Question/objection:
Would knowing how the average student does actually provide an objective barometer to how you are currently doing? Even if every thesis topic was equally difficult, even if every panel of advisors was equally rigid, even if the other circumstances in the life of a student were equally difficult, would it really matter how you compare to these other students?
If I were you in your shoes I’d be more interested in knowing how close I was to be doing done. This seems to me to be a bit more objective.

Observation:
I think maybe facts are isolated things about the universe that we build up into truth, through wisdom or interpretation. Facts are like lincoln logs. They are answers to trivia pursuit questions. A well-built log cabin results from putting them together in the right way.

See…perfect example of why you’re awesome. I’ve been trying to say this for like 2 years…and you just said it. Just like that. Plain and simple.

Sigh. Good one.

“In accumulating property for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal; but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident. The oldest Egyptian or Hindoo philosopher raised a corner of the veil from the statue of the divinity; and still the trembling robe remains raised, and I gaze upon as fresh a glory as he did, since it was I in him that was then so bold, and it is he in me that now reviews the vision. No dust has settled on that robe; no time has elapsed since that divinity was revealed. That time which we really improve, or which is improvable, is neither past, present, nor future.”

- Thoreau