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TIFU by leaving the comments on when submitting my master's thesis

So I recently turned in my program’s equivalent of a master’s thesis, which the faculty of the department reads and decides whether to pass you and let you graduate…or not. I still haven’t heard a final decision from the profs, but I was chatting with my friend the other night and my thesis came up, which I had sent to him. Our conversation went like this:

Him: I liked the little comments, too

Me: wait what comments?

Him: the ones on the side from your dad

I was silent for a second as I stared into the wall in mute horror

Me: that was the document I turned in to my professors

Silence

Him: ah. Oh no.

I had turned off all of the comments before submitting but apparently, you have to delete them all or the settings reset when you re-open the document. I guess I just never thought about it because I always kept the comments open when I was editing.

So what my professors received was the document I had put my blood, sweat, and tears into...along with the little comments from my mom (working on my dad’s computer). I had deleted most of them but kept the ones that pointed out the positives to give myself a little boost of confidence as I was finishing up with the edits.

Unfortunately, my mom is very dyslexic (but is good at catching grammar and syntax) and, as she always says “can’t spell her way out of a paper bag” so there was not a single comment that was spelled entirely correctly. According to her, she was tired when she was writing them and “didn’t even try” because I was the only one who was going to see them. The kicker is that I’m getting my master’s on scholarship from this fancy east coast school, and all of my professors know I’m from Kentucky. I don’t think my mother’s spelling is helping to dispel their ideas of the region.

I figured out my fuck up the night before the professors were meeting to discuss the papers, so my advisor received a 3 AM email that I can only describe as ‘professionally panicked’ apologizing profusely for my mistake. I included a fixed version of my paper, saying that “as my advisor, I want to ensure that you have the final, polished version that I intended” with the subtext of “please don’t fail my ass”

She emailed me back the next morning and was very chill about it, saying that she didn’t think the faculty would care that much and that she “enjoyed the encouraging comments:)” When I called my parents and told them, my mom and I laughed so hard she was wheezing and I had tears rolling down my face. I’m happy I can laugh about it and am crossing my fingers that the professors liked the paper (or pity my mortification) enough to pass me.

TL;DR: I, a scholarship kid from Kentucky, left the comments on on the doc for my master’s thesis with comments from my dyslexic mom, to be read by a bunch of east coast PhDs who decide if I graduate or not.

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