Approval of Dissertation

The deadline of submitting the dissertation this year is before Friday noon, July 29. Otherwise, the conferral date would be next January. There are two major steps to get approval: the first one is the formatting approval from grad school, the second one is the approval of committee members.

Wednesday, July 20: I submitted the dissertation to the grad school for general approval. Thinking that I have enough time to get there.

Monday, July 25: There is still no news from the grad school. To save sometime, I sent the draft to my committee saying that this version is waiting for format check and they could have a final look of the content. I got an immediately reply from Jim saying that he is out of email contact till July 29! In the early afternoon, my dissertation was approved by the grad school for the formatting. And in the later afternoon, one member approved.
Friday, July 29, 4:41am: Another member approved and waiting for my last member . At 12:00pm, still no response from Jim. Desperate, I went to lunch.

12:39pm, got email from grad school, saying that the deadline has been extended to Monday 4pm! I quickly forwarded the email to Jim.

2:38pm, got confirmation email from grad school that all my committee members have approved my dissertation. Whew!

Later I got email from Jim saying that I could call his cellphone, but I really didn't want to interrupt his vacation in the Alps as he has already made a specific trip for my defense two weeks ago.

I'm grateful for the kindness of grad school and Jim's quick response once he get back to Geneva.