The End Has Come

Well, the real end won't come for another two weeks, but this is a red letter day regardless. As you see in the picture, I am sitting at my computer and my printer is churning out page 8 of 57 of my master's thesis. After a day filled with packing boxes, loading moving trucks, scrubbing baseboards and lightswitches, I got an e-mail from Dr. Spackman advising me to make to final changes to the latest draft of my thesis before printing it out and dropping it off to my committee. This is so exciting for me! This has really been one of the top three greatest challenges of my life - a real odyssey. What happens from here is that I drop off three copies to each of my three committee members, then turn in my final oral defense scheduling form, and then I wait for two weeks for my oral defense. On Sept. 18 I will be back in Provo with a 15 minute presentation of my research that I will give to my committee who will grill me on any number of topics related to my project, after which, if I defend successfully and thy give me the thumbs up, I will make a couple of revisions (based on their recommendations), will print out four copies of the final product on fancy paper, submit it to the library for binding, and after completing some other miscellaneous paperwork, I can sit back and wait for my degree to show up in the mail. Fantastic! What an accomplishment. I am so excited and relieved. What a day. A special thanks to all those who helped us move, and especially to Ryan and Piper Johnston who let us crash at their place for a while once ours was emptied and cleaned. A red letter day friends. A red letter day.