MY MEMORIES

Charles Glenn Petersen

1974 - College Years IV

Dissertation (continued)

The summer after the data collection, I analyzed the data and planned to graduate with my PhD by the end of the summer terms at Iowa State University. Again, I was told it couldn’t be done in that short length of time. I said I will work full time 24/7 to make sure I finish on time. I was told of the difficulties of getting my committee together during the summer would be a problem. Then I was told that the typing turnaround time alone would be a problem. My plan was that I would use the Thesis writing program available from the Computer Center at Iowa State University and the turnaround time would be at most 24 hours. Then there was the library approval process which I was told could take weeks. I met with the lady in charge of that process and found that they had recently started accepting computer printed dissertations. This process was intended to assure certain standards that the university had established as to format and citing of various reference. I had been told that this lady was very difficult to please and a real stinker to work with. I found out that just wasn’t so. She just doing her job and was very pleasant to work with. I submitted my first pass at the dissertation to her and she was willing to get it back to me the next day. There were quite a number of things to be changed and she was surprised when I then requested another meeting the next day. I told her I would make the changes immediately and the only delay would be getting the upper/lower case printout which was only run at night. After about 3 rounds like this, she was happy.