When I wrote my Master's thesis, I had the worst time writing Chapter 1 - Intro and Background. I hated it. HATED it.
It took forever. As far as I could tell, there were two ways to go about things. These two ways are the same when applied to writing the Intro section of a journal paper, too, not just a thesis.
First method
Write one sentence - "Widget A has cool properties 1, 2, and 3" - and then go find the paper that supports that. You look up the paper, print it out, read it (or at least skim, ahem) and file it away. Add the reference to the end of that sentence, then on to the next sentence. Rinse and repeat for an entire chapter. And if you needed to write a sentence like, "Many researchers have tried Process X," then that would be a good hour of finding all the papers to cite for those many researchers. And if you needed to say, "Research in this area has been going on since 1986," then you might as well just throw your hands up and dedicate the afternoon to finding the supporting papers.
Second method
Run a library/journal search for all papers relating to Widget A. Usually get search results in the thousands. Read all papers and try to determine the relevant ones. Then sit down to write your Intro section, citing the appropriate papers as you go. When you get to the end, check to make sure you have cited everything relevant and didn't miss any papers. Of course, I usually have forgotten a lot, because my brain doesn't hold details very well.
Either way I try it, writing the intro section is painful for me. But what made it especially painful for my Master's, I felt, was that I did most of my background and lit searches the first semester I was in grad school. And then I was writing the thesis a year and a half later. I can't even remember what I learned last WEEK (my saving grace is looking at old weekly PowerPoint update slides for reference).
Now I'm embarking upon the PhD, and I have my first committee meeting coming up on Friday. All you really have to present at the first meeting is what you PLAN to do for the PhD - that's why it's a proposal, after all. But in order to justify why I want to do what I'm proposing, I need to know the current state of the art in literature.
And learning about the current state of the art is what I've been doing for the past month of two anyway, while I was writing/updating my proposal document. I've even got all my papers categorized and fully searchable!
So now I come to my point for today: I feel like I've been down this road before. And heaven help me, I'm going to do better this time around.
So I started a document titled "Miss Outlier PhD Thesis." And I am going to add to that document AS I GO, gosh darn it. The intro chapter won't change much between now and when I graduate (at least I hope!), so why not write it now?
The past day or two I've spent tossing all my current knowledge into a growing outline of my thesis. Even if I don't have the info I need, I go ahead and create chapters and subsections that I can fill in later. And even if it's only bulletpoints, I put everything down anyway. It's much easier to expand a bulleted list than to come up with content from scratch.
When I got home from work today, I exported all of what I have so far to a .pdf, in the proper thesis format. Now the formatting means the first 11 pages are nothing - just title/table of contents/table of figures, etc. And the last 5 pages are nothing - just a list of references. And I have a LOT of pictures that take up a lot of room, and probably won't be in the final thesis. And bullet point lists take up a lot of room.
But still.
I have 86 pages.
Man, defining the problem really is half the battle, isn't it?
Showing posts with label thesis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thesis. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Friday, June 11, 2010
PhD Committee Building
Well, let's see. I passed quals. I have a thesis card. I picked a topic. I wrote a proposal. What's next?
I need a committee.
The rules are that I need at least three professors on the committee. The conventional grad student wisdom suggests that you want to keep it to as few as possible - because the more advisors you get, the more opinions you have to deal with, and the harder it is to schedule meetings. It may sound silly to worry about scheduling meetings, but it really isn't trivial to get a handful of professors in the same place for an hour. I've seen a couple people who almost couldn't graduate because they couldn't get their last committee meeting scheduled. And trying to schedule the actual defense is a real bear (although come on, who worries about that when you are two years away from that point?).
My own advisor is obviously member #1. I need two other professors.
My thinking is that I am researching several things - a manufacturing process, a precision machine design, and a new material.
I work in a lab for manufacturing, which has a whole bunch of professors involved, each of which have their own individual lab. One of the other professors in this lab specializes in precision machine design. My thought is that he would be perfect for member #2, because he covers the bases of both manufacturing and machine design.
I went to talk to this potential member #2, explained my plans for a PhD and asked if we could discuss any overlap with his lab's interests. Turns out a lot of the ideas I had for machine design are things that his lab has already tried (some worked, some didn't). At first I thought, well, beautiful! This has already been done! But perhaps not so beautiful - if somebody else has already done most of the novel machine elements I was going to design, maybe I need to pick something harder? Or maybe it will just make it a really fast PhD.... :) In any case, the professor actually offered to be on my committee. So, check! Moving on.
My ideal member #3 would have expertise in the fancy material I want to try, and also expertise on the applications of the devices I am making. Even though I am on the "making the chip" side of things, I need somebody on the "using the chip" side to advise me what they actually need. I might not be able to find someone with both of those qualities, in which case I might need a member #4.
I didn't ask either one to be on my committee, because I'm not sure if a) either one is interested or b) which one would be a good fit for what I need. Of course, not that I'm entirely sure WHAT I need, since I haven't done the research yet... Neither of them have expertise on the materials side, so not ideal. I still have plans to meet with a couple other professors on the materials side. Maybe I'll get lucky and find my ideal member.
In any case, I'm 2/3rds of the way to a committee. That's enough accomplishment for one week.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Thesis Card
The small, unassuming pamphlet that will rule my life for the next several years has been bestowed upon me.
It is: the thesis card.
I don't know how other schools do this, but here every PhD student receives a two page, folded cardstock thesis card when they pass qualifying exams. The card is kept on file at the main office, and must be checked out with special permission whenever you need to add anything to it. It summarizes your PhD career in nearly chronological order.
Figure 1: Page 1
The only thing I can fill out so far is my name and the date I passed qualifying exams, and my thesis advisor. Soon, I will have to choose a thesis topic and a PhD committee, and the approved topic and committee signatures will be added to the front page.
Figure 2: Pages 2 and 3
Next, my program of classes for major and minor areas of study. I just discussed this with my advisor today - I made up a little schedule of everything I plan to take between now and graduation. It's an exciting list, I have to say. Interesting classes taught by giants in their respective fields - it's such a thrill to be crafting my own plan of study! My advisor has approved of the list, but I need to have signatures (again) from all of my eventual committee members.
The back page is reserved for committee comments at each committee meeeting. At each future committee meeting, I will check out this card and bring it to the meeting. The committee will record their comments on my progress, recommendations for next time, and anything else they find relevant. The number of times you have to check out this card is rather correlated to how critical those comments are.... :)
Figure 3: Back Page 4
And finally, the back page is reserved for your thesis title, date of defense, comments of committee at defense, and - ah heaven, draw near! - the signatures of all your committee for a final time, approving your doctorate.
So me and this paper are going to be close for the next few years (three, according to my timeline). We're gonna make it together, baby.
It is: the thesis card.
I don't know how other schools do this, but here every PhD student receives a two page, folded cardstock thesis card when they pass qualifying exams. The card is kept on file at the main office, and must be checked out with special permission whenever you need to add anything to it. It summarizes your PhD career in nearly chronological order.
Figure 1: Page 1
The only thing I can fill out so far is my name and the date I passed qualifying exams, and my thesis advisor. Soon, I will have to choose a thesis topic and a PhD committee, and the approved topic and committee signatures will be added to the front page.
Figure 2: Pages 2 and 3
Next, my program of classes for major and minor areas of study. I just discussed this with my advisor today - I made up a little schedule of everything I plan to take between now and graduation. It's an exciting list, I have to say. Interesting classes taught by giants in their respective fields - it's such a thrill to be crafting my own plan of study! My advisor has approved of the list, but I need to have signatures (again) from all of my eventual committee members.
The back page is reserved for committee comments at each committee meeeting. At each future committee meeting, I will check out this card and bring it to the meeting. The committee will record their comments on my progress, recommendations for next time, and anything else they find relevant. The number of times you have to check out this card is rather correlated to how critical those comments are.... :)
Figure 3: Back Page 4
And finally, the back page is reserved for your thesis title, date of defense, comments of committee at defense, and - ah heaven, draw near! - the signatures of all your committee for a final time, approving your doctorate.
So me and this paper are going to be close for the next few years (three, according to my timeline). We're gonna make it together, baby.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Miss Outlier, M.S.
It's official - I am now and forever Miss Outlier, M.S.
Two copies of the thesis have been printed on the official thesis paper, signed by all appropriate higher-ups, and turned in unbound to the department for archival purposes.
Three copies have been printed on laser paper for myself, my advisor, and my parents. These are presently out being hard-bound in leather, and will be back before commencement.
I am thrilled.
137 pages, baby. I've done good work in my two years here.
Here's to the next two - or three....
Two copies of the thesis have been printed on the official thesis paper, signed by all appropriate higher-ups, and turned in unbound to the department for archival purposes.
Three copies have been printed on laser paper for myself, my advisor, and my parents. These are presently out being hard-bound in leather, and will be back before commencement.
I am thrilled.
137 pages, baby. I've done good work in my two years here.
Here's to the next two - or three....
Thursday, May 7, 2009
And Along Come Quals
I have turned my attention nearly completely to studying for qualifying exams. All that remains of my thesis is to print it out on the fancy paper, and all that remains of classes is a couple paragraphs for me to write for a final project report.
Countdown is to the last week in May.
I have been studying for the past four days really hard on manufacturing, and I feel pretty good on this one. I have memorized nearly all the equations I need to, I feel confident in my depth and breadth of knowledge of manufacturing processes. This is a topic I have always felt pretty comfortable with.
Now I am turning to the second topic, control systems. I feel weakest in this area, although I have been studying slowly but surely this whole semester so I'm not completely over my head.
I haven't studied at all for design, for a couple reasons. First, it's a nebulous topic so it's hard to know what to study. Second, I have no study group for this one, because only one other person is taking it and they are not interested in studying together. Third, the material overlaps with manufacturing so I feel like I've already been working on it somewhat. But despite these reasons, I do need to study and there are some equations I need to refresh myself on. I'll get there. Controls first.
How I feel about this whole qualifying exam varies depending on the day. Some days I'm scared. I'm scared of failing, because I hardly ever fail at things and this is sort of a big thing.
But, I'm trying to put fear of failing into motivation to study. On the one hand, I want to be able to say, I did my very best. I don't want to second-guess myself and say, well if only I had studied a little harder... But if I fail, maybe I want an excuse to make myself feel better. Well, you know, I was taking classes and doing research and writing a thesis and studying for quals...
No matter how I psychoanalyze it, three weeks from now life will go on one way or the other. All I can do is be proud of what I have accomplished no matter the outcome.
Countdown is to the last week in May.
I have been studying for the past four days really hard on manufacturing, and I feel pretty good on this one. I have memorized nearly all the equations I need to, I feel confident in my depth and breadth of knowledge of manufacturing processes. This is a topic I have always felt pretty comfortable with.
Now I am turning to the second topic, control systems. I feel weakest in this area, although I have been studying slowly but surely this whole semester so I'm not completely over my head.
I haven't studied at all for design, for a couple reasons. First, it's a nebulous topic so it's hard to know what to study. Second, I have no study group for this one, because only one other person is taking it and they are not interested in studying together. Third, the material overlaps with manufacturing so I feel like I've already been working on it somewhat. But despite these reasons, I do need to study and there are some equations I need to refresh myself on. I'll get there. Controls first.
How I feel about this whole qualifying exam varies depending on the day. Some days I'm scared. I'm scared of failing, because I hardly ever fail at things and this is sort of a big thing.
But, I'm trying to put fear of failing into motivation to study. On the one hand, I want to be able to say, I did my very best. I don't want to second-guess myself and say, well if only I had studied a little harder... But if I fail, maybe I want an excuse to make myself feel better. Well, you know, I was taking classes and doing research and writing a thesis and studying for quals...
No matter how I psychoanalyze it, three weeks from now life will go on one way or the other. All I can do is be proud of what I have accomplished no matter the outcome.
Monday, May 4, 2009
LaTeX
I remember the first time I saw it. A classmate of mine in undergrad turned in a final report for a class, and it was beautiful. I had never seen a more professional looking lab report. I was on his team, but I had not been a part of the writing, so I had no idea how he managed such a thing. The equations were neatly laid out, in perfect Greek script - the margins and sections were flawless, and I thought for sure he had spent hours wrangling with Word.
To my amazement, when I asked about it he pulled up a huge programming script, and declared that was our paper.
Welcome to the world of LaTeX.
I didn't see it again until I reached grad school (that undergrad classmate was always a closet overachiever...). In math class, I saw a good percentage of homework assignments turned in as typed documents - which struck me as odd at first, because everybody hand-writes math homework. Who wants to try Microsoft Equation Editor for an entire linear algebra assignment?
Then I took a closer look, and recognized the impeccable formatting and clean symbolic math that LaTeX handles so well.
LaTeX is indeed a programming language, but it comes with some simple WYSIWYG back end processors for those like me that don't want to learn yet another language. As with any new thing, there is indeed a learning curve. But it turns out that here at World's Best School, there are enough people at the intersection of a) geeks b) homework and project intensive classes c) overachievers and d) people with bad handwriting, that LaTeX is almost expected.
And the reason that those people were using it for homework is because once you have gotten over the learning curve, why not use it when it makes your work look so good?
So for my Master's thesis, this is what I have been using. I use MatLab to produce my figures, and Lyx to compile on top of LaTeX for my thesis.
And, might I say, my thesis is beautiful. And unlike Word it never loses a figure, reorganizes sections, reorders bibliography sections, or has out-of-place tables.
One of my labmates has an undergraduate research assistant who had a similar reaction just recently - why isn't everyone using this? She has been working on her bachelor's thesis in Word, and has the majority of it done.
So she asked yesterday if she can do her thesis in LaTeX - but it turns out that she has never used LaTeX, and doesn't have any of the software installed.
Oh, and the thesis is due Friday.
Did I mention the majority is already done in Word?
We tried to talk her out of it, but she's determined... we'll see how she thinks by the end of today....
To my amazement, when I asked about it he pulled up a huge programming script, and declared that was our paper.
Welcome to the world of LaTeX.
I didn't see it again until I reached grad school (that undergrad classmate was always a closet overachiever...). In math class, I saw a good percentage of homework assignments turned in as typed documents - which struck me as odd at first, because everybody hand-writes math homework. Who wants to try Microsoft Equation Editor for an entire linear algebra assignment?
Then I took a closer look, and recognized the impeccable formatting and clean symbolic math that LaTeX handles so well.
LaTeX is indeed a programming language, but it comes with some simple WYSIWYG back end processors for those like me that don't want to learn yet another language. As with any new thing, there is indeed a learning curve. But it turns out that here at World's Best School, there are enough people at the intersection of a) geeks b) homework and project intensive classes c) overachievers and d) people with bad handwriting, that LaTeX is almost expected.
And the reason that those people were using it for homework is because once you have gotten over the learning curve, why not use it when it makes your work look so good?
So for my Master's thesis, this is what I have been using. I use MatLab to produce my figures, and Lyx to compile on top of LaTeX for my thesis.
And, might I say, my thesis is beautiful. And unlike Word it never loses a figure, reorganizes sections, reorders bibliography sections, or has out-of-place tables.
One of my labmates has an undergraduate research assistant who had a similar reaction just recently - why isn't everyone using this? She has been working on her bachelor's thesis in Word, and has the majority of it done.
So she asked yesterday if she can do her thesis in LaTeX - but it turns out that she has never used LaTeX, and doesn't have any of the software installed.
Oh, and the thesis is due Friday.
Did I mention the majority is already done in Word?
We tried to talk her out of it, but she's determined... we'll see how she thinks by the end of today....
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Turn It In
I printed out my thesis today, all 124 pages of it. Turned it in is as a complete draft to the advisor, and set up a meeting with him Monday to go over his revisions. Assuming I did an okay job on it, advisor says we will have it signed by end of next week.
I can smell the finish line....
I can smell the finish line....
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Standing in My Own Way of Finishing
I had a grand plan for this weekend. I was going to pore over my thesis, I was going to finish (or nearly finish) the whole thing, and turn in a complete draft to the advisor this week. I was going to glue myself to my laptop, keep a snack nearby, and really truly apply myself. Because I know I can accomplish some incredible stuff when I am being productive.
But I couldn't make myself do it.
I don't know why. I keep thinking about all that I have to do BESIDES writing thesis - the last few experiments to answer nagging questions, studying for the test I have on Thursday, studying for quals, keeping up with Treasurer duties for the student club I'm an officer in, keeping up with hall councilor duties for my dorm floor. And I just feel overwhelmed. Plus my home had gone to pieces, with laundry everywhere and dishes in the sink, and flowers that needed re-potting, and floors and the bathroom that needed cleaning.
I feel like I have so much to do, that all I can really do is take a nap.
Does anybody else feel this way? When you have too many things on your to-do list, you just quit?
And so this weekend I slept, I did all the housework (yay clean clothes and clean home), I took a walk around downtown. The weather was gorgeous, and it just made me happy to breathe again.
I went to dinner with a bunch of girls tonight - we had a potluck, I brought sweet potatoes with pecans and coconut. Trust me, it's delicious.
And it's now 10pm on Sunday night, I feel fantastic, I'm sitting on clean sheets, and my window is thrown open to the gentle breeze. But I feel like I quit. Because I made absolutely zero progress on school or research-related things.
I do my very best to keep my life balanced, to take care of myself and to keep a healthy perspective on school. But that is all well and good AS LONG AS the school is going well. Is it still okay to take time to smell the roses when graduating is on the line?
So I psyched myself out of being productive this weekend. And I'm going to have to pay dearly for it this week to make up for it, I'm sure. I could have gotten a major chunk of work done, and I didn't, and it's completely my own fault for not being able to focus. And being productive almost certainly would have been more important than me having warm fuzzies over a clean home.
But shoot, I'm chomping on a brownie, it's hard to feel too bad. :)
But I couldn't make myself do it.
I don't know why. I keep thinking about all that I have to do BESIDES writing thesis - the last few experiments to answer nagging questions, studying for the test I have on Thursday, studying for quals, keeping up with Treasurer duties for the student club I'm an officer in, keeping up with hall councilor duties for my dorm floor. And I just feel overwhelmed. Plus my home had gone to pieces, with laundry everywhere and dishes in the sink, and flowers that needed re-potting, and floors and the bathroom that needed cleaning.
I feel like I have so much to do, that all I can really do is take a nap.
Does anybody else feel this way? When you have too many things on your to-do list, you just quit?
And so this weekend I slept, I did all the housework (yay clean clothes and clean home), I took a walk around downtown. The weather was gorgeous, and it just made me happy to breathe again.
I went to dinner with a bunch of girls tonight - we had a potluck, I brought sweet potatoes with pecans and coconut. Trust me, it's delicious.
And it's now 10pm on Sunday night, I feel fantastic, I'm sitting on clean sheets, and my window is thrown open to the gentle breeze. But I feel like I quit. Because I made absolutely zero progress on school or research-related things.
I do my very best to keep my life balanced, to take care of myself and to keep a healthy perspective on school. But that is all well and good AS LONG AS the school is going well. Is it still okay to take time to smell the roses when graduating is on the line?
So I psyched myself out of being productive this weekend. And I'm going to have to pay dearly for it this week to make up for it, I'm sure. I could have gotten a major chunk of work done, and I didn't, and it's completely my own fault for not being able to focus. And being productive almost certainly would have been more important than me having warm fuzzies over a clean home.
But shoot, I'm chomping on a brownie, it's hard to feel too bad. :)
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Green Light
Last week at my meeting with my advisor, I showed the data from (what I thought was) my last set of experiments before I could finish my Master's thesis.
I had worked very hard to get all my data into pretty graphs, and I thought I had some very solid results.
I put up my slides, and spent a while discussing with my advisor the possible interpretations, and explaining some of the deficiencies I knew were in the data. In the end my advisor was very interested. He finally sat back in his chair, set down his pencil, and declared "Well this brings up some very interesting questions."
*face palm*
Oh, no.
So I had a list of new experiments I had to run. I was so discouraged, because I felt like I'd never be done with this thesis. Does advisor REALIZE I'm studying for qualifying exams at the same time here?? So the long shot was I had a night of feeling sorry for myself, but I picked myself up and busted my rear this week to get the other experiments done.
I stayed up way too late last night analyzing the data, formatting graphs, and organizing literally hundreds of measurements. At the end of the night (or, as it were, wee hours of the morning) I had many pretty figures for the thesis appendix. I took what I had learned from all my analysis and distilled it down into one, simple, holy grail plot. It concluded, pretty much, that my thesis was valid.
And then I dreamed last night that I went to my meeting with my advisor, and I couldn't find my holy grail plot. In my dream I thought, oh gees, I know I saved it, now what folder on my laptop did I put it in? And search as I might, I couldn't find it, and the folder trees were never-ending.... such a nerdy way to dream!
But the good news is that I indeed do have the plot, I did indeed show it at my meeting today, and I now have the green light to finish writing my thesis and graduate.
Hallelujah.
Now it's a race to see if I can do that without dropping the ball on all the OTHER things I'm supposed to be doing...
I had worked very hard to get all my data into pretty graphs, and I thought I had some very solid results.
I put up my slides, and spent a while discussing with my advisor the possible interpretations, and explaining some of the deficiencies I knew were in the data. In the end my advisor was very interested. He finally sat back in his chair, set down his pencil, and declared "Well this brings up some very interesting questions."
*face palm*
Oh, no.
So I had a list of new experiments I had to run. I was so discouraged, because I felt like I'd never be done with this thesis. Does advisor REALIZE I'm studying for qualifying exams at the same time here?? So the long shot was I had a night of feeling sorry for myself, but I picked myself up and busted my rear this week to get the other experiments done.
I stayed up way too late last night analyzing the data, formatting graphs, and organizing literally hundreds of measurements. At the end of the night (or, as it were, wee hours of the morning) I had many pretty figures for the thesis appendix. I took what I had learned from all my analysis and distilled it down into one, simple, holy grail plot. It concluded, pretty much, that my thesis was valid.
And then I dreamed last night that I went to my meeting with my advisor, and I couldn't find my holy grail plot. In my dream I thought, oh gees, I know I saved it, now what folder on my laptop did I put it in? And search as I might, I couldn't find it, and the folder trees were never-ending.... such a nerdy way to dream!
But the good news is that I indeed do have the plot, I did indeed show it at my meeting today, and I now have the green light to finish writing my thesis and graduate.
Hallelujah.
Now it's a race to see if I can do that without dropping the ball on all the OTHER things I'm supposed to be doing...
Monday, March 2, 2009
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.
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.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Making Figures
I have put in my 12 hours for the day, and my brain is whupped. Yes, whupped. But I can't settle down for the night, so I'm writing to clear my head.
I am currently writing the design section of my thesis. I thought this thesis would get easier after the painful introduction and background sections, and I thought the design section would only consist of pulling together the calculations I've already done. However, I've been here a year and a half, so some of the early calculations for my thesis were over a year ago. In looking back at my early notes in my lab notebook, all I can say is - what the hell? Sometimes, especially in my sketches, I can't make heads or tails of what I was thinking. Hey, didn't become an engineer because I'm good at art...
In the Excel sheets and FEA simulations I did, I didn't clearly label what I was doing. I thought I was clear, you know, "Study 1 - Thermal 2 - Run 4" nicely and neatly numbered. But which one was the RIGHT one? And the numbers are all there in Excel, and some numbers are bolded. But WHY did I bold those?
I always am sort of in a rush when I do analysis. Isn't every grad student? You just want to get the answer so you can go take data and turn out some results. I always intended to go back and clean up those figures, annotate that Excel sheet. I never thought it would be months before I revisited the issue, and with my poor memory it's only weeks until I forget what I was doing.
Ack. Only myself to blame.
So what I've had to do is basically re-do all my calculations. This has had two blessings: one, since January I have been taking AMAZING notes in my new lab notebook (I ran out of space in the old one). Two, I have discovered a few errors I made. Not large errors, thank goodness, but small things I should have tidied up. Assumptions I should have checked even though I knew they were good assumptions, for instance. For my thesis, I want precisely no errors, and no room for my work to be questioned.
So I've been doing figures. All day. Carefully and well formatted. You know what I mean (or you should, if you ever give Power Point presentations). All titles in the same font. Nice big font, of course. All data with a clear legend. Concise and helpful titles. Plot lines thick enough to see, in different colors for clarity, but also one dotted and one solid so if the paper's in black and white you can still read the chart. Always use the one consistent kind of plot line for theoretical results, and a different consistent kind of plot line for experimental results. Axes appropriately sized and divided, and consistent for charts of the same type.
And you know what the most disheartening thing is? If you do a figure correctly, it looks obvious. It looks simple. It looks like it took you no work. When in fact, it took you four hours to get it to look that good.
It's exhausting. But, lookie here. This is what I had, from nine months ago:
Ah, yes. Node 22837, of course, of Thermal Run 2.
Here is what I have now, with small errors corrected (note the different slopes of the lines now), simulation re-done (took me SIX times to get it to converge, sweet rainbows...), and graph nicely formatted:
Yay me. And you bet your buck tooth that I have three pages in my lab notebook documenting how I went about it this time.
I am currently writing the design section of my thesis. I thought this thesis would get easier after the painful introduction and background sections, and I thought the design section would only consist of pulling together the calculations I've already done. However, I've been here a year and a half, so some of the early calculations for my thesis were over a year ago. In looking back at my early notes in my lab notebook, all I can say is - what the hell? Sometimes, especially in my sketches, I can't make heads or tails of what I was thinking. Hey, didn't become an engineer because I'm good at art...
In the Excel sheets and FEA simulations I did, I didn't clearly label what I was doing. I thought I was clear, you know, "Study 1 - Thermal 2 - Run 4" nicely and neatly numbered. But which one was the RIGHT one? And the numbers are all there in Excel, and some numbers are bolded. But WHY did I bold those?
I always am sort of in a rush when I do analysis. Isn't every grad student? You just want to get the answer so you can go take data and turn out some results. I always intended to go back and clean up those figures, annotate that Excel sheet. I never thought it would be months before I revisited the issue, and with my poor memory it's only weeks until I forget what I was doing.
Ack. Only myself to blame.
So what I've had to do is basically re-do all my calculations. This has had two blessings: one, since January I have been taking AMAZING notes in my new lab notebook (I ran out of space in the old one). Two, I have discovered a few errors I made. Not large errors, thank goodness, but small things I should have tidied up. Assumptions I should have checked even though I knew they were good assumptions, for instance. For my thesis, I want precisely no errors, and no room for my work to be questioned.
So I've been doing figures. All day. Carefully and well formatted. You know what I mean (or you should, if you ever give Power Point presentations). All titles in the same font. Nice big font, of course. All data with a clear legend. Concise and helpful titles. Plot lines thick enough to see, in different colors for clarity, but also one dotted and one solid so if the paper's in black and white you can still read the chart. Always use the one consistent kind of plot line for theoretical results, and a different consistent kind of plot line for experimental results. Axes appropriately sized and divided, and consistent for charts of the same type.
And you know what the most disheartening thing is? If you do a figure correctly, it looks obvious. It looks simple. It looks like it took you no work. When in fact, it took you four hours to get it to look that good.
It's exhausting. But, lookie here. This is what I had, from nine months ago:
Ah, yes. Node 22837, of course, of Thermal Run 2.
Here is what I have now, with small errors corrected (note the different slopes of the lines now), simulation re-done (took me SIX times to get it to converge, sweet rainbows...), and graph nicely formatted:
Yay me. And you bet your buck tooth that I have three pages in my lab notebook documenting how I went about it this time.
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