Ok, so I have the wooden ruler out and I'm measuring it.... So far, 34mm!! Can you believe it? THIRTY-FOUR MILLIMETRES. Go on, get out the ruler and do it yourself. I just wish I was an engineer and had those fancy caliper things to get an exact height, but that's close enough. Those of you at home will need about 300 sheets of paper that have gone through an ordinary laser printer to get close enough, but it'll be worth it.
Mind you, right now it's just a stack of paper that keeps catching my attention from out the corner of my eye, being kind of poised on the desk next to my computer station, all shiny and white. Whenever I glance across the writing sort of springs into view, as if to say, 'edit me, big boy'. I'm playing hard to get though.
Written on those 300-odd pages are 90,000 words of waffle about why I think I should be awarded a Doctorate of Philosophy. As a means to self-aggrandise I could have picked a better, funner way, but each to his own, right? As I may have said before, I should have tried to become a rock star.
Well, to be honest, I did. Back in the early 90s, when I had hair down to my ass and a conviction I was god's gift to lonely, vulnerable women I took up the bass. And I was pretty good for a bloke who'd played five minutes. All it took to stop me though was a well-placed, 'dude, you're shyte' to filter through my tone-deaf eardrums and I sold the axe to the first victim to hove into view. Probably all for the best though, I have all the rhythm of a... I don't know what, but take my word for it, I'm no metronome. Or even a ruralnome.
I should apologise for that last gag now. Sorry.
If you haven't twigged yet, the final draft of the thesis is currently sitting on my desk, after me having gone through the literal mountain of unnecessary material I gathered over the past eight years, from important primary material like interviews, to stuff I just collected from second-hand book stores and reception's. There was a lot of this junk. And I mean, A LOT. It took me days to sift through it all, catalogue it, and add it to the thesis if it had actually influenced my thinking, or just looked good in the bibliography.
From here on in? Editing. I'll spend the next four or five days re-reading the bits that need close attention (i.e. the most recent stuff), and then send it off to the supervisor by the end of next week at the latest.
The big question is then what to do.
I have a sneaking suspicion that at this exact moment I'll be offered that dream job ($35k, long hours, no perks, get yelled at heaps), but if that happens it happens. One can't complain. I estimated the other day that this study has cost me something like $160k. Seriously. $160k. I got that figure from looking at where some old mates are at today, subtracting me not doing as well financially, subtracting the amount I have actually earned/sponged since I kicked off this project in 1997, and I'm left with at least $160k.
Fuck.
However, the optimistic contingency plan says holiday. Big holiday. Maybe international. I’m thinking of Option 4B at Student Travel, “Wake up in a gutter covered in vomit to find homeless person trying to knick your shoes after a week of endless boozing and swapping spit with semi-clad but heinous Finnish girls called Umi and Uma in a beach chalet on the coast of a tropical nation populated by easily-exploitable working poor”. But then I might just as well go to Byron Bay.
We shall see. Whatever happens, when I submit that thing you’ll probably hear the ‘whoopie’, or ‘yeehaw’ all the way to Auckland.