It is done...

Quarto

Unknown Enemy
I am back. After two very long months of near-total media blackout, where I worked 12-14 hours a day on finishing up the PhD thesis, I submitted it today, and I am now free. Until the examiners get back with their feedback in about two months, of course.

It is a very strange feeling. Just like finishing my master's degree fifteen years ago, and finishing Standoff nine years ago. A profound feeling of emptiness, where you have the urge to keep working, but you have nothing to work on. Your brain has gotten used to constantly pressuring you to do work, and now has to accept that the big task you were doing is done, and you can actually think of something else.

Also, after my family, and the Standoff mailing list, this is the third place I really wanted to share this - doesn't that make y'all feel all warm and fuzzy? :)
 
I am back. After two very long months of near-total media blackout, where I worked 12-14 hours a day on finishing up the PhD thesis, I submitted it today, and I am now free. Until the examiners get back with their feedback in about two months, of course.

It is a very strange feeling. Just like finishing my master's degree fifteen years ago, and finishing Standoff nine years ago. A profound feeling of emptiness, where you have the urge to keep working, but you have nothing to work on. Your brain has gotten used to constantly pressuring you to do work, and now has to accept that the big task you were doing is done, and you can actually think of something else.

Also, after my family, and the Standoff mailing list, this is the third place I really wanted to share this - doesn't that make y'all feel all warm and fuzzy? :)
I have been through it a couple of years ago. Congratulations, and I hope I'll be able to call you a fellow doctor soon. :)
 
I have been through it a couple of years ago. Congratulations, and I hope I'll be able to call you a fellow doctor soon. :)
Indeed, doctor :).

Out of pure curiosity,
may I ask what was about?
Eh, well, honestly, I really don't feel like talking too much about it just now, because I've spent so long in recent months working on it :). I'm sure I'll be happy to say more in a couple of weeks, once I've put some distance between me and the submission. For now, here's the short version: Skyrim world-building, Skyrim fan communities, and using open-world RPGs for cultural heritage.
 
After two very long months of near-total media blackout, where I worked 12-14 hours a day on finishing up the PhD thesis, I submitted it today, and I am now free. Until the examiners get back with their feedback in about two months, of course.

Congrats ;) . My wife is currently in the final phase of that thesis as well, submitting it probably next week. One large document full of complex formulas summing up the last years of her professional career. A feeling of emptiness is to be expected after such an experience, I felt similarly after my Masters.
 
Congrats ;) . My wife is currently in the final phase of that thesis as well, submitting it probably next week. One large document full of complex formulas summing up the last years of her professional career. A feeling of emptiness is to be expected after such an experience, I felt similarly after my Masters.
Legs shaking when they announce the results, then you walk away for a few minutes from the party and go cry in your office. Followed by a few weeks of emptiness indeed.
 
I am back. After two very long months of near-total media blackout, where I worked 12-14 hours a day on finishing up the PhD thesis, I submitted it today, and I am now free. Until the examiners get back with their feedback in about two months, of course.

It is a very strange feeling. Just like finishing my master's degree fifteen years ago, and finishing Standoff nine years ago. A profound feeling of emptiness, where you have the urge to keep working, but you have nothing to work on. Your brain has gotten used to constantly pressuring you to do work, and now has to accept that the big task you were doing is done, and you can actually think of something else.

Also, after my family, and the Standoff mailing list, this is the third place I really wanted to share this - doesn't that make y'all feel all warm and fuzzy? :)

I do feel all warm and fuzzy inside, thanks! Congratulations! I don't know if it will have been worth it but it will be over and that's important.
 
I do feel all warm and fuzzy inside, thanks! Congratulations! I don't know if it will have been worth it but it will be over and that's important.
Well, I sure hope it will be worth it. I mean, a PhD is not like yet another game, that you pour your blood into, knowing that five years after its release, no one will remember it. The whole point of it, hopefully, is to influence other people.

Speaking of the warm and fuzzy bit, though, it just occurred to me that really, this community has been a constant in my life longer than anything else. I must have moved cities and/or countries probably like a dozen times since March 1999, when I first registered at the forums here. I've changed jobs, I made mods, I got married, had children, I've gone through whatever else. Who knows how many computers I've had during this time? Basically, everything has changed, except for the fact that almost all that time, I've visited the CIC forums pretty much every day. Next year, it'll be twenty years. Of course, probably like 90% of the people I've talked to at the CIC during that time have long left the community, so it's not like this place is immune to change, but still... so really, nothing could be more natural at this point than wanting to inform this community before just about anybody else.
 
Well, I sure hope it will be worth it. I mean, a PhD is not like yet another game, that you pour your blood into, knowing that five years after its release, no one will remember it. The whole point of it, hopefully, is to influence other people.

Speaking of the warm and fuzzy bit, though, it just occurred to me that really, this community has been a constant in my life longer than anything else. I must have moved cities and/or countries probably like a dozen times since March 1999, when I first registered at the forums here. I've changed jobs, I made mods, I got married, had children, I've gone through whatever else. Who knows how many computers I've had during this time? Basically, everything has changed, except for the fact that almost all that time, I've visited the CIC forums pretty much every day. Next year, it'll be twenty years. Of course, probably like 90% of the people I've talked to at the CIC during that time have long left the community, so it's not like this place is immune to change, but still... so really, nothing could be more natural at this point than wanting to inform this community before just about anybody else.

Now I feel even warmer and fuzzier inside :)! And of course, I do cross my fingers for you that it will all have been worth it in a material sense (increased pay, better job opportunities, higher esteem - I don't know how important a PhD is in your sector) but anyway it was a experience thath taught you many things I guess and that alone will always be there.
 
Oh wow, you finally did it! It's been so long... I suppose in the back of my mind I thought you had already finished. Or maybe that was for other papers you did before.

Well, now you might have a bit more time for your family and things that you enjoy for recreation. You know, things that you used to do instead of work. ;)
 
Oh wow, you finally did it! It's been so long... I suppose in the back of my mind I thought you had already finished. Or maybe that was for other papers you did before.

Well, now you might have a bit more time for your family and things that you enjoy for recreation. You know, things that you used to do instead of work. ;)
Hey, nice to hear from you! I was just thinking the other day that you've been away from the CIC for so long, I should send you an email to show off about my completion. But yeah, during the course of the PhD there was several papers I had to complete, so you may have been thinking about one of those.

And yeah, I think my family would agree that family time is more than overdue. Right now, however, I'm still in Australia for the last semester of teaching, while I took my family back to Poland last year, so it'll be another six weeks or so before I am actually with them again.
 
I still read the news posts even if I don't visit the forums regularly any more. Glad I got the chance to see you, however briefly, while you were in Sydney as I don't think I'll be in Queensland any time soon (and I have family I want to visit there as well). I'm sure it's great for your family to be back home with friends and relatives again, though obviously not so great that you're be apart for a little bit longer.
 
Just wanted to add my hearty congratulations!

We set up a Discord recently for the CIC, if anyone is familiar with that service... it has happily blossomed into a modern, active version of the old IRC channel with a lot of the old gang. Any of you are welcome: https://discord.gg/tmmhcVJ
 
Just wanted to add my hearty congratulations!
Thanks! By the way, you still haven't responded to me on the question of whether that Asia-Pacific Kilrathi Saga I posted to you last year ever arrived or not. I sure hope it did, as that was the only spare I had ;).

Yeah, I need to visit the Discord channel one of these days. The trouble is, I have a built-in reflex action to avoid all such things for fear that they will suck up all my time. I think most of you guys have a completely different attitude towards it, because you've been using IRC for so long that you're used to it just sitting in the background. Me, when I see an unfolding conversation, I have this urge to keep watching as it unfolds, which is not so good.
 
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