Thesis Submitted!

I wanted to blog about this the day it happened, but was too busy celebrating my freedom and forgot. No matter. On this blog, I hereby officially declare my thesis, 'Stories, Spectacles and Sports: The Politics of Visaulizing the Beijing Olympics protests', SUBMITTED :D

I submitted it a day before the official deadline actually. From my experience, leaving something that important to the last day would be too nerve-racking. This turned out to be a very wise move as the day I made my submission turned out to be a very hectic one full of all sorts of drama. It all begin when I went to print 3 hard copies of my thesis at my university's print centre. A couple of minor screw-ups with the printing occurred, which made me a tad nervous. So I went through each of the 74 pages of each hard copy just to make sure that everything was okay before I got my three copies binded. All the meticulous checking left me only 15 minutes for lunch. I grabbed a bagel, wolfed it down and had about 5 minutes to get to my last tutorial. Then it rained. I opened up my umbrella to prevent my precious copies and I from getting wet and rushed to class but still ended up about 10 minutes late. After class, I tried to submit my 3 hard copies to the Student Enquiries Officer, but she had to leave early and told me to drop by tomorrow to give it to her. So I decided to make the online submission of my thesis but my laptop ran out of power. I headed to the library to use one of the computers to make my online submission. Once I logged on to the school portal, I realized I lost my course profile that I wanted to refer to while making the online submission. Yep. Talk about a series of unfortunate events! I bet even Lemony Snicket wouldn't have been able to think up of all that crap befalling someone. If all these happened on the actual day of submission, I'm sure I would've suffered a mental breakdown.

In the end, there was a happy ending. There wasn't any specific or crucial things to take note of when making the online submission so I went ahead with it on my own. After the online submission, I managed to find my Honours course coordinator and told her that I was unable to pass the Student Enquiries Officer my 3 hard copies. She said that I could submit them to her and she would pass the hard copies to the Student Enquiries Officer the next day. With that, I managed to overcome all the challenges that came my way and completed all official submission requirements one day early! The day ended with me hugging my Honours course coordinator, shaking hands with my thesis supervisor and rushing off to Hamilton suburb to try and catch the sunset as well as have a celebratory dinner plus dessert.

Since I officially completed my Honours programme, life has been such a breeze. I have done a great deal of catching up with my social life, eating out at places I've wanted to visit and re-visit for a long time but didn't have the time to do so as well as indulge in plenty of shopping. This is very likely going to be the last month of my stay in Australia so my plan is to enjoy my remaining time here to the fullest, now that I have completed my Honours programme. There are people to visit and thank, places to revisit and things I want to enjoy while I'm still here. June is going to be an unforgettable month because I'm determined to make it happen!