And life continues

While the final formatting of the thesis was excruciating - 6 hours to format a 7 line table of figures, come on Microsoft! - the actual approval process at Grad Studies was a breeze. I expected to have to reformat the table of contents, to argue over my copyright permissions (since they were in email form), to need the signature of a person away until the first week of July, something, anything. But the rubber stamp came down, and lo, it was good.

My advisor held an awesome party for all three of June's grads, with barbecue, wine and cake. My thesis went up on the mantle piece next to the others - and whoever said size doesn't matter is wrong, mine was the biggest - and we had a great time. I have been lucky to find an advisor who is so caring and challenging, who makes me want to continue on in academia. We will be discussing phd programs and publishing this summer.

I still can't quite believe I'm done, but man, I feel great.

Go Portugal!