Danny...hard work does pay off

It just so happens that Danny's thesis WASN'T a waste of time.

I don't know how many hours Danny spent in the engineering buildings on BYU campus-giving up Saturday mornings, working through the holidays, working 12 hour days in front of a computer, editing, editing some more, meeting with professors, reading articles, researching, running programs, re-running programs, presenting, and stressing out-to finish his thesis. I was pretty naive about the whole thing, and in that regard I thought how hard could it be to finish a thesis. What...you just have to read a few articles, look on the internet, write about what you read...so simple!!!

Well, I was surprised and somewhat frustrated that it WAS NOT that simple! I mean, the plan was to have the thesis done before Jakob was born in July so that he could find a job and get insurance before mine ran out. I watched July pass by faster than I can even remember, and pretty soon it was September and the thesis was still going strong. (I actually think part of the time constraints were due to the super computer behaving super poorly, but no one in the lab seemed to know how to fix it! Plus, Danny's thesis had nothing to do with reading a few articles, looking on the internet and writing about what you read. There was oh so much more to it than that. duh, Jamie)

Unfortuantely Danny didn't get to the end result like he was hoping, which I think was a little OCD for him because the end result was going to prove that what he was doing actually DID make a difference- which is what the thesis was pretty much about. So this made Danny feel like he had failed or that his thesis wasn't worth reading, but we all know that the 100 plus pages that he has is a great start for someone else to finish. (at least that's what I think, but I doubt it will make him feel any different) Of course now that it's finished and published I doubt he really cares anymore.

Danny got an email from his professor. This is what it said:

Hi Danny,

How are things going with Belcan and Pratt & Whitney? Attached is the paper I wrote from your thesis for the AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting. It was well received.

Dr. Gorrell

Danny had no idea that Dr. Gorrell was even writing a paper on his thesis...what's more, he had no idea that he would present this same paper in Florida and refer to Danny as the author. How cool is that? See Danny, people are interest in your work even if you didn't finish it the way you had intended.

I just had to share this with you. I am very proud of Danny. He has worked really hard on this accomplishment and is finally starting to see that maybe it wasn't a waste of time after all.

Danny, I hope you feel better about your decision to be an engineer...now you don't have to consider being a farmer instead-not that there is anything wrong with being a farmer, It's just not what I had in mind when I committed to marrying you.