Goodbye, Project!

Well, I finally got rid of the project. No, I didn't push it off a bridge, I took the boring way out and just worked and worked until it was good enough to hand in. Sadly, I realised quite suddenly yesterday that it was a pretty bad project which shows up my lack of statistical knowledge quite considerably. It was the way that, confronted with all the graphs I'd done of the various variables, which I could see were quite good graphs for illustrating usefull things about the variables, I still couldn't come up with anything interesting to say about many of them. The original draft had lots of stuff along the lines of 'BV91 has a negatively-skew distribution. This means that in most local authorities a greater than average proportion of the population is served by a kerbside recycling service, and the gap between the lowest proportion and the mean is greater than the gap between the highest proportion and the mean'. Luckily I realised on reading it through again that this both sounded silly and wasn't really saying anything very interesting, so it mostly got chopped to 'BV91 has a negatively-skew distribution' with the assumption that the reader would know what that meant. I also think I neither had a great method for my investigation nor explained it with stunning clarity. So I think the most that can be hoped for is a C, and that only if I'm lucky. If I'm unlucky it could even be an E.

Oh, and I just realised I forgot to indent the paragraphs. Whoops. Was going to go and do that at the end.

But that doesn't matter, because it's finally finished! Last night and this morning I was feeling so awful, and now I feel fine. A little tired, but fine. I'd been at home over the weekend (given the deadline I wouldn't normally have gone back then, but I needed to sort some stuff out to do with my tax), and it took ages to get back yesterday evening- the train that was supposed to go all the way as usual had to terminate at Reading due to staff shortages, and then there was a 20 minute wait for the next train, and then that train took a very very long time to get to Paddington due to engineering works meaning there were speed restrictions in place. Actually I didn't quite get it with that last train- it left Reading at 8.30, and the man doing the announcements was claiming simultaneously that it would arrive at Paddington in 40 minutes time and at 9.28.

The state of play with my project when I left the house was that it was about twice as long as the limit. Maybe I had a lot of stuff in there I didn't need, but I really couldn't tell which stuff that was and so I didn't want to lose anything in case it turned out to be the only good bit. So I was stressing quite a bit about how I was going to get it all cut down- and finish off putting a few extra bits in and sort out the files that had to be handed in on disk. I was actually feeling quite lousy on the bus back across London- stressed, with a temperature and a little sick (I didn't have supper before I left home so as not to waste valuable project time, so I ended up snacking on the way: big bag of cheese and onion crisps, big bag of maltesers, and then an egg sandwich from Sainsbury's once I got to Paddington so I would have had something healthy). But I got right down to it when I got back to halls. Even so, it took simply ages- hours just to get the Bibliography in order before I started on anything else. It ended up 8 pages long, mostly because I'd looked at so many local council websites to get information about their political composition. That was obviously a non-starter- since the whole thing had to be no more than 20 pages I wasn't about to waste 8 of them on the bibliography. I took out all the council websites and put in a footnote explaining that I would provide the references if asked (This may not have been entirely wise, and the tone may not have been 100% strictly professional- but I was very tired and not feeling so good- did I mention that?). It then took a long time to cut it down to size. I managed to lop off 10 pages by that bibliography cut and putting it into Times New Roman instead of Arial (shame, I like Arial better), and making the graphs a bit smaller. And I got rid of another six or seven by making the graphs all half-size and putting some on the same line as each other. The rest pretty much had to come from taking bits out (though not a whole 3 pages- the last page only had a couple of lines on, and there was quite a bit of blank space scattered througout where the graphs hadn't been able to quite fit and had to start a new page- with just a couple of lines moved they could all shift up a quarter or half a page. Some bits were probably best removed; others were maybe unfortunate losses. In the end I got it down to 20 pages and breathed a sigh of relief that I had had to cut no more than that. I started sorting out the files that had to be handed in on disk, but my brain wasn't working and it was just too hard, so I abandoned the orginal plan of getting everything done that evening (to be on the safe side) and decided to take advantage of the fact that the deadline wasn't till 3pm.

I got a couple of hours of sleep that, although not of course as refreshing, actually felt like seven or eight in terms of duration- I think because I was too stressed to sleep properly (I was still doing the project in my dreams) so it was more like a nap. At 8 o'clock this morning when the point was reached where if I didn't get up I would be late for my lecture, I was seriously tempted to skip it, have another couple of hours sleep and then finish off the project. I wavered back and forth for a couple of minutes, but in the end I got up and went, because I remembered that last week the lecturer had done totally different stuff in the lecture to in the notes, and I would therefore be missing out big-time if I wasn't there to take it all down.

I lugged my laptop in with me, because I hadn't saved the project on a disk or disc or emailed it to myself (it was a bit large), and because there were many many files that were needed to sort out the ones to be handed in on the disk (they needed weaving together, with the mistaken commands taken out and all the bits where I went wrong removed) and it was easier just to take the computer than to copy all of them onto some more portable format. (I should probably get a USB key). I suppose it was also partly a comfort blanket- reassurance that I wouldn't be sitting there finding I couldn't open my copy of the project on the LSE computers with mine sitting back in halls. Anyway, it was very annoying to drag round all day because it's pretty heavy, but I quite enjoyed plugging it in at the special work area in the library for the first time (or the tiny bit of me that wasn't stressing did, anyway).

However, I discovered that my project had betrayed me. I could have sworn it was 20 pages when I went to bed, but this morning, using the same program on the same machine it was 22. So that necessitated more cutting. At least the files didn't take too long, now I was more awake, and in just over 2 hours I had it all ready, including a couple of extra graphs I'd realised yesterday were important but hadn't had a chance to put in yet (they fitted into some gaps in already existing rectangular arrays of graphs so didn't push me over the page limit again. After that it was just a matter of rushing around buying floppy disks, a file to present it in, getting it printed out on the University computers (having written it onto a CD from mine)- including the technical problems of colour printing a couple of pages (the C120 colour printer got a bit confused and thought it was jammed when it wasn't, so I had to send it to the Library colour printer and go back over there to print it out)-, printing plagiarism declarations (and finding the plagiarism declaration on the LSE website- it wasn't easy), and finding out my exam candidate number. Interestingly, the LSE computers decided it only came to 19 pages, which was fine by me as it meant I could have a title page. And then I finally dropped it in the box 15 minutes before the deadline, feeling rather surprised that it was apparently all there and all done.

I wasn't the only last-minute person, I hasten to add- LJ still had a bit to do when I spoke to her in the lecture this morning, and I spotted another girl from the course still at it when I got to C120 at about 12 (she finished an hour or more before me though. No, I know, it's not a race!)
Meanwhile, it's Environment Week this week, but I felt too out of it after handing the project in to feel I could make a usefull contribution today. There's an event in the evening with MPs speaking that I'd have liked to go to, but I have a computer class. I have a computer class at the same time as tomorrow's event as well, but I might miss that because last week there wasn't really anything that wasn't on the sheet. Or maybe there was. Well, we'll see- but the event does sound pretty interesting. It's a debate about animal testing. Anyway, I'll probably see if I can help with the stall tomorrow, between lectures.

Tonight, though, after the computer class, it's recouperation- a DVD, a Spinach and Goats' Cheese Tarte Flamme that by amazing good fortune they had in Paddington Sainsbury's yesterday (they don't normally stock it in that branch), and an early night!