My readers may wonder what I have been doing. The answer is I have been working on my thesis is the area of astrophysics. With much help from my advisor Dr. Anuj P. Sarma I am finally finishing.
The humble title, which could change, is "A Survey of the Literature Regarding the Environments of Class I Methanol Masers." This is much much more than simply writing a book report which is what that title can sound like to some people. It feels much more like a version of what they do in other area's of science, where one takes data from other sources, combines the sources, and analyses the data sets together, to reach novel conclusions. In social science they came up with the impressive sounding name of "meta analysis" for this process. (This is done in the medical and psychological fields on a regular basis). This isn't quite the same as that...but in some ways it is. I'll give more details once the thesis is final.
I am up against a hard deadline, if and when I make that deadline, and with the departments permission I will give the date and location if anyone wants to come and question the heck out of me. If not, then I will at least post a video of the talk here, a link to a PDF of the (hopefully) passed thesis, and the powerpoint slides.
It will be so good to be done. Now if only I can bring back the very old custom of addressing those with the degree of Master of Science or Masters of whatever else as "Master so and so..." then not having a PhD. out of all this work won't seem so small... At DePaul University, which only awards the PhD. in two subjects that I know of, they really make us work for that masters.
