Reading aloud

For that last few days, I've been reading my thesis aloud to Crystal.  This process has been interesting, and has really led me to find a lot a small errors that need to be addressed before I give my full thesis over to my supervisors to review.  I should be finished with that by the early next week.

I've received editing recommendations for my Summary and Conclusions chapter, and have done most of them at this point.  The big struggle that I have now is to find a few good closing sentances.  I'm not expecting my thesis to close with the same feeling as The Great Gatsby, but I really need some thoughts that push the implications of my research, without repeating things that have already been said too much.  I hope I can find these few words quickly.

I also sent in a resume to a company that I hear might have an engineering job available at about that same time that I'm planning to return to the US.  I feel rather nervous doing this.  The last time I was looking for a job was in 2005, and the economy was still doing pretty well.  The outlook isn't that great right now and even engineering jobs are pretty scarce.  The job is really good and I shouldn't have too much trouble living in an area that I like either.  I put a lot of work into both the resume and the cover letter, so hopefully they leave a good a impression and I get a call for an interview.

Where do the weekends go

Unlike everyone in North America, I've already had to deal with Monday.  Nuts to that.  But the weekend was pretty good.  Besides going to Lush and getting some nice smelling things, I spent some time talking to my parents, and playing some games with Crystal, Chris, and Brandon.  I'm really ready to be finished with my thesis so that I have a bit more leisure time.  Things are getting pretty close.  I'm running around trying to secure permission to use some third-party copyright items.  So of it has been easy, but I'm going to end up writing some letters to take care of the rest.  Hopefully, the rights holders are willing to let me use stuff for free since I'm a poor student and not really publishing my thesis.  I spent the rest of the day entering some data into a spreadsheet and drawing a profile for a stratigraphic section that someone else described.  Then I printed out a copy of my thesis so that I can start checking through it to make sure that everything flows together reasonably well and I don't repeat anything.  I have a meeting with my supervisors tomorrow, and will hopefully get some editing suggestions back so that I can wrap up the last few chapters.