Just submitted my Masters Thesis to the department.  Whew.

Just have to say that thank goodness the EECS deadline is today (as opposed to the MIT May 8 deadline).  I gave the thesis to my advisor on 5/2, he was gone for a week at a conference, and we only really started going over it together last Friday (talk about cutting it close).  Meaning I spent the better part of this week making changes, including adding a whole new chapter!  (Well, at least it was in the appendix.)  I know that only me and maybe any future students in the group will probably ever read the thesis, but still, personal pride made me tweak it all the way up to today so that I could get it just right.

Found out about my professor’s semi-ritual for theses, too.  All theses done by the group are signed with a “sacred” pen (a nice fountain pen in a fancy box).  Anybody except him and the student are kicked out of the office, and the door is closed before the box can be taken out of his desk.  Not part of the ritual, I assume, but since the pen is used pretty infrequently (last time was 1.5 years ago), it took him a couple of minutes to get the ink running smoothly so that he did not make a big blot on the thesis.

Anyway, my professor and I had a final look-over the thesis at 1 pm today, and then we realized that one thing I forgot in all my hubbub writing and revising the thesis is that it is nice to get the thing printed on fancy archival bond paper, rather than the typical white printer paper.  That means making a trip over to MIT CopyTech, and since today was the deadline for EECS (biggest graduate deparment at MIT) and AeroAstro (small department but long theses), I spent an hour or so to print 87 x 2 = 174 pages.  I guess that’s not too bad considering.  Except the deadline was 3 pm today, and I got out of CopyTech at 2:50, so I had to make a mad dash from Bldg 10 to Bldg 34.

The thesis is signed and submitted, though, so another milestone done.  Maybe I can finally devote my time to my new research group now…