Somedays it helps to work at not thinking that far ahead....
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
A kind of final draft
Drafts are never really final are they? You just stop editing them at some point. I've been exchanging drafts of thesis chapters with my professor and there's alway something new to add, a way of re-phrasing a sentence. It's not at all bothersome. In fact it's a relief to be more than two weeks from that day circled on my calendar, "Draft to Committee!" and be in a kind of final draft. I think that final drafts are really just a myth. At some point we'll say "that's enough, lets move on." we'll have the "sufficient draft". Then the committee will spend their two weeks with it. We'll all gather for the day of torture (or the defense if you like) and then my professor and I will spend another 2 weeks exchanging drafts that incorporate a selection of committee comments and edits until we again decide enough is enough and then we have the "sufficiently final draft" which will be printed, bound and cataloged in both the university and departmental libraries to take up 1 inch of shelf space, gather dust, and be universally forgotten.
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1 comment:
I think you're right! There's no such thing as a "final draft"! There is always something to add and always something to change. Some sections of my thesis introduction have already been approved for publication as a part of a review article, so I thought we were done with those sections and we don't need to go over them again. Yet my advisor still makes some comments and changes to those parts!
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