The master thesis is done!

[whereisirisnow]

It is done! I have done it! Last week I handed in the report of my thesis, I gave my final presentation on Monday and yesterday I received my grade. It is an 8.4/10 *yay*. This means that I will graduate cum laude for my master (which I also did for my bachelor). Also, I finished this degree in 1.5 years, even though it is a 2-year program. Also also, my average grade is an 8.64/10. I am very pleased!

I celebrated this with my family by eating a 'bossche bol' (you can google that ;) ) and they got me a lovely bracelet as a present for this achievement. A picture of this bracelet will follow, as soon as it is properly engraved. I've also been celebrating this by doing mostly nothing science-related for the past few days, even though I had to write part of a second draft for our Alpbach-paper (which is happening! Excited!). Oh well, tomorrow is another day, another chance.. :)

Comments

[whereisirisnow]

Good luck finishing this bloody thesis. I'm sure it'll be like a weight lifted of your shoulders, when you finally hand in the thing (maybe quite literally as well, as a pile of 250 pages is quite heavy).

I've heard about the bad conditions for PhD students in America, and I can assure you that it is way, way better in Europe as far as I know. For starters, the health insurance is a mandatory insurance for which you pay monthly (reasonable priced). Besides that, depending on the country where you're doing your PhD, you are regarded as a full time employee, so you get a real, proper salary. That's the way it is in the Netherlands, anyway. In the UK you'll probably get paid through scholarships and funding and in Switzerland you get a very nice salary and you get to keep your student identification card, so you have the best of both worlds: loads of money like someone with a more mainstream job + lots of discounts, because you are a 'poor' student :p

[sorrillia]

Thanks! Hopefully I'll manage to get some progress made on it this weekend, since the last couple of days I didn't really get much done. And yeah, it will be heavy, especially since I have to submit two paper copies of it...

*nods* Yeah, Europe does sound like a very good option if one can manage to get into a program there. Honestly, though, I'm not that sure I want to stay in research: I've managed to get pretty badly burnt out, and I'm not sure I ever had the amount of passion for it that you are supposed to. I just don't see much else open in terms of career paths.

What about you? What do you plan on doing once you finish your PhD? Become a professor?

[whereisirisnow]

Yeah, research can be pretty tough. Very persistent to continue your thesis even after a burn out! At present, I still firmly believe I would like to follow the whole numerous-postdocs-before-ever-finding-a-permanent-job-to-become-a-professor-path, but I'm not ruling out ending up somewhere else. ESA sounds very cool for example :)

[sorrillia]

Good luck!