Thesis

That is to say that I'm doneish with my Masters thesis. I handed in my thesis to my readers on Friday. I defend next Friday. Corrections are due the Friday after that.

I've been working very hard for the past three weeks in particular. The last week was light on sleep, but I made up for it by sleeping for about 13 hours Friday night. I haven't slept that well since my NSERC USRA days. I've relaxed yesterday and today, but I'm going to be back hard at work starting tomorrow, when I begin the preparations for my talk.

Presuming I pass, I will immediately start my PhD here at Dal, again under the supervision of Dr. R.J. Nowakowski, which I am very much looking forward to.

Delinquent blogging

I've been waaaay too slack with my posting. Tomorrow would be a month since my last post. As I'm out of practice, and I'm supposed to be somewhere else in 12 minutes, I'll make this quick.

I had an excellent trip and I made it back safely, three weeks ago today. In the past couple days especially, I've been spending much less time on my computer. I had be trying to spend less time surfing the web, but that lead to more game playing, especially cribbage. Most importantly I haven't been spending much time at all on facebook, which I'm pleased with, but it also means I haven't posted any pictures recently.

In terms of real news in my life, I've been accepted into the PhD programme here. I've also been offered funding from the department, which isn't as much as I'd like necessarily, but it's enough to live off of. I should hear from NSERC by the end of March.

Academically, as opposed to paperwork in academia, I should really get cracking on thesis research. However, I've been cluing up some work from the summer and David Pike (from MUN) and I should be submitting a paper soon.

I'm off to trivia at the Grad House now. Dal had a referendum recently about some issues that concerned the Grad House. The referendum didn't pass and it may be that the GH is only around for another year. The president, Tom Traves, had threatened to knock it down (and not replace it) if the referendum didn't pass.

Ph.D. application

At least in the math world, this is the time of year for grad school applications. As I'm in a 1-year Masters programme, it was time for me to start applying to schools. This year I'm only applying to Dalhousie. This is where I would like to go/stay and I believe to be a shoo-in. I was told to have my application in my the end of the month so that I could potentially be nominated for a Killam Predoctoral Scholarship. If I were to receive one of these it would be worth more than an NSERC (the lower level NSERC). Late last week I submitted my application. The reference letters are still en route to the department. Hopefully this will all work out. I should find out almost all of this by the end of March.