Thesis is back :)

So my thesis came back yesterday from the College of Graduate Studies (CGS) administration. Advisor called me yesterday afternoon when I was at the gym and had just changed into my exercise clothes saying that I should go pick it up ASAP. It was still 2:30 pm, and I was so excited and eager to see the CGS's feedback. So I dressed up quickly back again and rushed back to college, which is about 10 minutes away from the gym. Weird enough, Advisor had left by the time I got to his office, so I had to wait till today to get my thesis.

Thankfully, there are not so many changes to make. It should've been like this, since I tried my very very best to adhere to their format and to make my thesis as typo-free as possible. They had 5 comments: to mention the CGS grant number in the acknowledgements section (which I thought was funny; is the grant number really important as long as I did acknowledge them?), to leave more space between the name of the university and thesis title on the title page (which Program Director thought was funny), to italicise the journal name in one of my references (which is important, but I just missed out. After all, it's one out of about 300 references), to add a "hypothetical" graduation date at the bottom of the title page (they suggested April 2010), and to change the direction of the last page to the other side. Very simple changes, I can manage to them today and then print out six copies, spiral-bind them and give them to Program Director to distribute them to the committee members as well as to the external examiner.

At first, the date "April 2010" freaked me out. I'm not quite ready to defend in the next few weeks, neither emotionally nor intellectually. But they're telling me it's only an arbitrary date not leave the date space empty on the title page. OK, if that's what they want!

It usually takes an average of 1 month for the thesis to come back from the external examiner, and another 2 weeks from that date till defense. Days are running! While I wait, I should keep myself busy preparing for the annual Poster Conference and putting my defense presentation together. Wow! Poster Conference is nearly here. I just love this event for some reason, maybe because I think of it as our local Science Geek Holiday!