27 Pages

When I was at "The Other School" doing my grad degree, in my third year while we were all amidst the Thesis process we had this odd greeting. It would go something like this:

"Hi"

"Hi. How many pages?"

"24, How many pages?"

"24, really, how nice. I myself have 48 pages."

And so it went for the entire year. I guess it was 1/3 encouragement/reminder, maybe 1/3 rubbing their nose in it (if you had a lot of pages), and 1/3 simply having not the slightest inkling of any other topic to talk about.

So right now if you said to me "Hi. How many pages?" I would say 27.

Over the past week or so my 2 page broad outline has mushroomed into a 27 page specific outline. From the original 50ish items to expand I am coming down to the final dozen or so. Unfortunately these are the ones that are either hand written in my course binders or, even worse, completely blank; indicating that I either composed it on the fly in class or think I know it so well I never wrote it down. There's even one that is just a digital photo of the board at the end of class. All seem to be difficult to cut and paste into my current document.

I'm thinking that for bilateral motivational purposes I may put myself onto the PTM Thesis schedule for my current 3rd years. This way when I pass them in the hallway I can say "Hi, how many pages?" Plus this would land me at substantial completion at the top of the summer and give me until the fall to tweak. That would give me a completed companion text for my Technical Direction course the next time it is offered. It's aggressive, but I think it might be a good idea. So, my next step is to make up a thesis proposal the same way I am having them work: title, genre, audience, abstract, outline, schedule, budget, and advisors. I looked at the submission form for Focal Press today and a lot of that stuff is there as well - may as well complete the exercise.

Right now this is a lot of fun. I hope it stays that way.