It went well! My committee thought that the core of my thesis is incredibly good but that I really need to streamline the shit out of my thesis. My goal was to strive for comprehensiveness, but they argued that it is much better to have a concise main story and leave the comprehensive details for the appendices because I was boring them to tears. Fair enough - I'm rewriting most of it anyways because I'm porting it all to LaTeX. I found a neat thesis template that, after some fiddling around, checks all the boxes. The one downside is that I won't be graduating December 21st like I had planned because one of my thesis councilors will leave the country a few days before that. The next available date is halfway through January, which means that I didn't achieve my goal of graduating this calendar year. A bit of a bummer, but also a blessing in disguise because it gives me the breathing space to polish and perfect my thesis. Like, it gives me the time to have my thesis printed as a softcover 7x10.5" book, circulation of ~8. Partly because it'll make a splash, but mostly because it is cool af. (Especially because LaTeX allows me to format everything in Garamond beautifully.) ---- After some more job conversations I think I finally have a great answer to the age-old "so what do you want to do" question. It's a long answer, but the short version is a crossover between business development & innovation, data science, and urban planning. The great thing is that I can do that at all three companies that I'm in serious talk with. Tomorrow I'm gonna discuss details with my so-far-favorite. (I count my blessings that it's a close race though!) ---- Aldi and Lidl are know for temporarily selling random, cheap stuff in between the rest of the groceries. I found a 10-hole harmonica for like €4. I couldn't resist its sillyness. So if life ever blows I can blow that. ---- edit: I forgot to mention that that Punch Brothers album I posted in the music thread is really growing on me. It's eccentric and creative and I love it.It's not the final document, but a 90%-done document that determines whether you can graduate or whether you need to put more work into it. That meeting is next week