I am reminded of something I read in the combat techniques portion of the old 82d Airborne Division Airborne Standing Operating Procedures (in this case for jumpmasters pulling safety duties): "you will be tired, very, very tired."
I completed and sent off to my committee the first full draft of the dissertation manuscript. 453 pages.
The last large paper I wrote for a degree program was my monograph for the School of Advanced Military Studies. That paper was about 44 pages, and was written over the span of about 7 months.
This dissertation is about 10 times the size of that paper and was written in the space of about 12 months. The last chapter was about the same size and level of rigor as my SAMS monograph and was written in 22 days.
Surprisingly, I actually feel pretty confident about the defense and stand by my assertion that I think I can get into a discussion of operational art with anyone in the Department of Defense and argue persuasively for all of the points I need to make. That's not just on my own topics, but also on the ones I'm likely to face in the future.
That dissertation manuscript and its preparation has been the reason why I've done exactly six workouts in the last 30 days. I can start rebuilding myself, since writing this pretty much destroyed me physically.
Now I await the comments from my committee.
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