Update

[liv]

I feel a bit embarrassed about panicking to quite the extent I did earlier. Still scared but no longer convinced I'm going to fail and ruin my life. Thank you for all your supportive comments and helpful advice. I'm tempted to go and reply to them all but that would blatantly be displacement.

Stuff that is done (I mean, really really done, not 'almost done' like it's been all week):

• The introduction
• The discussion
• 2 results chapters

Stuff that needs only fiddly bits:

• 2 more results chapters
• materials and methods
• bibliography

Stuff that isn't done:

• Formatting for submission (should be fairly quick, it's just converting to .rtf and double spacing, mostly)
• Contents page
• acknowledgements (can I thank my LJ flist for keeping me sane?)
• pagination stuff (might be a bit of a pain but shouldn't be impossible)
• Converting figures from Powerpoint to sensible format (from past experience this could be more difficult than it ought to be. Or maybe the printer will take Powerpoint files? I'm a bit reluctant to trust Powerpoint, but if I get more desperate this is a place where I can cut corners)

I only need to soft bind for this stage. It may be that I can actually get away with printing everything out myself (from work, obviously) and taking a big thick pile of paper to the printer and asking them to fix it in a cover. This could potentially save time. Or maybe, with modern technology and all, I can just give the printer a CD, go out for a celebratory icecream and come back in a couple of hours?

Now I need food. Love you all. (Oh, and the workmen have gone away. They have left a horrible mess, but this is a non-urgent problem.)

Comments

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

(can I thank my LJ flist for keeping me sane?)

I see no earthly reason why not, I thanked quite a disparate bunch of people I knew online in the acknowledgements to mine for exactly that.

[lisekit.livejournal.com]

Printer should certainly be able to cope with a CD! Will probably have a nice, fast machine to boot.

[blue-mai.livejournal.com]

printers take cds, but dont go out for ice-cream. stay in the printers and stay out of the way but make sure you are there. they can ask you stuff if necessary and you can watch them. i deal with printers everyday...
powerpoint isn't the best for exporting graphics. you can 'save as' an image and define image size. if it's too hard remember you can always print straight out of powerpoint on your printer. the printers can colour copy it in seconds and it'll get bound in, even if it doesnt look as professional.
well done. don't forget to eat. make sure you get sleep until the penultimate day. operating on no sleep is fine but counterproductive after the second day.

[hatam-soferet.livejournal.com]

Take the ice-cream with you.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

And the grapihcs that go in this copy don't have to be the same ones that go in the final, properly-bound copy.

[khalidz0r.livejournal.com]

Good luck! You'll do it alright, I can't prove it, but you'll have to trust me on this one. :P

[darcydodo]

Even if you give them a big stack of paper, I would still give them a CD as well, just in case.

The main problem with giving them .ppt files is that different version of Powerpoint will read images differently, so it's best to save them in a different, more image-y format if possible. Don't spend all your time on it, though.

You should do your contents page now, so that you don't find yourself having to do it at the last minute. And you can use fields to define page numbers, so that you don't have to keep going back and changing page numbers.

It'll all be fine, don't worry. *hug*