Steamed Puddings

My father made this rocking horse for me when I was an infant. There is a famous picture in which a year old-ish me is riding the horse in footy pyjamas. My mother’s antique Pfaff sewing machine is visible in a corner of my parents’ Stuttgart quarters.

I think the horse was around the house when I was an older child, but was given to my aunt Kathleen when my cousins were born. They’re about 8-12 years younger than me. When Kiwiman and I were in the US for our wedding reception, I received a giant UPS box from Aunt Kathleen which turned out to contain the rocking horse. It was such a neat present to receive!

Kiwiman and I disassembled the horse for the first time in nearly 30 years and scattered the pieces within our luggage to bring it back to New Zealand with us. For a few years, the pieces were sitting in a cardboard box just waiting for some attention. This year, in a flurry of post-PhD house projects, I had intended to sand the horse so we could put it back together. I didn’t have a lot of time to do this, though, so Kiwiman took over the sanding and did a great job stripping off the original dark brown varnish. Hugo contributed, too, by helping to bolt the neck back to the body after we cracked it during the disassembly.

Finally, after priming, arguing about colors, painting, and soaking the original cracked leather pieces in linseed oil, the horse is now (nearly) complete and ready for a new generation of riders. I think Kiwiman has taken a lot of pride in his sanding and paintwork (as he should!) and I’m touched that he has added his own stamp onto this handcrafted hand-me-down from my side of the family.

My exam was today, and it went much better than I could have expected.

There are four possible outcomes for oral exams at my university:

• pass with no corrections required
• pass with minor corrections required
• revise and resubmit for another examination
• fail

95% of people I know pass with minor corrections required.  It is some kind of testament to my incredible perfectionism (bordering on OCD with this 250-page document, I swear) that I passed with no corrections required, a real rarity.  CSO even put my thesis forward as a nominee for the Best Doctoral Thesis award.  I had no idea I would do so well.  I hated the research, towards the end, and
I couldn’t see how anything positive could come of it.

The exam was…anticlimactic, really.  The chair was a female professor from the medical school who served to ensure the exam process was carried out as expected.  CSO was there as my supervisor (I enrolled in the old-school regulations which allow the supervisor to be an examiner; nowadays this isn’t permitted).  The oral examiner came over from Brisbane today and works in generally the same area as CSO.  It was his first oral exam, and I think he did a good job, though I had honestly expected to be grilled a bit more!  I was prepared for all sorts of nagging little questions about what the proteins I’d found actually meant, and we mostly stayed on the broad-strokes level (which was just fine with me as I’m a generalist, not a specialist).  And then it was all over!  I knew I would pass, but I didn’t have any clue that they thought it was SOOO good that I wouldn’t have to make any corrections at all.  I’m still astounded by that.

The path forward from here: tonight I’ll write the acknowledgements section, something I didn’t feel was necessary in the exam copies of the thesis.  (Honestly, if I had written it in February, I would have had some nasty things to say about supervisors, so it’s better that I write it now.)  Tomorrow I’ll fix a few typos in the thesis and start printing out the ~5 copies I’ll need to have hard-bound.  I’ll call around to some binders and get prices and estimated times.  I might even get to drop it off tomorrow.  Then comes the hardest decision: what color cover and printing should I get?  I kinda like the idea of red…

When I get the hard-bound copies back in less than a week, I can turn them in at the university’s Graduate Centre and get my letter stating that the PhD has been awarded.  I can trade this for some shiny gold rocks at my place of employment.

Graduation will be in September - and I have to get some papers out by then, if I want that Best Doctoral Thesis award.  Bring ‘em on!  Now that this is out of my life, I have time to work on papers again.

My PhD oral exam (defense, viva, or viva voce, depending on where you’re from) is tentatively scheduled for next Tuesday afternoon, May 6th.

This is dependent upon the two examiners (one proteomics, one placenta) getting their reports in on time like they said they would. Once the Graduate Centre has them in hand, the room will be booked. Hopefully this will happen in the next two days.

GPCW, Placentologist, and I have been writing a paper based on the two biggest (and coolest) chapters of my thesis, and it’s just reached the penultimate draft stage. Keeping an eye on this paper has helped me feel like I haven’t completely lost touch with my thesis topic. However I am pretty worried that I won’t be able to explain big chunks of the work once I get in a room with the three other people who will be there. Only two of those people will actually be judging me, and they are both proteomics people, so I think I can stand my ground there. Thank goodness I won’t have a placental person in the room.

Now to cram. Unluckily, I have a cold. Luckily, I should be well over it by next Tuesday.

I had an interesting meeting today with GPCW and Placentologist regarding the first draft of thesis paper 1, otherwise known as “all your gels are belong to us [sic]“. It turns out that even though they both said earlier this week they wanted to submit this paper to Clinical Journal X without much fuss, we spent the whole 3-hour meeting picking through each sentence of the methods and results sections I’d rewritten from the thesis. I don’t think I could adequately convey to them how little I care about this material anymore.

As usual for any meeting involving Placentologist, we figured 3 hours would be enough time to touch on the entire draft. We just barely got through the methods (which are lengthy) and the results (which are not) within this time. Placentologist kept commenting that we needed more biology in the discussion section, and I pointedly told her near the beginning that I saw this as a great place for her to contribute (read: do it your damned self). I wrote a THESIS on this stuff, and I shouldn’t have to write every word of a paper on which there are 8 authors. In the words of The Garbage Man: “Can’t someone else do it?” Bonus points if you can tell me the song that goes with that quote.

I was happy when the three hours were up and it was clear that Placentologist had other committments. Too often my meetings with her have stretched to five hours, into late nights, starting in early mornings, or over periods in which I would have otherwise eaten or peed. I have really been looking forward to the end of thesis papers 1 & 2 so I can avoid having any more long meetings with her.

She has pushed for the last year for me to get this paper written, suggesting that having an acceptance in hand before my oral exam would prevent any problems. Kiwiman has always scoffed at this suggestion, saying that if I were to have problems, the supervisors (Placentologist and CSO) should have caught them already and not allowed me to submit the thesis. I agree…but some of today’s meeting had me worried. I’m still freaked out that my oral exam COULD happen within a month.

The elephant in the room was my knowledge that Placentologist will not be at my oral exam. She doesn’t know that I know, I think. She apparently thought it would be inappropriate for her to examine the thesis in which she helped me write sections. I tend to agree, but wish she had discussed it with me…something she still has not done. Open communication is something we do not always have.

I took the bus from work to Placentologist’s office. She works at a satellite campus which is an hour’s bus ride from my house/work. I started the journey back at about 5pm. The sun was still high in the sky, since daylight saving time doesn’t end here for another ten days or so. When I sat down on the bus, I thought: “It’s so nice and sunny - I should go for a run when I get home. I slept in and missed spin class today, so I need to get moving. Last night I noticed some ‘chair spread’ creeping in, too. Must be those Creme Eggs at easter.”

As I rode across town in the Auckland rush-hour traffic: “(Yawn) I was so tired towards the end of that meeting. Maybe aerobic exercise is a bad idea. Too much work.”

When I got home: “I need a drink, and some junk food. Let’s open those yummy corn chips. Maybe I can finally get the Long Jump achievement in Portal while Kiwiman is at squash. I can go to the gym in the morning (if I get up early enough).”

I deserve an award for talking myself out of exercise. Do any of you do this too?

You asked for it, so here it is. Geeka, in particular, spurred me to action with the comment that my haircut couldn’t possibly be as bad as I’d made it out to be.

We spent the long weekend at Waihi Beach with family and had a nice time, especially when we took a day trip to Rotorua for Aix massages. Mmmm, massages.

During the massage, I started thinking about how much it would cost to have a monthly, or even weekly, massage.  For a few thousand dollars a year, I could have an hour-long massage every week.  Now that would keep me relaxed!

I have heard unofficially through highly speculative channels that my oral exam might be in late April.  This could be utter hogwash, but if it doesn’t happen in April it may have to wait until September as CSO (my main supervisor) is overseas between these times.  We’ll see what happens…