Yesterday I handed in my thesis. I am so relieved to be completely done with it. I will have to wait till the summer to find out my grade, but whatever happens, it’s out of my hands. Which means I can stop worrying and focus on what lies ahead. But of course this huge accomplishment didn’t go down without some drama.
Monday I took my thesis to the copy shop on a memory stick to have it printed and bound. They told me it would be ready the next morning. I dropped off the books I had used for my thesis at the university library in town and then went to the next town over to drop off a few more books at the library there. I came back to town and was waiting for my bus to go home at the train station when all of a sudden a thought popped in my head.
“Why is my works cited section chapter #7?” I went through all of my chapters in my head and sure enough there were only five chapters and then the works cited section. And for some reason I had a picture in my mind of it being chapter #7. I looked up the file on my iPhone (thank God for technology, right?) and sure enough, it was (wrongly) #7. I called the copy shop right away but they told me my thesis was already bound. Well there was no way I could hand in a thesis that just skipped a chapter number (a typo, fine, but this was too embarrassing and would make me look careless), so I asked if they could replace a page. They told me that it would be possible but they would have to re-bind the thesis. I took the bus to get back to the copy shop and I looked through the file again just in case I mis-numbered another chapter. And sure enough? I did. You know, I went through every single chapter title when I proof-read it but I only paid attention to the actual titles, not the chapter numbers.
At that point I just started crying. All the pressure was getting to me, and now this? It was so awkward to be crying in a busy copy shop, but I didn’t really care at that point. I knew they could fix that mistake and you have no idea how glad I was I realized it before handing it in but why couldn’t that damn thought have popped in my head a little earlier? And why did they have to bind my thesis right away after I dropped it off when it wouldn’t be ready till the next day anyway?
In the end I was able to bargain with them and “only” paid $12 to have them replace the two pages in each of the four copies, but I was so mad at myself for not checking those chapter numbers. It would have cost me an extra minute or two instead of $12 had I done it a day earlier. The good thing is I did find the mistakes and they were fixed. Chances are, there are more, because that thesis is 80 pages and it’s just likely. Heck, I even found some mistakes in the secondary literature I used and that was published, and sold in bookstores! I just hope it’s nothing as obvious and embarrassing as this.
And usually I would say those $12 went to my learning the hard way to check chapter numbers, except there will not be another time that I can make use of that lesson. I was really really upset yesterday (and I could still kick myself for it) and instead of being happy, I spent a lot of time crying instead but you know what? Now that’s all in the past, and I AM JUST HAPPY TO BE DONE!
(I will also not take another look at my thesis because I have no doubt that as soon as I do I will find another mistake.)
