I’m setting a deadline for obtaining my doctorate in physics. The deadline is 2011 September 21 Wednesday. It’s the last day of summer before fall classes begin at UCLA. To reduce the possibility of having sunk-cost pressures to continue beyond that point, I’m setting an assessment date, a few months before the deadline, to quit if it looks like I can’t make the deadline. The assessment date is 2011 June 10 Friday, the last day of Spring quarter finals.
To be explicit about how firm or soft these plans are, I’ll say that I’ll be willing to extend the deadline by a few weeks if I have trouble scheduling with my committee or if I am very close to finishing but need a little more time and am sure I can finish within those few weeks. However, I will try to put this leniency out of my head and work with a dual count-down to the two judgement days. Let the public count-down begin.
Assessment: 187 days
Deadline: 290 days
5 December 2010 at 5:18 am
Congratulations on posting your policy!
The leniency clause may introduce a risk of running into the effects of Hofstadter’s Law:
“It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.”
Definitely applies in the case of our old homework assignments!
It might be safer to make the final deadline firm and specific. For example, there could be a deadline where you must cease all work on your research studies and a later deadline where you cease all work on your thesis writing and anything related besides the defense itself. The defense could come after these deadlines. Also, for the assessment, there could be a criterion like “Thesis is 50% typed up.”