All done!

Woo, my paper is done!

I just finished it, was going to leave it till tomorrow and just thought i would have a tinker and managed to get it done! Is such a brilliant feeling!

I worked for about 2 hours and then my ma came to stay yesterday so we had some drinks (not me, obviously) and went out for dinner (where I ate a lot, obviously) and i had the most awful, horrid night's sleep. I woke up at 3am wide awake, and then at around 4am beanie woke up and kicked alllllllllll night. I had horrid dreams that he was being hurt or was an alien and that I was far away from home with people who wouldn't look after me and I was so worried about bean. I woke up feeling vile and... hungover?! And guilty that I hadn't been able to look after Bean, though it was a dream. Went out and about to the local festival today, came back and tried to work and couldn't, decided to leave it till tomorrow but then did it just now as was checking emails anyway. Soooo happy as it means I can have tomorrow off! Completely. Will email it off to someone (who?! Does anyone care?!) and that's it. Am having Tuesday off too wooty! Then Weds, Thurs and Fri will re-write it as it is actually 5,750 words of Very Rough-ness - I wouldn't normally even send this draft off to my Sup to check. But I keep thinking that he did say it could even be in note form and to only make it 20 pages. It is 21 pages and not in note form, but an essay with an abstract, keywords, intro, middle and conclusion AND pretty much all my references. Albeit it's not very well worded (bit wordy and colloqiual), I would prefer more sources to be used as I rely on a core few which isn't all that representative, and I would like to see if I need to add another facet to the argument or if I really can leave it out (i have it written in atm, but very roughly and pretty much in note form). Some refs aren't in there and it needs some serious tightening up. But it is a decent first draft, the argument is there, the intro matches the content and my thesis is backed up by empirical evidence. Lots of checking and re-writing aside it could be that it will always seem banal to me because I know it so well, but actually be of interest to someone else... hmmm!

So, another deadline met and down, next one is to get this into a decent draft and off to Sup, and also to work out how it fits into my PhD! May need some rewriting again. THEN, I need to get on with the presentation. I hope I don't need powerpoint. I can't wait to start practising it so I can feel more in control you know?

After the presentation I will only have 6 working weeks left before I start to wind up for maternity leave. In this time I have to write two chapters and plan another. Oh God, I really do have to. Maybe instead of winding up totally I will go part time for the last couple of weeks... that will give me two months, a month for each chapter. And some of those chapters have already been written, and by some, I mean about 2,000 words which is a good start?!

And breathe. I will get my PhD, I will.

x J