Final submission almost complete

Today in class I got a lot done on my final submission - specifically, I was able to go through all 100+ of my emails between my mentor and I and copy them into a Word document and upload that to my Process Record folder. It was incredibly frustrating because the copy and paste function made the formatting really weird, so it took absolutely FOREVER to edit all of it and improve it somewhat. (It only took the entire period.) By the end, though, I had 70 something pages of text, so that's good. That was really the majority of what I had left to do for final submission; now all that's left is getting my mentor to send me back her profile form and then make sure the rest of my paper forms are where they should be. Then I'll be done!!

Still working...

I'm still in the process of my final submission. In thesis today I was able to read over my abstract and upload it to my Final Submission folder on Google Docs. Now all that's left is uploading the rest of my Process Record - that includes, mainly, the emails I sent and the rest of the communication between me and my mentor, my judges, and the director of the DCT whom I was in contact with when I was trying to organize the joint event between Pratham and the DCT. The deadline for final submission is this coming Friday, and I'm sure I'll be able to have it done by then. It's just tedious to have to go through all of my emails and copy and paste all of them into a Word document (I couldn't find any other way of doing it). I plan to have my final submission done by Thursday at the latest.

Working on final submission~

Today I started working on my final submission. I spent some more time this morning reviewing all the final submission guidelines, especially the list of all the things I need to submit. I created my Final Submission folder on Google Docs and already uploaded some of the things I had - my previous presentation, my mid-term paper, my annotated bibliography, and a few drafts of my final paper. As of now, I have yet to upload all my email communication (I'm still trying to figure out how exactly to go about doing that; if all else fails, I'll just go through them and manually copy/paste them into a Word document). I'm also holding off on uploading my final paper until I read it over at least once more. There are a few other minor things that I'll need to upload as well - I just need to make sure my name is on them before I do so.

I also started and completed my abstract today in class, so after I read that over a few times and maybe make some minor changes, I will upload that as well.

DONE!

I had my final thesis presentation today; I think it went well! The responses I got from my judges were great, and it made me feel as though I did better than I'd expected. I'm pretty happy with how it went, to be honest. It was also the perfect length, so that's good too. One of my judges told me he really liked my paper before I began my presentation; he told me it was well-written and I had done an excellent job, so that made me pretty happy too. :)

Now that the presentation is out of the way (and thank goodness for that), I can work on final submission. I hope that by Wednesday I'll be ready to upload all my documents and actually be done with senior thesis (gosh, I can't believe it's come to an end already!).

Next class...

Today I worked on practicing my speech for my final presentation. It was nearly 45 minutes the first time I rehearsed, which came as a bit of a shock, but I think that's just because it was my first time. I was rambling and stuttering a bit, so that took up more time.

Today in class I also finished my speech (well, sort of: I gave up about two-thirds of the way because I realized I wasn't going to follow it word-for-word anyway) and completed a typed outline of my presentation. That, I think, will give me a good idea of what to talk about, since it's less detail-oriented and instead has just the main topics of each slide that I want to hit. That way, it'll be more useful to me in making sure I don't leave anything out.

I want my presentation to be around 30 minutes, and considering the amount of stuff I have, I think it'll be that long. I just need to rehearse it a few more times over the weekend and then I'll be set. I can't believe my presentation is this Monday! (Ahh!)

Presentation complete!

In thesis today, I completed my presentation. It's got about 20 slides, so I think it'll be a pretty good length. I guess you could say one minute per slide, but obviously it won't happen that way. But it's fine because I'm not too worried about the 20 minute minimum. I also started typing my speech and got a little less than halfway through before class ended. I plan to work on it out of class and rehearse it every day now leading up to my final presentation on Monday.

On another note: it hit me this week that this is real and it's coming to an end. All of it - school, thesis, everything. It's kind of scary, but also exhilarating at the same time. Seeing my classmates dressed up every day now because almost every day there's someone presenting their thesis to their judges is what really caused this whole realization. And in terms of college, I guess it's the fact that I've already committed that has now also made that a reality to me. These final weeks are the most stressful for me, but in the end it's going to be so so worth it. And I can't wait.

Preparing for final presentations

Today in thesis I worked on my final presentation. It looks like it's going to be pretty long, especially judging from the length of my outline. It's pretty extensive, so I feel like the 20 minute requirement won't really be a problem for me. It's a lot of information, though, so I have to type it all out to make sure I'm not forgetting anything - that's what's going to take me so long. I'll have to get it done by the end of this week, though, at the latest, since my final presentation is next Monday.

On that note, I also emailed all my judges to remind them about my final presentation being next week. So far, I've received confirmations from two of them. I'm still waiting on the third, and if she doesn't reply by Tuesday evening, I plan to call her Wednesday during thesis period to get a confirmation. I also plan on emailing them my final 30-page paper either tonight or tomorrow.

Absent! 4/10/14

I was absent yesterday because I was visiting Rice University.

Making up work in advance!

Since I'm going to be absent the rest of this week on a college visit, I decided to spend today's thesis period taking a physics test in advance (since I would've missed it tomorrow otherwise). I plan to work on my thesis tonight, though, to make up for the time I missed today in class.

Started the final steps~

Today in thesis I finally finished my paper! It's a grand total of 30 pages; today I put the finishing touches on it. I spent some time today reading through all the documents in the final thesis submission folder - I noticed some stuff in the given guidelines that required me to make changes to my paper, so I did that as well.

I also started the outline process for my final PowerPoint; I'm fairly sure that I'm going to follow the basic format of my thesis paper, since it's a chronological account of my experience with the Readathon. I may also, however, include some of the sources that I didn't include in my final thesis paper because I had already met and exceeded the minimum length requirement of 25 pages. Considering that it's information that was in my mid-term paper, I think it would be better if I did, but at the same time, my judges are all part of Pratham already, so I feel like some of that information would be redundant. When I take my audience into account, I realize that some of the information (especially all the stuff that was in my mid-term paper) will become irrelevant and unnecessary, so I will probably just leave it out and focus more on talking about my personal experience working with Pratham as opposed to explaining the organization itself and its goals.

Paper (almost) done!

Today I spent the majority of thesis working on changing my thesis paper from Chicago formatting to MLA formatting. There were quite a few differences, so it took longer than I anticipated, especially with adding/removing spaces and blank lines and such.

I spent the majority of my time on my Works Cited page because I realized I had never cited an email in MLA before, so I had to look it up and then copy that format and fit it to my specific sources. I had to do that with quite a few other types of sources, so in all it was that final page that took the most amount of time.

I'm happy with my progress, though - I'm not adding anything more to this paper, because as of now it's exactly 30 pages long. I hope that on Friday I will finally be able to start outlining my final presentation and creating my PowerPoint.