Help me settle a dispute - finishing MSc dissertation with 10 minutes to spare

I voted YABU, because you have just submitted your dissertation and should be feeling proud about that! Forget how you did it, you did it! Sure, maybe there are things that you can take from this experience and use to improve future deadline work - but that's what this process is about. It is to teach you how to plan, carry out and, most importantly, actually complete a project. You learn how to do it by doing it - you're not expected to have all of the necessary skills beforehand. And everyone is different with deadlines - some people need a deadline to complete work, and are working right up until the last moment, and other people like to have everything completed well in advance. At the end of the day though, you made the deadline in time. Congratulations!

Sorry but this just shows terrible planning and timing to complete your dissertation. 10 min is insane any thing could happen and you have zero time to fix it. Once your actually working handing in projects and data in with 10 min to spare when you have a deadline will not go down well.

When I did mine I handed it in a week early (I also have quite bad dyslexia and refused any extensions) and got a 1st, a few people I know of on my course handed them in with a couple of days left at the maximum. Deadlines are not a target sorry.

We are all different.

Some obviously wouldn't have left it so late, I would have.

But look on the positive, you have a marriage which brings in both ends of the spectrum of organised vs less organised - the yin and the yang. You can both learn from one another the positives and negatives of each stance - and yes, there are negatives of being too organised, usually a perfectionism or a propensity to be inflexible

I never leave things like that to the very last minute but I have always felt like I was the abnormal one! I submitted my masters thesis a few days early and then had to twiddle my thumbs for days until
my friends submitted theirs and we could actually celebrate.

I mean it's not great, but it is how I used to work, although not always that close to the wire - I am a bit better now because now I am in my 40s I just can't put that lastminute sustained effort in, I physically would not be able to work all night anymore. I do remember sitting on my friend's floor proofing her (two!) dissertations and putting the pages in order for her as they came out of the printer with minutes to spare before she had to leg it down to wherever you had to hand them in (In those days you had to hand in a printed copy, don't know if you have to now).

Normal for me. Twice.

Everyone I know was working /checking their dissertation on the morning of submission.... Whether they had finished 10 mins or a month before.

In fact a couple of folk who submitted a few weeks early asked for them back as there was other stuff they suddenly remembered they wanted to add.

I have ADHD so this is absolutely normal for me. I think it depends on the person though.

I know a teacher who was complaining about students uploading reports 10 minutes before the deadline but to me 10 minutes before the deadline is still before the deadline.

I think it depends what you were doing! If you were still writing the content then that's not typical at MSc level. Imo. But sorting the formatting and bibliography etc, I wouldn't be too surprised!

I frantically finished my BSc dissertation with 3hrs to go on a midday submission after pulling an all nighter. I was queing with two copies in my bag at the printers to have it bound at 10am with lots of other students (this was 2003, no electronic submission accepted) and handed it in with about 30mins to spare.

So no, you're not alone but yes, it's not the norm for most people.

Literally 10 mins? Not great if there are WiFi or server issues or turnitin glitches!

It’s exactly how I finished my dissertation! And all my friends too. I don’t know anyone who wasn’t working on it down to the wire.