4 years, 256 pages, and 56,397 words later, my thesis is finally done. It is finished!

At exactly 2300hrs AEST, on the 30th of May 2009, I printed out 5 copies of the damn thing (1280 pages. Sorry, trees!). After the constant late nights and lost weekends, it kinda feels anti-climatic that the madness ends with the monotonous hum of a laser printer.

A quote attributed to Ronald Azuma goes: Being a PhD student is like becoming all of the Seven Dwarves. In the beginning you're Dopey and Bashful. In the middle, you are usually sick Sneezy, Sleepy, and Grumpy. But at the end, they call you Doc, and then you're Happy. I'm not sure about the Happy part. All I feel right now is Sneezy and Sleepy, with a mildly horrifying notion in the back of my head that my to-do list hasn't gotten any shorter. Maybe I'll feel Happy when I finally get to wear that silly thing that looks like a black chef's hat that has been run over by a truck. Maybe.

Now that I've got my thesis done, it's time to get my papers finished and published, and to begin to look for a job. While my thesis topic on the evaluation of spectral changes in the paediatric electroencephalogram for assessing quality of sleep has afforded me the wonderful opportunity to work with a lovely bunch of children (they have sleep apnoea) in the hospital here (all of whom were delightful, though not all the parents were!), I do yearn to return to working with animals, preferably under the sky instead of cooped up in a lab all the time.

There's a possible opening for a post-doc up north working with visual systems of marine life on the great barrier reef. I won't know till July if I get the position. Fingers crossed.

I'm really looking forward to the road ahead. Life seems to full of possibilities right now, and while I'm feeling slightly grumpy due to this cold I've developed from my lack of sleep over the past two weeks (or should I say, past 4 years!), I am genuinely excited about a career in scientific research.

To paraphrase Richard Feynman, "Science is like sex. Sure, there are some practical side effects, but that's not why we do it."