My terrible paper

Three days ago I spent the entire day putting the finishing touches on my terrible, unpublishable fourth chapter. The next morning Iris copy-edited it for me, and I sent it to a professor who sent it back to me six hours later. I would hug him if he wasn't 3000 miles away and if one went around hugging members of the National Academy of Sciences. I spent several hours implementing his enormously helpful comments, and sent it to a second professor very late that night. He sent it back 1PM yesterday. He had it for 12 hours, but I'm guessing he was asleep for at least six of those, so that is pretty fast turn-around also. His comments were also majorly helpful. I spent until 1AM this morning implementing his suggestions. Now I have to update my tables and figures, and I'll send it to my third faculty person. At that point the rapid turnover is likely to stop, as she takes her time in editing and produces masses of highly detailed incisive comments.

This seems like an awful lot of work by some incredibly smart, busy people to vastly improve my paper that is still unlikely to be publishable.

That said, it now seems at least plausible that I will have my degree by the time I leave California a week from now.