Date: 30 October 2009 20:32:58
Today was my last full day at uni. I hadn't planned to do anything to mark it, as it's (sadly!) not the last day of my PhD - I have every intention of marking the submission of my thesis! (although when it finally comes to that all I'll probably want to do is go to bed). The guy who shares my office with me has been working from home this week, so I've been on my own in the office, and so it's been quite quiet up there. Today I finished up sorting out the mountain of articles and other random bits of paper that had rather taken over most of the desk, and filing them away somewhere where I have a hope in hell of finding them again. (I also put a ton of random bits of paper in the bottom of my filing cabinet and locked the door, so I can delay thinking about what to do with them!). My health visiting job starts on Monday, and so I'll be working on my thesis in the evenings, which means that I'll only go to the office every few weeks to pick up the stuff I need for whatever chapter I'm working on at the time, so having it in findable files will be very handy.
It does feel a bit strange though. With all of my friends who've done PhDs, it seems that they are all around right up to submission day so there's a very definite 'end' to their PhD experience and life at the university. I suspect in the two or three days before submission I will have to take time off work to do the mad panicked formatting and printing thing, but that on current estimates won't be until next summer for me. Now I have to get my head round doing something totally different - I really don't feel in the health visiting zone at all yet! I'm expecting Monday to be a bit of a shock to the system!