Of special interest to Nathan, evidence that the process of dissertation writing is the same across disciplines:
> work on dissertation
You spend three hours reading five articles which have nothing to do with the dissertation.
> work on dissertation
You spend twenty minutes online reading about baseball.
> tear out hair
Taken. You find the Elvish sword.
(Today's a Lab Day, so you're mostly getting silly posts...)
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When I saw "work on dissertation" together with "Elvish sword", my first thought was that you were linking to the renowned theory that Lord of the Rings is an allegory for the process of getting a PhD.
It's so spot on I'm astonished. I actually was just arguing with a chemist over the existence of the word "substituent", and ended up dicking around in the OED, proving myself wrong, and then browsing for words for half an hour or so...
NL, I'm not sure why you astonished. The call of the OED is strong, and academics are very, very weak.