Jealousy

I am ashamed to say I came down with a case of jealousy today.

One of my colleagues (I think he started the same semester as I did in grad school) is also currently in the process of writing his thesis. We are both doing what we call "device" type theses - a thesis on the design, building, and testing of a physical device or piece of equipment. This is in contrast to people who do theory or simulation kinds of theses, which are heavy on equations and modeling and have a very small physical component. This means that we've had a lot to discuss, and there are a lot of parallels in the structure of our theses.

We started making our outlines at the same time - last fall. We both thought this was a good place to start - to lay out all your ideas before tackling the writing. My outline is about seven pages long, and I thought that was plenty. I got it approved, then in December I started writing. My colleague, on the other hand, decided to just keep expanding his outline with bullet points, until it pretty much became the thesis. So his outline was not done until January, and it's 90 pages long. It has no actual sentences, but every single fact and idea he wants to include is in there. He reserved space for every figure and reference he wants to add.

Then he has spent all of February making figures. Still no sentences. I teased him about this, because I am over halfway done writing. He is now up to 120 pages with only 4 pages of paragraph-style text.

And I am jealous now because he has just started writing this week, and it's a simple job because all the figures are done.

If he finishes before I do I will kill him.

Tisn't fair. I was trying to be done in January, and he was aiming for May. I should be done, dammit.