Print! Print! Print! Print!

I worked all through the night last night and my thesis still wasn't ready in time - by noon today I was still working on it (who would have thought that arranging the table of contents would take two hours?) and that was the time when the theses are collected from the copy shop by the binder.

Eek.

I pressed on, and got to where it was mostly OK at around 12:30pm. There comes a point where you just have to say "Enough is enough".

I couldn't figure out how to have the page numbers at the beginning be in roman numerals and then switch to normal numbers, so it's all in normal numbers. Didn't have the time or the inclination to mess around with it. Also, no fancy formatting, half-way decent headings was the best I could manage. So, nothing to write home about.

My conclusion was a bit fjakk too, lol. Oh well.

Aaaaaand it didn't help that I got zero feedback from my tutor about my draft, due to a problem with her email. So i didn't have anyone pointing out "That bit is rubbish, go sort it out". Heh.

Oh well, I took it as it was, went to CopyClub, and was VERY relieved when Bella said that she'd arranged for the late theses to be taken this evening and still be ready by tomorrow so that I can make the deadline. WOW!!!! Apparently I wasn't the only engineering student to be hit by the crunch :-) Other people had problems with getting their projects to work properly too.

Oh, and I omitted my damaged model... I just didn't have the time to go in and find out what went wrong. Oh well.

There was another engineering student there at the copy shop when I arrived; he was in the middle of printing his thesis. He'd been plagued by technical problems; his page size had been set incorrectly on his home computer, the black-and-white printer would only print a page at a time AAAAAAAND while I was waiting my turn, the colour printer broke down in the middle of printing some of his colour pages.

*eeeeek*

The shop assistant called the company, who said they would send a technician when they could, but it was going to be a while...

After waiting for an hour or so while he continued his printing and while the other person ahead of me printed some stuff for an assignment, it was finally my turn to print. I was SO RELIEVED that all my black-and-white pages printed right off the bat, with no problems.

Except for a formatting problem which meant I had to go back and arrange and re-print four pages, but at least the problem didn't propagate through all ninety-four pages of the thesis! Also, Bella noticed that I had left the month and year off my title page (that's what I get for following the template in this year's official guidelines!) but I was able to sort that out and print the title page again.

I noticed that the text had shifted downwards in some places, which threw off the flow a bit, but hey, at least it's all there.

Whatever.

Past caring.

After finishing the black-and-white printing, I went to a neighbouring café for a tuna baguette while waiting for the photocopier technician to show up. With brilliant timing, he was done by the time I got back to the shop :-)

It was plain sailing from there, no more problems.

While I was standing there at the counter, counting all the pages and inserting the colour copies into the main document, I remembered previous years when I had seen students doing the same thing, looking enviously at their theses and thinking "Wow, I wonder if I'll make it that far?".

And now I have.

But as the other engineering student at the shop said to me this morning, it's a funny feeling, like a hollow victory. I don't really feel jubilant or anything. Just kinda numb. Maybe it's just exhaustion from working long hours on minimal sleep.

I'm rather sorry it's over actually, because I had started to really enjoy it, and now I wish I had more time to continue the thesis because it's interesting. Maybe I will, just for fun. I think it's a shame that this thesis only counts for 8 credits out of the total 120 credits for my degree, it feels like it should be worth more :-)

It did feel good to see my name on the front page of the printed copies, though.

The other day I realised that I am the second person in the third generation of my father's side of the family to be finishing a degree. Both my grandparents, all their four children, and my older cousin all graduated from the University of Malta. I had been dreaming of going to the Library, making a stack of all the theses and taking a photo of mine with them, but then I realised that of those seven degrees, three were doctor degrees and therefore had no thesis. Lol.

Oh well, I think I will still look up the other ones. See what my predecessors did, kind of thing. My Dad actually has two theses in the Library because he did a Masters too.

I'm not trying to brag, it's just that I suddenly realised that it's sort of a family thing, and it's cool to have this connection with other members of my extended family. I'm very appreciative that I was able to go to University at all, because there's so many people who would have liked to go, but couldn't for whatever reason.

Anyway, I finally left the photocopy shop just before 4pm. It's a shame I was feeling emotionally numb today because I'd been looking forward to choosing the cover for my thesis! It's got to be black, and also it's got to be Tablerene (a kind of cloth), so no purple leather for me, heheheheh. There were three swatches of black cloth to choose from - the other guy chose one that looked like sparkly sandpaper, but I went for a smoother, darker kind.

Of the 94 pages in my final copy, 19 had colour pictures on them, mostly screenshots of my project. I had 4 copies of the thesis made (three to hand in, and one for me). Total cost of 300 black-and-white pages: Lm6.75. Total cost for 76 colour pages: Lm15.12.

*sigh*

I'm lucky that Bella gave me a big discount on the colour copies!

Middle Sis was great, she both drove me to the shop and picked me up afterwards, and then took me to a computer shop so I could buy CDs - the appendix to my thesis has to go on CD because (a) attaching 100 pages of code wasn't really a good option, lol, and (b) some of the stuff can only be appreciated by seeing it on screen. So I bought CDs and some soft covers for them. Shame there weren't any in the thesis colour scheme, black-with-gold-letters, lol.

Finally I got home, dead on my feet because I had been awake for over 30 hours, and had worked overnight for more than twelve hours straight. I drank some orange juice, went to the minimarket and bought a Viennetta as a thank-you to my parents and sisters, and went to bed for a few hours :-)

So, now all I have to do is get the material for the CD sorted out, and go pick up the copies of my thesis at noon tomorrow and hand them in at my faculty.

In the afternoon I'm going down to Għadira, where I will spend the next few days relaxing, studying for my exams (they start in 1 week) and working on my juggling (which sucks, lol). No computer and no TV, but I imagine that I'll get to an internet café at some point.

Aaaaaaaah...

Comments

[wwwitchie]

It will take a while for the numbness to wear off... but it will... and you will be proud. The next time you work on a thesis or a big project, prepare your formatting before you write up :) It will save you a lot of headaches.

Incidentally, the roman numerals at the start ARE a headache. You have to create two separate sections in word, the initial section with pages starting at 1 and then you change the style to roman numerals and the main section, again with pages starting at 1. Or you could just have two files if it makes your life easier. I usually go with two files.

[MaltaGirl]

I'm just a rookie thesis writer, thanks for the tips :-) I will do better next time!!!

[Kenneth]

Glad you're finished... well done!

As wwwitchie said, it's better to settle the formatting styles before you begin. I made it a point to set the formatting styles in my comp project, although Word will make things worse as you go along. By the end of the project, my 15 styles had automatically doubled. Everytime I tried to remove redundant styles, something catastrophic would happen, so I just decided to let them be.

I couldn't figure out how to have the page numbers at the beginning be in roman numerals and then switch to normal numbers, so it's all in normal numbers. Didn't have the time or the inclination to mess around with it. Also, no fancy formatting, half-way decent headings was the best I could manage. So, nothing to write home about.
Please, don't even write about this!

Would you believe that this stupid problem took me around 12 whole hours to solve... just 3 days from my deadline? Initially, my problem was because the page numbers in the documentation were not contiguous i.e. at some point towards the end, they re-started from 1. It took me a day of Googling about the problem and looking on Google Groups for a possible answer. When I discovered that it was a problem with Word's sections, I wasted another 2 hours messing around with Word because it wouldn't let me remove the section break without screwing the formatting and the rest of the page numbers.

Later I had to go through the same ordeal when I had to make roman numerals for the table of contents. I then knew the theory behind the section I had to create, but Word was still messing up everything.

I know it's late, but to get around that problem, you have to mess around with Insert > Break > Section Break Types. More importantly, Google it up or consult Microsoft's help files (they are rather good.)

It's a complete nightmare though.

PS. At least you didn't get a bunch of EneMalta workers switching off the power supply for a half hour (just so they could do some busywork) 3 hours before the deadline... I'm honestly glad that didn't happen to you because I can assure, the feeling is terrible.

[MaltaGirl]

Oh boy, I am REALLY glad that I had no problems with power cuts! How awful...

Regarding the page numbers, I tried to create a section break as suggesting by the MSWord Help, but it seemed to ignore it... plus I had page breaks all over the place so I gather it would have been pretty bad to sort out...

Sharon's method sounds infinitely better :-D

[Lena]

Prosit, I'm glad you finished on time ;) now go off to take a break from computers and get ready for exams! Mohhok hemm =)