being subjected to cruel and unusual torture

Yesterday my advisor suddenly informed me that my thesis should be around 100 to 150 pages in length. I’m just going to pretend I never heard that, since I’ve seen theses that were on the order of the 50 pages. That aside, with less than three week left to the due date, he also decided that it would be necessary for me to make some new contributions in addition to an elaborate literature review (which is all that is really expected for a theses for this particular degree). That is, he said it wouldn’t be trivial, but I should perform some dimensional analysis, re-plot the data presented in the papers with the modification of a new length scale, etc. etc. The more work I do, the more I realize the impossibility of actually making any real progress on his suggestions, and I have hardly begun on the 100 pages. How did I get myself into this?! Why didn’t I just stick with something simple, something I could be sure fell within my intellectual capacity? Perhaps because I didn’t realize that my advisor would suddenly drop these bombs on me at the last minute. He actually seemed like he would be pretty helpful. But shouldn’t I have learned from the previous two advisors that this is how things work at this institution? They offer minimal direction and continually approve of your progress, until the very last moment, when they decide you haven’t accomplished nearly enough, then they sit back and watch you sweat. I’m seriously afraid I won’t be able to pull this off. How cruel would it be if my advisor decides that my thesis is not up to par, thus preventing me from graduating?

Miriam: where could I find one of these coaches you spoke of?