Rejoice! The revision is done! Well, almost. The body is done. References need to be renumbered (yet again) and spelling/grammatical errors need to be fixed. But then it’s done! All I have to work on after that is re-making my tables and graphs for my Appendix sections (which shouldn’t be too hard if Excel will cooperate with me). I managed to painfully squeeze out 115 whole pages. I’m proud. Now, of course, I still have to send it to my committee members to tear apart. I’m hoping they’ll cut me some slack since I went out of my way to address every single issue that they brought up on my first draft. If they’re still not happy, I hope that they’ll just tell me what to write instead of trying to make me figure it out again. It’ll save all of us precious time.
On a completely unrelated note, how cool are the new MacBooks? Too cool. In fact, I’ve already ordered one to replace my current much-hopped-on-by-my-corgi-puppy one. I’m hoping it’ll come before I finish my thesis because otherwise, what would I use it for? Blogging? 
Published on
1 year, 5 months ago in
lab/graduate school and medical school.
Tags: dissertation, graduate school, md, medical school, medical student, phd, revision, rotations, third year, timing.
The good news (I think): I’m finally almost done with my dissertation revision. I could have it done by the end of this week if my thoughts didn’t keep fluctuating and then focusing on how ephemeral life is. That and the fact that all I have left to finish is the discussion. One section doesn’t sound tough, but it is the section that needs the most work and the one that is the most difficult for me to write.
The bad news (or maybe not so bad if you really think about it): I’ve been asked to consider stopping my clinical work (read: my third year) and starting up again with next year’s class so that I would have my dissertation completely behind me and be able to start completely fresh instead of jumping back in with now super-experienced third years with only psychiatry under my belt. I have mixed feelings about this particular strategy. On the one hand, I do need that extra time to “prepare” myself as best I can by reviewing things like the physical exam and clinical reasoning, which I never was very good at in the first place. Also, since I’ve already done one rotation, I can take my last block off and study for Step 2, which I need to do well on since I’m going after Radiology. Oh yeah, and if I were to really return on rotation 5 as planned, I would be so far behind that I would not have any time to do any away rotations during my fourth year before having to apply to programs. I really believe that this extra year will be advantageous to me in helping me become the best possible Radiology applicant I can be. And, of course, I’ll have no more dissertation hanging over my head. On the other hand, now I’m going to be yet another year behind. One more year of not being done. Of not moving on with my life. Of not earning enough money to afford as many Chanel handbags as I want (though, really, in the grand scheme of things, I realize that life is far too short to spend coveting overpriced designer handbags). Oh yeah, as if it wasn’t hard enough to join the current class I’m in, I’ll have to do it all over again with a new batch of people. Not to mention that I’ll have to start the warm-and-fuzzy doctoring class all over again. I suppose I’ll just make sure to take on an early case since I’ll know what they’re all about.
Hmm…now that I’ve listed out all the pros and cons, it’s perfectly clear that taking the rest of this year off and starting again next year really is the best thing for me to do. Now, it’s not set in stone yet. There’s going to be some headbutting between bigwigs over this plan, but we’ll see where it goes. Until it’s decided, I’m sure as hell going to enjoy my carefree days. There’s nothing like tasting just a tiny bit of the third year of medical school to make me appreciate the finer points of doing nothing 10,000% more than I ever did before.
I’m kinda screwed. Let’s count the ways:
1) My hypotheses suck. In my defense, I knew they sucked and I didn’t want to go with them, but my major professor made me. And now I get to look like an idiot when my committee member calls them “naive.”
2) My results suck. It’s not good when your baseline measurements are significantly different from each other.
3) My discussion sucks. That would be because no one told me how to write a dissertation discussion. And also because my hypotheses and results suck.
So yeah, I spent a week sulking over these sad facts. I finally got off my ass and started working on my revision today. And it’s not fun.
Just the thing I was waiting for. Revisions. Do I sound excited?
It was hard enough getting the damn dissertation out. Now I have to revise it? I’m not actually as incredulous as I might be sounding right now because I know that my writing and my logic are not perfect and I expected that I would have to make massive revisions. I’m actually glad that the comments are pretty mild and that I don’t have to rewrite the whole thing as I had feared. But that doesn’t mean that the task doesn’t seem daunting to me. Especially because my world has just been turned upside down by issues I would rather not discuss. Just when I was getting back on my feet, shit happens to knock me back down.
In any case, one of the reasons why I’m just a tad annoyed at some of the comments I received is that a lot of them are about things that my stupid major professor told me to say or do that I disagreed with but that he said were fine. And when they got called out and I pointed out to him that it was him who suggested them to me and forced me to write these things, he tried to deny it or imply that I had misunderstood what he had told me to do. He actually criticized me on something he himself told me to do and which I hesitated to do! When other reviewers point out these things, it’s not like I get to defend myself and say to them, “But my major professor made me do it!” I just get stuck with these reviewers believing that I’m an idiot when I’m not. And that’s why this whole revision stings a little bit. Not because I think I’m perfect, but because not all of the mistakes are mine.
But what can I do, right? It’s always been like this with my major professor. If I just suck it up this time around, then I can be done with him for good!
