Oh my God. As I slowly climbed my way towards the 60-page mark, agonizing over every page as I wrote, I learned the most upsetting thing possible:
The French don't double space.
Oh. My. God. My almost 60 pages have now been reduced to 29. Which means I have 71 more to go. S-e-v-e-n-t-y o-n-e. I was seeing the end of the tunnel... and feeling so good. I thought, "Hey! I'm almost finished. Type up another thirty pages of hard-core research and I'm GOLDEN!"
No. Not really.
I feel as if somebody has sentenced me to a lifetime of sitting in front of a constantly-open MS Word document. 71 more pages! When I thought I was almost DONE. The agony. Ohhhh... the agony.
I was worried about losing my steam around page 70 or so, wondering how I was going to yank those 30 last pages out of my ass. But over 50 more pages? Oh no, wait, remember: that would be 50 more SINGLE-SPACED pages. I believe that might just be downright impossible. I suppose I have to get to the 50-page mark and see. Oh, the 50-page mark. How lovely it will be to see you. Again.
Pray for me. This is going to get ugly.
UPDATE: My professor just wrote me and said, "Normally, it's 80 pages, single-spaced. I'm not against the idea of 80 pages double-spaced, though."
What is a girl to do with that?
First of all, she's to break out the champagne because she just had 20 pages knocked off the grand total! Second of all, she's to celebrate some more because what he said sounded kind of like an invitation to his double-spaced party, n'est-ce pas? Double-spacing and 80 pages! Bring that shit on.
Woo-hoo!!! Also: I hit the 50-page mark for the second time yesterday, so things are really moving along nicely now, aren't they?
Hey, you don't know me at all (I found my way here from assistantsinfrance.com) but I wanted to send my condolences all the same. That hurts. I totally empathise cos I just finished my memoire de maitrise here in Toronto and I totally left it till the last minute and it caused me endless anxiety. That's terrible about the double-spacing. I was luckier: my thesis advisor looked at my first (shorter than required) draft and said "what the hell is this 8-font?? I want arial, 14. I can't read this, I'm old".
Anyway, you'll get through it and you'll be so pleased with yourself when you're done.
good luck
OMG, that really sucks. I'll be applying to grad school soon and just found out that I will have to turn in a 20-page paper en francais! I'm planning on using lots of long quotes...
Good news! 1.5 spacing might be acceptable... am awaiting the response of my prof, but the others say 1.5! Woo-hoo. That's a whole ten extra pages. Or so. Oh my God, 14 pt Arial is a fucking dream come true!!! I WISH.
I'm sending lots of long, free-flowing thoughts your way.
maybe you can try 1.6 and squeeze a bit more out of it. good luck :)
And maybe you can 'accidentally' use 8.5 x 11 paper rather than A4. I bet it would save a few inches per page!
Ah, American internet friends - always there to help you find a way to cheat! :)
This is beginning to make for really heart-rending reading.
Apart from the great news about the professor...
Now ask him how many spaces you are alllowed between the letters.
Then add lots of punctuation marks. Also, since I'm told I've written nonsense about everything under the sun and some that isn't, you can pinch whatever you like.
Hehe, that is too funny. Glad it worked out for you and good luck!