My Life. My Thesis.

Presently, I am in the process of writing my thesis.

A co-worker and I have concluded anything written in LaTex, as opposed to Word, looks inherently more professional, hence my decision to write in LaTex. There is some small comfort in the fact that even with the poorly written sections, my thesis can at least look good. Disclaimer: I am an avid apple user and only use Microsoft products under extreme duress. The only exception I make is for PowerPoint because I like the nifty clock it displays when you give a presentation.

Most of my conversations lately with family/friends includes one of the following questions: "Have you been working on your thesis?" "How is the thesis coming?" "What page/chapter on you on?" "When will you be done?" etc. I have learned to no longer answer the last question. There is some Murphy's Law of thesis-writing which mandates that everytime you say a month out loud, life penalizes you and adds three more months of analysis. I will concede that checking nytimes.com over twenty times a day does not help with efficiency either, but there is some value to being up to date.

After much thought, I have also concluded that the dissertation is a cruel joke on physicists. There is something sadistic about making a scientist write a tome on their experiment and analysis in sentences that are not only grammatically correct, but understandable. I think the fact that I am generally incapable of forming a complete sentence, let alone, a coherent paragraph clued me in early that my life path would not include journalism, literature or blogging (until recently). So the fact that my graduate career should culminate in a dissertation still strikes a strange note and, generally speaking, a poorly written one.

Comments

[Kaixuan]

I am having similar experience now. Good luck for your thesis writing.

[Mick]

I'm on the other side of the planet going through exactly the same thing (though I'm a quantum information theorist). I've tried enforcing a ban on the "t" word around my family, friends, and office - unfortunately people don't seem take it that seriously! For a long time whenever anyone asked when I'd be done I just said "3 months", I think I started doing that 6 months ago. Anyway, at least now I know why so many PhD students that graduated before me looked like they wanted to wring my neck whenever I asked how things were going. Good luck with the thesis and the blog.

P.S. In Australia, we check out the Australian Broadcasting Corporation news site (www.abc.net.au) about 20 times a day.

[Dimitri Dimitroyannis]

Writing a thesis using TeX/LaTeX not only makes the product look good now, you will be able to use the same
"source" file in future hardware, not even designed today.
My thesis started on a timesharing VaX cluster at Fermilab in 1988 and finished on a NeXT cube. The source file was saved on 3.5in diskettes and re-run on a MacSE/30 and thes same source file now on a CD runs off a sleek aluminum PB G4.
Using a wordprocessor-and Zeus forgive us MSWord- for scientific/mathematical work is inelegant even crass. Read Donald Knuth to that effect.

Having exorcized my own thesis-demons almost 15 years ago, I admit, the only utility of the thesis-writing-process is to learn to apply "ass to chair". Our professional advancement depends on the amount of elegant, tight and succint writing we do. Writer's block for us is tantamount to professional suicide. Having produced a thesis, a binge-writing exercise, one understands how far the writing muscles can be worked.

Professional novel writers say that one good page a day gets you a book a year. For some good writers that one page comes after 2-3 hrs of toiling. For us scientists a stright 8-10 hrs writing day may not produce more than 3-4 good pages. Talking to colleagues, I find one of the most difficult obstacles in technical writing is the separation of "writing" from editing. We are intimidated by the polishing/editing process and paralyzed we do not even attempt the actual writing.

In a future blog installment I will expound on promise of electron laser accelerators in revolutionazing applied medical physics. This snowy and cruelly cold Boston night, I offer my warm wishes to the thesis writers.
Ta ta for now,

--Dimitri

[karunaprasad]

i really learn that how to present thesis with the help of your article please send me some intresting information about presenting thesis

[karunaprasad]

i really learn that how to present thesis with the help of your article please send me some intresting information about presenting thesis

[karunaprasad]

i really learn that how to present thesis with the help of your article please send me some intresting information about presenting thesis send me your ideas abot submiting thesis

[Wim]

LaTeX is indeed much better.

You know you can make slideshows, like powerpoint, with LaTeX.
http://latex-beamer.sourceforge.net/

Good luck

[Caolionn]

Excellent! Thanks for the tip ... but I bet it doesn't have the cool timer that powerpoint comes with (it's only redeeming factor).

[Roberto Peron]

I'm writing the PhD thesis on tests of general relativity with laser ranged satellites. I think that now I couldn't use other tool than LaTeX for typesetting.

I use it also for presentations. I would suggest you the TeXPower bundle, with which one could do pretty nice things!

[Roberto Peron]

I'm writing the PhD thesis on tests of general relativity with laser ranged satellites. I think that now I couldn't use other tool than LaTeX for typesetting.

I use it also for presentations. I would suggest you the TeXPower bundle, with which one could do pretty nice things!