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Late last Friday afternoon I completed the final step in my PhD journey when I resubmitted a short abstract that for some reason the University could not find. It had originally been lodged at the time I submitted my thesis for examination, so lodging it again was not a big deal. However, it was a bit of an anticlimax from submitting my thesis with all the sign offs which I’d done the day before.
In any event, it’s all done now and conferral of my PhD should occur at the end of July.
Knowing it is all done, was a liberating feeling at first , followed by a sense of excitement that led to a difficult nights sleep helped by having the Tour De France to watch until the early hours of the morning.
I used this pen for months after our visit to Coimbra. Although its long since run out of ink it still holds pride of place on my desk
Hitting the send button on my thesis manuscript wasn’t the feeling I’d expected. I thought it would be eeuphoric but instead it was a a flatness that comes from sheer relief.
It was early. I’d been up since 5 in the morning, tidying up formatting, which had been the bane of my life in the last few weeks. I had been pulling my hair out over headings, renumbering themselves for apparently no reason – of course; there was one which I found with the help of a colleague for whom I am eternally grateful. Full stops were missing in my final run-through, a random page break, a bold line in a table, and an incorrect reference on the second last page of a 365 page document. And of course, there was the conversion to pdf process that saw the pages slighting alter, meaning a few tables had to be reformatted.
What I thought would take an hour took two and a half hours, so at 7.30 in the morning I hit send and into the examination process my thesis goes. I’m hoping that will be straight forward but I can’t be sure.
Thre was no one else in the house awake – how to celebrate? Upstairs and a 45 minute bike session on Zwift. I’ve racked up countless hours on the bike over the course of my phd. It along with the gym have been a welcome release from the daily phd process.
It was quite nice to have an hour or so my own to take in the fact that it was done. The countelss journal articles I’d read,the more than 1 million words written of which nearly 115,000 found there way into the manuscript.
I’m nearly there. My PhD thesis is with the copy editor for the second time. I know there will be yet more typos to fix and references to correct. I know my supervisors will make a few more suggestions, but I’m nearly there. In a few weeks my PhD Thesis will be in the examiners hands.
It’s almost six years since I started my PhD journey and eight since, in contemplating what’s next, that I commenced an academic journey. At that time I was exiting my career as a partner in a global consulting firm and I had to think about what I’d do next.
With the benefit of some wise counsel from two colleagues and after reading Herminia Ibarra’s Working identities I had a plan. I didn’t want to pursue the non-executive director route or remain in the corporate space. I thought I’d be an academic and explore a completely new path.
That was the and this is now.
All of those years later, I am close to completing that journey and I’m feeling a bit lost. What’s Next?
When I started this blog it was part of my transition to retirement strategy and it was the vehicle I would use to write. A commitment that I would have to some imaginary group of people who might stumble on my blog and find it interesting.
My personal commitment was a post at least once a month and at least one thousand words. I’ve been pretty faithful to that commitment however in the last few months my PhD has taken over. I have a deadline and it is getting near. I’m writing every day and my PhD is coming together.
So for the next few months posts will be even more sporadic as I work on finishing my PhD.
I received some great news at Easter an academic journal accepted an article I submitted for publication. Finally, I will be a published author.
It gets better. I have also just received an email from the editors of a soon to be released book on family business that my chapter for their book has also been accepted.
So after 4 years of submitting various articles, I am to be published not once but twice.
