Here's an article for all my readers who are/were in grad school. Many of you understand the joy/pain of writing a thesis for your degree.

This tale comes from the University of Maryland where a 43 year old woman was enrolled as a grad student in exercise physiology. After seven long years of grinding away, she was nearing the completion of her Master's thesis. Amazingly, she kept the only copy of her thesis, the product of those seven years of work, on a small USB drive. Of course, her belongings got stolen one day and that included the all-important USB drive.

The article details her desperate search for the drive and her thesis. I'm not sure how any competent grad student keeps only one copy of their thesis. For every grad student that piece of work represents years of hard work, dedication, and effort. To have only one copy of that is flat out stupid. I know people who keep multiple copies everywhere and backup at least once a day.

The author of the article labels her somewhat as a modern day Sherlock Holmes but it shouldn't have come to that. My thinking is that since she was older, she was less likely to backup her thesis on different formats. Technology scares older folks. Or maybe she was just an idiot. Wait a minute... who the hell doesn't save a thesis to a hard drive? Man, that's just dumb.

If you want to read the whole thing, click here.

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