endgame.

now, the job is done.

rather, one job is done;
i've kept one promise, and there are a few more to keep.

but this was the most important one.

---

i went to rackham graduate school [1] today with an unbound copy of my thesis, and i met with a friendly woman who walked me through the formatting.

there were no rulers.

there was no transparent sheet to put over pages,
in order to check specifications, such as margin lengths (to the millimeter).

there was nothing of the sort,
no draconian measures taken,
nothing to weed out graduates unmindful of the rules and regulations.

..then again..

i had to rename a chapter or two, because their titles said "appendix" and the graduate school couldn't have that .. but that was all.

no complaints here.

when it was all done, the woman who helped me gave me a official certificate, that i have "hereby completed all requirements towards a Ph.D at the U of M" or something like that.

amazingly enough, they spelled my name correctly.
there was even a shiny gold University seal on it.

so i guess i am a doctor now.
it still doesn't seem real.

i had thought that the toil of editing and re-editing and more re-editing of the thesis manuscript would sink in the idea.

by the time i submitted my thesis, i would feel that i deserved it, for all that this year and years have put me through.

well, no. it still doesn't seem real.
can i be really Dr. _____?

no matter, that;
titles are of little importance, anyway.

---

when i woke up this morning, i thought a little about what would happen if this actually worked out [2]. nothing came to mind, and it worried me.

when this is done, will i have a purpose?

when you've spent every waking day, either working or worrying,
pushing yourself to finish "one last thing" ..

.. which becomes a half-dozen things,
and takes an hour longer than you'd have liked ..

.. when you fret inwardly,
even when you see your friends at conferences,
itching to go back to work because you feel you must ..

when it is all done, what then?

before my meeting, i received an email. someone's asking about my Ann Arbor talk. someone wants to know a few more details.

someone actually cares?!?

so for now, i have a question to answer and an email to write. come to think of it, there are a few other questions to think about ..

.. a few more promises to keep.

i don't know why, but unconsciously i thought that my world would collapse, once the matter of a thesis was settled. i can deal with disasters -- i call it "graduate school" -- but successes and endgames ..

.. i never plan for those.


at any rate, there's work to do and i want to do it;
more to come, about that.

[1] though i am/was a graduate student in the mathematics department, there is a single graduate school for the entire U of M, called the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies.

[2] this morning and the night before, i mostly thought of contigency plans B, C, and D, in case the rackham people felt that something was wrong with my thesis formatting.

for the record, plan B was to rescale the printout margins, plan C was to remove all footnotes (which were unnecessary but slightly informative) for new versions of plan A and B, and plan D was to figure out how much summer tuition cost, if it came to that.

countdown.

two more days. that's what i tell myself.
two more days before the thesis submission deadline for U of M.

two more days before my meeting with the graduate school administrators, in order to pore over the words and margins and font sizes.


by then, i can give up on my thesis,
and i can say: "good enough!"


until then, there are two more days to go. argh.
how does everyone else make this look so easy?

life after a defense.

i had promised myself that i wouldn't do any work yesterday and today, but i ended up breaking that promise ..

.. on both days.

oh well. at least i didn't do any LaTeX until today. besides, there's not much time before the rackham graduate school deadlines, anyway.

---

earlier today i was walking past the first-year grad student offices. the doors were closed and the interiors looked dark.

for some reason, that sight relieved me. there might be qualifying exams soon, but at least the younger kids know enough not to lurk in their offices, all the time.

endgame: stand and deliver.

so yesterday was the defense. all of the committee arrived on time, including the cognate member [1].

there was a large audience, too. the 20 seats in the room were taken, and 5-7 more stood or sat on the wide window ledge (in the back of the room).

admittedly, i hadn't expected this. many people had told me that they would attend, but i thought they were saying that for support. they all came, after all!

there were a lot of questions, so it actually felt like a defense.

i suppose it is a good thing. it was pointed out to me that questions indicate that some people are indeed listening and that they understand you well enough to ask their questions.

on the other hand, some of these were questions like:

"does the module have torsion?"
whereas i couldn't remember what torsion was; it was mildly embarrassing.

also, apparently i was working with a different notion of rank than what most people do. so i was asked, "wait. so you mean that the module has rank at most N?"

"er: it's not a free module," i replied.

they added, "you can define rank just with linear independence."

"oh," i noted.

anyway, i was nervous and i went over my allotted time, and barely gave any intuition why my main result makes sense.

then there were even more questions.

when it was over, we left the room so that the committee could make a decision.

.. a few,
LONG
minutes
later ..

the committee members walked out of the room,
each shook my hand,
and i became a doctor.


there are thesis corrections still to make, but it's done. the forms are now at rackham and it's a matter of paperwork.

[1] according to rackham graduate school rules & regulations at the U of M, a dissertation committee must include one faculty member outside of your home department. interestingly enough, the rules allow for one committee member not to attend your defense as long as it is not the cognate member.

t-minus 18.5 hours.

everyone's been asking, so ..

yes, tomorrow's the day;
i defend my thesis tomorrow.

no: i am panicking.
the committee is composed of very nice men, but i'm still panicking.

students and their families: it's complicated.

today i didn't do any work, really. i was too busy printing things out and making sure that the graduate school will let me have a defense next week.

i was also a little busy "graduating."

there was a ceremony in the mathematics department, where many undergraduates -- most of them, newly graduated -- arrived with their parents and siblings.

i was invited and also attended; a postdoc friend was curious and joined me. i even received a graduation certificate, and i was more pleased when i read the wording:

".. on his expected graduation date of ______."

that was something i appreciated;
you can't have mathematicians without some rigor or precision. q:

---

in this ceremony they gave a little talk about mathematical modeling in applied maths, but it was more for fifteen minutes and for some semblance of depth.

for most of the time, they did what the families wanted: they gave many awards to deserving students and said fine things about them.

i realised, then, that these are important events.

when you're a mathematician [1] for most of the day and most of the year, little human things slip from mind.

for example, we are not just ourselves, but we are our families.

i would say that mathematics is humbling, and more so in the graduate level than the undergraduate. that changes perspective between us and non-mathematicians.

as mathematicians, we often see things that we don't understand. perhaps we will, with enough time and effort, but we quickly realise that things don't come easily. there may no longer be right answers or wrong answers. there might not be any answers at all.

years of discipline and hard work pay off. on the other hand, months of unused work and failed ideas are sloughed to the side.

so perhaps it's not anything mathematical after all. maybe it's just me: i think of all the things i haven't done and couldn't do. i think of lost time, and things that might have been or never could be.

the ph.d. is near, too, and i wonder how i got here, already this close. maybe i will finish, as everyone assures me.

---

i know that my family would say otherwise. let's forget who is right and who is wrong; they will say that

of course he will succeed;
we knew all along.

how could it be otherwise?

they say such things without knowing how hard it is. somehow, our families know us. they will say what they say because they can. because we do know, because we see the risks and the difficulties, we can't .. or won't.

when [2] they are proven right, then there needs a forum, a celebration for family to say so. it is not gloating; it is a happy thing.


despite this, i avoid celebrations and instead, i reminisce. i worry about things now past and beyond worry. it's how i am.

i'm sure that it annoys my family to no end. \:

---

[1] not all mathematicians, of course. just inept ones, like me. \:

[2] or if.

enough writing; soon, talking.

there's one chapter in my thesis which i hate editing. it's not that the results are bad. in fact, my main results are in that chapter.

but it's thirty-five pages long;
whenever i edit it, it takes an eternity to finish.

---

i'm done editing: enough! there's a week and a day left before i defend.

it's time to write the talk. i've given plenty of lackluster talks, and it would be nice to finish a graduate career by giving a good one.

i have no illusions:
there are a lot of weaknesses in the writing of my thesis.

for now, though, i'll let my committee worry about them, and i'll get back to the revisions after this minor public spectacle called a defense.

[deep breath]

for most of these years, the only reason why i've stopped doing one mathematical task was because i had to start another. nothing has ever felt "finished."

sometimes you have to realize that you're becoming a little obsessive and a little crazy, and make a firm decision.