And so I handed in the library bound copy of my thesis and graduation is in May, apparently.
The book in this photo is just my personal copy of the whole the piece of work that I produced over the four years I was in the course, and it is substantially different to the one I handed in. The copy of A Year in the City that I have is thirty thousand words longer, contains a different final chapter, and no longer contains the autobiographical element that I used much more successfully in 26Lies. In short, I have the final copy, and the University Library gets a version a draft or so earlier, which is what I subbed for the doctorate (I always knew I'd have to rip some of the content out--one of the advantages to doing a mosaic novel, I guess). Finding the thesis will be a bit like finding Neanderthal bones for any researcher who wants to write about my work, which is an amazingly fucked up thing to think, but I don't expect that to ever happen. I just can't imagine any other reason why someone would read it.
While I was there I ran into a guy I knew, and who finished his PhD a few years before me. We got to talking about work and, in particular, academic work, and he said, "Yeah, I had one job interview last year."
Don't you wish you had a doctorate?
