My thesis was supposed to be finished by the end of June. Major underestimation of the time it would take on my part. But I can say, with 95% confidence levels, that it will be done this week. {Augh, statistics are creeping into everything I say.} My crash course in basic and advanced statistics over the last month has been frustrating, enlightening, time-consuming, and a hundred other adjectives. I feel like I've been trying to drink all of Niagra Falls. For days.
But I've learned some things.
1- I really don't enjoy academic writing. I much prefer to make everything up and not have to cite sources.
2- Statistics are very complicated and I'm not sure very many people really understand why you do it the way you do, or what is really going on under the hood in the stats programs, but I think I have a grasp of what some of the numbers in the output table mean.
3- Academic writing takes ten times longer than fiction writing. It can take me hours to write just a couple of paragraphs, mostly because I need to keep looking up stuff.
4- I don't think I want a PhD.
5- I can handle graduate school, despite being a mostly stay-at-home mom for the last twenty years and being older than most of my professors. I enjoyed most of it. But I also know I'm done.
6- My kids are more capable than I believed. They've been doing a lot of cooking, cleaning, laundry, and generally taking care of themselves. And doing a good job of it.
Once I get this thesis defended and jump through the hoops to graduate, I'm taking a nice long break from academics. I'm going to go back to making stuff up and writing about explosions and magic and sword fights and monsters and spaceships. Because that's what I really enjoy.
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