The dog ate my homework

Man leaves 11,000-word essay on bus

 

All discs and hardcopies, in the same bag lost ??? No back ups?

 

James says "there is no way I can write 11,000 words" by July 24th.

Let's see. That would be 458 words a day. With an 8-hour work day, that would be one word per minute, on a topic he knows well and has already written about.

 

(If it is true he lost it), he is probably still in shock, he could re-build, but probably not at the level as it was.

 

An 11,000 word Ph.D. thesis?

With an average 250 words per page this is a 44 page thesis. Hmmmmmmm, not bad.......

 

less than that

Looking at one of my MS Word documents (12 point Times New Roman, no figures on the page), I find 668 words on a typical page. Theses are not double spaced these days, so I'd say he's lost a 20 page document.

Perhaps he should request a "Prior Learning Assessment" or ask for "Credit for Life Experience?" After all, having written the 20 page paper already, he can become a professor at some of our favorite unaccredited schools.

G

 

Freed from the self-imposed strictures inevitably included in his first run-through, the re-write might turn out better.

 

a mild sausage, favored by small children

One wonders with what marvelous university is he dealing? Are we supposed to believe they are unwilling to accept his 20 page PhD thesis a few weeks late?

Unless the marvelous university's faculty expect to be on the lam (for those of you unfamiliar with American slang: "in flight to avoid prosecution") wouldn't they be willing to reschedule his "thesis" defense for a later date?

G

 

Just had a flashback to when I 'lost' 35 pages of my Master's thesis. I accidently overwrote my file with a blank file. Stupid things happen at 3'oclock in the morning....
Luckily I had a briefcase full of notes and a previous printout (15 pages). Bummer for him...

S. Farrar
U.S. Army Chemical School

 

It seems ironic that someone could lose several months worth of work without some form of back up system. I have seven back up systems for my dissertation including disks, CDs, paper (a complete manuscript) and multiple copies stored on databases and a second server.
If you are going to invest this amount of time and sweat, you might as well be certain that your security systems are in place. I don't feel sorry for this individual. He was quite foolish in having only one copy of his thesis.

 

Re: a mild sausage, favored by small children

It's the Open University. By anybody's standards, that is not a Mickey Mouse university.

My guess is that the Evening Times (not exactly Glasgow's most highbrow publication) got the degree wrong. It sounds remarkably close to the amount of words required for an MA dissertation at the OU, and the size of grant he received is pretty much the exact cost of an MA course.

Angela

 

Re: less than that

Really? I thought they were?

 

James says "there is no way I can write 11,000 words" by July 24th.

Hmmm. Obviously my writing a 5,000 word finals essay in 40 hours straight was an hallucination ;-)

There again, by the end of that (and the three pots of coffee that accompanied it , not to mention the beer that followed submitting it) I *was* hallucinating.

Angela

 

Missing Thesis

It said in the article that he has to add 7000 words to it so it would be total of 18,000 word in his Ph.D. thesis. Not a bad size for a thesis (dissertation) ...mmm...Open University. Recall reading someplace here that they don't take Yanks - shame.

The reference to him as a "mature student" in the article seems like an oxymoron in this case.

 

The most I've ever managed to write in one weekend on a topic I knew about intimately was about 14,000 words.

In the "truth is stranger than fiction" category, I once (as a teen) wrote a novel in longhand using a fountain pen. My sister's ex-husband's puppy came into my room and pissed on the novel, and destroyed the manuscript. Some critics....

(Note to moderators: Due to an email change and my forgetting my old password to boot -- I'm now under a new account, but have no access to the old one. Please don't consider this a double registration. Thanks for your understanding.)

 

Re: Missing Thesis

In that case I'm positive that he's doing the MA dissertation. That's exactly the size needed. See http://www3.open.ac.uk/courses/bin/p12.dll?C01A827_1_30

They *do* take students from the US. Just only on the MSc in Computing.

Of course, their being in candidacy with the Middle States could presage a new push into the US.

Angela

 

Open U

Thanks for clarifying that Angela, I thought it was too short for a Ph.D. thesis.

Didn't know that OU was seeking MSA accreditation. Thought that after the failure of USOU that they had abandoned these shores.

Even though UNISA is an older institution, OU is really the mother of modern distance learning and have a winning process for developing programs. If they keep their fees reasonable and offer masters and doctorates in popular fields, they'll give the US for-profits a lot of competition. Then all we'd have to do is educate employers and HR professionals on the prestige of an OU degree. OU is not Oxon, Cantab or Londinium but very well respected.

 

I've spent 2+ years on my dissertation. I have a copy of it on my home system, on my jumpdrive, on my laptop, and I loaded a copy to my hosted server. I plan to burn a copy on a CD as well.

I have no plans on allowing 170 pages to just disappear. I even have a hardcopy incase the world is hit with a huge EM pulse!

Russ

 

Oh, and don't forget that tatoo of it on your...oh, uhh, never mind.






Tom Nixon

 

Watch it, Tom. I had to spend enough time to cultivate that... nevermind to accomondate all that printing :-D

20 days and counting!