PhinisheD

I realized a while back that I have a whole bunch of crap lying around the house that I don't really need or want, but I keep it around for sentimental reasons.  It struck me that this blog would provide me with a perfect opportunity to get rid off some of this junk.  I'd just take a picture, tell a story, and throw the useless sentimental object in the trash.  Sound good?  Here's my first post in that vein.

Back in 2002, my research adviser at Berkeley was kind enough to let me write-up my dissertation and leave with my Ph.D.  Grad school wasn't always a great time, but I really enjoyed the process of writing up.   I'd spend a few hours typing away in my apartment each morning, then I'd go meet friends for lunch and a few games of pool around noon, and I'd wrap up the day with a few more hours of writing in the afternoon.  I never spent more than seven or eight hours typing in a day.  It was the best time I had in grad school and probably one of the most relaxing periods of my life.  But the vengeful gods of academic research had their clipboards out, and they were marking off the karma as I burned it away.  And then one day, the chickens came home to roost.

Nine years ago, the technology behind electronic document management was still beyond the capacity of your average organic chemistry grad student.  As a result, I was left to use the old school cut and paste strategies in order to prepare my NMR spectra.  I actually employed real scissors and glue (or maybe it was scotch tape).  That part was easy.  Unfortunately, dissertations with clumsy hand-cropped spectra taped or glued onto low quality lab printer paper don't exactly fit the University guidelines for thesis approval.  So I had to transfer the NMRs to dissertation-quality paper by photocopying.  Piece o' cake, right?

So one day in mid-May, I had all my writing completed, approved by my committee, and printed out in the correct format on the correct paper.  All I had to do was get those spectra transferred onto the good paper, and I would be all set to submit my thesis.  So I made a plan to do both those things in one day.  But transferring those spectra turned out to be a complete pain in the ass.  That high quality paper is so soft, that creases form really easily when photocopying.  It took all day trekking back and forth across the campus between my lab and Kinko's trying all sorts of techniques to get my spectra printed as efficiently as possible.  All the while I was throwing away valuable pieces of expensive but ruined paper.  I was incredibly frustrated.  My blood pressure is climbing just thinking about it.  By the end of the day, I literally broke out in a rash which stuck around for two weeks -- all the way through commencement. The worst part is that my frustration was completely pointless. I still had plenty of time before the semester deadline.

So the next day, blotchy and itchy, I walked into the filing office8 holding an envelope containing my thesis with all the spectra copied onto the required paper.  Somebody checked over my work and then handed me a See's chocolate lollipop with a PhinisheD labeled pasted to it (see above).  I've had that lollipop ever since, and it's been sitting in a mug on my dresser for the past few years.  Nine years is a little long to keep a lollipop, and it's time to get rid of it.  I don't think I need a reminder of the most frustrating day of my life hanging around anyway.