't, otherwise I'd be in bed by now.

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PM is your friend.