30 years too late. Finish it. It really can be finished as long as you don't mind sacrificing your sanity and coming to the brink of being a homicidal maniac when your advisors "suggest" "have you considered". I kissed so many arseholes you would have thought I was looking for love in all the wrong places. I finally had to accept finishing it was the objective, not changing the world with some new discovery. Plenty of time for that when you become a post doc. Plus you get seated quicker when you put in your reservation under "Dr." Other than that be humble.
I get a chuckle when I hear people say: "I have all the data, I just need to write it up!" That means they are hopelessly floundering. I remember, I was there, too. Managed to thrash and dangle to completion, though.
Do you have a formal dissertation / thesis defense?
If you do, then it has to at least be sufficiently obscure that you can defend it with a straight face.
You know the old maxim, "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with BS".
My dissertation is 79 pages total. Not an unusual length for mathmematics. Title: Geometric Realization of Homotopy Systems. There is plenty in there, believe me. Think density as opposed to volume.
Years ago while driving around the country, I stayed for a day or two in a Cistercian Abbey in France. The sisters belong to an order of nuns who have taken a vow of silence, except for participation in religious ceremonies. They farm, and partially support themselves by taking guests. A few sisters are given dispensation to speak so that the guests can be accommodated, which included serving breakfast and dinner. As you can imagine, it is a very quiet place, with little to do for a guest except perhaps talk (in subdued tones) to the other guests at meals. Surprisingly, I found out that there was always a full complement of guests (there was no room for me, but they allowed me to pitch a tent). Why so many guests? The place was full of grad students who came to escape the distractions of their normal environments in order to write their dissertations.
I think mine was a couple of hundred pages when all was in it...
...probably have a copy around here somewhere, don't remember the exact title of that but I submitted a Physical Review Letters manuscript about a month or so after completing it which boiled the 200 odd pages down to 4...
I was in the lab one day and a friends draft dissertation (not yet submitted) was sitting on a table. His major professor walks in, see's it, picks it up and hefts it up and down a few times like he is weighing it. He said "it's getting there".
Mine was 175 pages and four distinct chapters (earth science). The four chapters gave me opportunities to grind down the committee by cycling though review and update cycles. Finally they just gave up and I won. I published two chapters and gave up on geophysics as a career because there are so many other interesting things to do out there.
My goal was to go field work in the Andes, which I did. Had a picture on the cover of GSA journal to boot. I've got the galley proof in a frame somewhere.
when i was in grad school a girl i knew had her prof delete her whole work. he called her into his office and made her bring her laptop that had her dissertation on it. he proceeded to call it all a piece of sh#t and then deleted the whole thing off her computer right in front of her. told her to start all over again. f*#kin' dick!
. . . is clearly discipline specific. my advisor would smack any student who referred to the "dissertation." "You are writing a book," N used to say. Fortunately, wes in the natural sciences, and it sounds like you folks pretty much just mail it in
That (80%) would be 37.6 pages of mine (1971). Boiled it down further for the Transactions of the American Mathematical Society.
Just skimmed this and wanted to add my encouragement to you to finish writing the damn thing.
I wrote mine in Spring of 80 in Boston. With ADD and after a hard winter all I wanted to do was go outside and play in the fresh air. I managed to write it by writing in the nude (so it would be a real conscious effort to go outside) and be setting a clock for 15 minute intervals and allowing myself to get up and run around the apartment for 2 minutes and then sitting down, setting the clock to write again.
Look it wan't pleasant but it was by far not the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life. Take heart!
phyl
Seriously and having been there just hanker down and finish. Phd dissertation is an el cap route; sounds attractive in the abstract, hard but doable in the first few pitches, serious doubt sets in in the middle with thoughts of bailing, two thirds up you want to be anywhere else, another few pitches and it's actually more scary to go down than up, final pitches revive the spirit, topping out is a life's accomplishment. Don't bail from the changing corners pitch, only a few more to the top. As with el cap, no crowd will be there to greet you and your future pay has no correlation to the accomplishment, but the doneness - the having completed the ultimate education big wall - soothes the soul. As with wall climbing its about you and what your made of. Plenty of good people bail, but not people like you. You don't want to have to drive into that metaphorical valley and always wonder what if. You came to conquer, now do so. I imagine th bail rate on el cap and dissertations is about the same. As for ABD - it's about as meaningful as bailing from the third pitch of free blast and hauling your heavy sh#t back to your car to drive out of the valley.
It's the best feeling in the world to finish a dissertation. You'll feel good about it for years to come (I still do, even though it was so long & painful at times)
Whatever you do, don't go into academia. Bunch of lazy slackers there.
How would you like to spend the rest of you life being proud of the 2 or 3 students you advised who got into grad school. Or the 5 or 6 papers a year you sweated blood over to publish, only to have been read by the same 2 or 3 people. Yeah, that is some accomplishment.
Congrats! But it's more like paying people to read your schlock than vice versa. I haven't even read my wife's and it is probably far more interesting than yours.
congrats on finishing. it's like climbing or moving, the last one percent just takes forever.
i just got back from the funeral of my mentor. he put in more than thirty years in the business-- not sure how many folks he mentored, but it was well into the dozens.
Whatever you do, don't go into academia. Bunch of lazy slackers there. How would you like to spend the rest of you life being proud of the 2 or 3 students you advised who got into grad school. Or the 5 or 6 papers a year you sweated blood over to publish, only to have been read by the same 2 or 3 people. Yeah, that is some accomplishment
Unnecessarily pessimistic IMHO. But then I've been retired from the profession for about 13 years, and I worked at a small state college where research was a plus, but not really required. I'm sure KLK has an entirely different take on the subject!
I didn't catch your area, but keep your eye on SUNY Rockland, we've got a lot of people retiring. Heavy teaching load (5/5), pays is usually in the low-mid 50s. Kinda tough by NY standards, but I'm surviving with a mortgage on a house minutes from the Gunks and a good wife who is grossly underemployed. You could do a lot worse...
Let us know!