Watcha Doing? Version 2015.5 Showing 2,501-2,550 of 2,846

[Tasha]

That's wonderful, Peggy!! I'm so glad it went well and was actually a lot of fun for you. :D CONGRATS

[Lisa]

Congratulations Peggy! I'm so happy for you! :D

[Stephanie]

Congrats, Peggy! So happy to hear it all went well :)

[Berit☀️✨]

Congratulations Peggy!!! That sounds so fabulous :-)

[Janice, Moderator]

Congratulations, Peggy! I'm so glad that the defense went well yesterday. You deserve that big smile!

[Sharon]

Congratulations Peggy! Well done!

[Kandice]

Yay Peggy!!!

[Sandra, Moderator]

CONGRATULATION, PEGGY! I'm so happy for you! Just yesterday I was thinking in asking you when the great day was, and I forgot! Enjoy a few days of rest now.
The box idea sounds lovely!

[Sandra, Moderator]

I like the previous font better, but I don't hate this one.
It's the white what it's making things kind of unpleasant. I'll check f.lux

[Peggy]

Thanks everyone!! :D

I got one picture:

[Travis]

Nice Peggy. Is thst your mom looking so emotional to the left

[Peggy]

She's a friend, one of the paranymphs. My mom was even more emotional, she was actually crying :)

[Sandra, Moderator]

Yay! Thanks for sharing!

[Dawn]

Rusalka wrote: "If you don't want to make your browser smaller, check out f.lux as well. I do love it. https://justgetflux.com/..."

I like this. For some reason it didn't occur to me to do this for my main computer even though I have something like this on my tablet. It works great!

[Lisa]

Great picture Peggy! Thanks for sharing!

[Stephanie]

Great photo, Peggy!!
Aren't you moving into your house soon?

I can now see what everyone has been talking about in regards to the color change of the font. I don't log in much on a computer, normally I use the app :) The color of the font is horrible. Makes it hard to read. The app ( at least on my phone) isn't different though.

[Peggy]

We do Stephanie! We get the key December 28.

[Peggy]

It's going to be 16 degrees here tomorrow. That's crazy! Those temperatures are normal for late March and early April, so spring. If it will be sunny we could have a drink outside! In December!

[Stephanie]

December 28th will be here before you know it :) hope the weather stays nice for your move in!

[Sarah]

Congratulations Peggy! I knew you could do it. Love the picture. And you must now being really excited about moving in to your new place. What a month!

I agree about the temperatures Peggy. It was 13C overnight here last night and 15C during the day. It's looking like the same again tonight and tomorrow. Err...weather, it's December! It's not looking like we'll get a white Christmas.

[Lisa]

Sarah wrote: "Congratulations Peggy! I knew you could do it. Love the picture. And you must now being really excited about moving in to your new place. What a month!

I agree about the temperatures Peggy. It was..."

Apparently it's meant to be getting colder here next week Sarah. I hope it does, it really doesn't feel like winter at all at the moment. I'm still waiting for the 8 inches of snow they forecast weeks ago to arrive!

[Travis]

I am in love wih the super mild weather here. Heifers are still on pasture no snow and most days a sweatshirt is all that us needed. We deserve ot after the pounding we took here last winter

[Rusalka, Moderator]

Grats Peggy! So very excited and proud of you!!

It's graduation week here so everyone is running around campus looking like Harry Potter. I notice one of your paranymphs (Love that word by the way. Not in English or our Uni system here. "Side by side goddess/woman/bride/sprite". Are they always women?) is wearing her gown, but you aren't. Do you get your gown at another stage?

[Lynda]

Peggy, I'm so happy to hear that the defense was fun, and that all that stress is behind you. The picture is great! Congrats on the new place, too. Applause all around.

I had one of those days at work today where all I did was work on one thing. It was a very tedious thing, too!

[Anne (Booklady)]

@Peggy, Way to go! You deserve a great celebration! :)



I discovered an add on for Firefox that I installed for Goodreads only. It's called Stylish. I turned the background dark. It really has helped with the new fonts. My work on computers and astigmatism really made the new changes awful for me. The bright white screen and the skinny font gave me a migraine headache last night. The dark background and the grey color font has got me back as a full time Goodreads user. I had been thinking of deactivating my account because if using Goodreads was going to bring on more migraines, I couldn't take it. Now with the dark background I'll be on Goodreads for a long time.

[Lilisa]

Congrats Peggy - great photo and all the best on moving into your new place as well!

[Peggy]

Rusalka wrote: "Grats Peggy! So very excited and proud of you!!

It's graduation week here so everyone is running around campus looking like Harry Potter. I notice one of your paranymphs (Love that word by the way..."

I love the name too :D It's always two, can be men too though. They would also be called paranymphs, which is a very feminine name I think.

The lady on the right, in the gown, is actually my professor who supervised me during the past 4 years :) Only professors get to wear gowns in the Netherlands. The other girl is my paranymph, and the other paranymph was standing a bit to the side and is not in this picture.

Thanks for all the congrats! :D

[Rusalka, Moderator]

Oh no! That's the whole point of getting a PhD! Dr in front of your name and a silly gown!! In Aus, you wear a gown if you are an academic but most (all outside Law) are PhDs. You come in the gown of your university, so if you worked in Aus, you would have to wear your University's gown. I always love looking at different unis and their get up. My grandfather for example had a scarlet red gown and bonnet with royal purple sash and hood. At my uni which is black gown and bonnet with a cornflower blue hood and tassel, he would have stood out like a lightbulb.

I've spent the week dressing the Dean and the 5 Associate Deans. If I have to find a safety pin (the hoods are designed to hook your shirt button under your tie, sexist much? We have 3 female Associate Deans who need to pin the hook to their fronts somehow) or ask "Where is your silly hat?" one more time...

[Peggy]

I did get the dr. at least ;-) Interesting how it's all so different across countries. I would love to have a gown. And a hat!

I've also seen people who just get a letter in the mail saying that their thesis was approved and they can now call themselves dr. And I was reading up on this yesterday and it seems in many countries the defense is closed, so just you and some professors, while here it's open to anyone who wants to come see. I used to think it would be nice to just get the letter, so easy! But on the other hand all the ceremony and it being such a festive day, also for family, and that your degree is actually celebrated is great too. A bit more nerve-wrecking, but much nicer to look back on!


Yes, this world is way too much focused on how things work for men...

[Rusalka, Moderator]

We don't really have a defense. When you're about at the first full draft stage, close to submitting, you have a seminar. Depending on the school/faculty/subject depends if this is open to the public, open to the faculty, open to the school. You present your final seminar, and get questions. You do the same at the end of your first year. Any points people make you can always incorporate into your thesis, but you should be done and tidying up. You can't submit until you do this, but it's not a full on examination.

Then you submit your thesis, and it can take anywhere between 3-12 months to be marked. Once this is done, you get a letter advising you of the outcome - hopefully you are now a Dr and and invitation to graduate, but acceptance with minor revisions, or major revisions needed no graduation. Then you wait until the next Grad (June or Dec) to walk the stage, get your hood put on you by the Chancellor and have your thesis title read to the whole ceremony.

[Peggy]

12 months?! Wow.... I love the hood-part!


It has been ages since I felt so relaxed and unhurried as I do now. And it's sunny outside and it feels like such a good day! Great timing to have the defense so close to the christmas holidays. I'm not going back to work until the 4th of January. I have to do some work-stuff but I'll do that from home. I also have lots of moving-stuff to do, but just the idea that I have 3 weeks to do all those things is amazing.

[Rusalka, Moderator]

Depends on what examiners are doing. After working for one who was in high demand, I know some theses just sat on her desk for 6 months until she had time to mark them. Sad, but true, when you have to teach, research and do university service, then thesis marking and other stuff is on top of that.

So glad you're relaxing. Enjoy. And enjoy the new house!! Everything is new and shiny!

[Peggy]

Professors are extremely busy indeed. We have to submit our final thesis as well, and 5 experts in the field (mostly professors, some associate professors) read it and have to approve it. They don't have to give any feedback (you can't change anything anymore after it's been submitted to your reading committee), just say if it's good enough or not, so maybe that saves some time compared to what they have to do in Australia, but they get 4 weeks for it. When it's approved you can plan a date for the defense and send it all to the printer to make it actual books.

[Rusalka, Moderator]

Only changes we can make is when they say "major changes needed" (ie. rewrite) or "accepted with minor changes" which means you have some typos to fix, or a definition to explain, or something they deem you should add in. When we submit, you have bound it like a book. So if it changes, you need to pay for rebinding.

Oh my boss used to mark international theses, so I'm sure she held up half the world.

[Travis]

My aunt called thia morninf. My 83 yr old grampa fell called her who called us since we are 2 minutes away we went decided 911 was best route. 5 minutes we had 3 firemen 2 ambulance guys a Sheriff then because my dad called and is a retired state trooper the troopers heard their lieutenant had called 911 so we had a state trooper as well. Finally got him on ambulance. Every time he stood he lost blood pressure and pulse. At hospital now so in the hands of the doctors anf God I guess

[Kandice]

Travis of NNY wrote: "My aunt called thia morninf. My 83 yr old grampa fell called her who called us since we are 2 minutes away we went decided 911 was best route. 5 minutes we had 3 firemen 2 ambulance guys a Sheriff ..."

You'll be in our thoughts.

[Kandice]

I love that picture Peggy! Congrats.

[Janice, Moderator]

Travis of NNY wrote: "My aunt called thia morninf. My 83 yr old grampa fell called her who called us since we are 2 minutes away we went decided 911 was best route. 5 minutes we had 3 firemen 2 ambulance guys a Sheriff ..."

Sounds like there was a quick response time. I hope your grandfather makes a quick and full recovery.

[Peggy]

I'm sorry to hear that Travis. I hope your grampa will recover soon.

[Sarah]

Sorry to hear that Travis. Definitely a quick response time for your grampa and all the support he needs and then some. I hope he gets well soon.

[Travis]

Thanks all. Thibk they have him straight now. Hooefully . next thing will ve if they let him back home. You have to understand my grandmother left in 1980. Gramp has lived alone ever simce. He truly believes cleaning to be womans work and lives in a pig sty. Always has. Today the house was actually pretty good ahape for him but if no one calls social services we will ve lucky. Then since I bought the property a few yeara ago and he has lifetime use of house I guess I will be remodeling so he can destroy that as well. Many have tried to help clean over the years but give up since he won't contribute and just trashes it. We always figured when he couldb,'t live alone anymore or died we would just bulldoze the place. He is in far too good of health, until today to not live alone. He is very mobile and goes all over walking through the woods and auch. I think he has kerosene poisoning since he has been heating with kerosene heaters ubtil last week when he put in a new furnace. Finally. He is a tough old bird but stubborn and set in his ways. Being led to stretcher with IV and oxygen he still stopped several times to boss arou d the emt's and us. First thing is just to get him healthy

[KimeyDiann]

So sorry to hear about your grandfather, Travis. I hope he has a speedy recovery.
Have you considered hiring someone to come in 2 or 3 times per week to clean for him?

Congratulations, Peggy! So happy for you!

[Travis]

Actually I told my dad this morning that if the hospital says he should be able to leave in a couple days ler me know so I can call a carpenter to put in a new floor. I almost fell through in 5 places today. Grampa just had the vad spots marked to walk around them. Clearly it had been that way for quite some tine. But that is his style. But seriously I cannot have an 83 year old dodging around soon to be holes in the floor.

[Sandra, Moderator]

I hope he recovers soon, Travis. It's hard to handle elders when they are used to their ways. I hope at least you have enough time to fix his floor. That would help prevent accidents.

[Travis]

Yah my dad aunt and uncle are in the room my grampa tells the nirse turn off the light. She says there is no night light it will be pitch black. Thats fine I like the dark. So now my dad aubt and uncle are sitting in the dark. Yup. The elderly and their wqys

[Stephanie]

Hope your grandpa gets well soon, Travis :)

[Travis]

Thanks again. I missed your message Kimey. Yeah I think there will be sone changes. We talk or else he stops in every day so we see him all the time, but don't go to his house. I saw some things that make me question his mind. A box of light bulbs yet almost no lights. He doesn't even have a light fixture in his bedroom. We only found 1 lamp that would work in living room and none in kitchen. Like 3 lights in whole house. I'm not sure he is playing with a full deck anymore I realized today

[Lisa]

Sorry to hear about your grampa Travis. I hope he recovers soon.

[Tasha]

Aw that's tough to see happen. Hope he recovers quickly.

[Travis]

Thanks. I always stay so calm in every aituation that I convince myself I am immune to emotions. I think I'm full of crap. I'm freaking exhausted amd its not from doing too mich work today I'm sure. Oh I hate when I have to admit I'm human.