Welcome to Orcmid's Lair, the playground for family connections, pastimes, and scholarly vocation -- the collected professional and recreational work of Dennis E. Hamilton

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Abandoning an M.Sc

E040200: Introduction to My Classmates.  I have mentioned the M.Sc effort on this and other blogs since I began my studies in November 2002.  I thought it would be useful to provide an account for where I ended up.

On September 27, I announced (one day before the last, final deadline) that I would abandon my M.Sc in IT dissertation and not submit a thesis.     I will obtain a Postgraduate Diploma for the course work, and I will not go through the make-up process that is available (involving more tuition and a completely-different project dissertation).

Although this has me regrouping with regard to next steps, I also want onlookers to know that this does not diminish my commitment to the work on Open-Systems Trustworthiness and projects to make computing more accountable and also more accessible, whether under ActiveODMA, nfoWare, or the Miser Project.

Some of the first materials to appear and be announced on this blog and over at the BlunderDome will be postings of articles derived from my thesis efforts, including ones on pattern languages, the nature of trust in artifacts, and important ways to look at the requirements gap, software as solutions (and what that doesn’t provide), and even what computers “know.”  Stay tuned.

Update: I couldn’t stand the first paragraph and reorganized the narrative.  I also noticed that I was a little teary as I sat down to write this.  That came up even more when I then sent the e-mail to my advisor and my program manager to affirm my chosen course.  So, a needed completion process.  I don’t expect to grieve much: there are too many exciting interests to pursue.

posted by orcmid at 10/11/2005 01:47:32 PM