Here are some handy hints I can offer to UvA PhD students in the late phases of dissertation preparation.

  1. Make sure you spell the name of the Rector Magnificus correctly, where it appears prominently on your title page (part of the boilerplate that “So-and-so has been awarded the degree of doctor…”). They’re picky about this: it’s not enough to have all the right letters in there, they have to be in the right order too. Yes, that includes initials.
  2. If you plan to defy Rule 1, at least remember to send a copy of your title page, signed by the dean of the faculty, to the office of the pedel.1 The reason for this requirement is so that someone from the dean’s office can politely point out that you’ve misspelled the name of the Rector Magnificus.
  3. If you plan to defy Rule 2, well, you can’t. But what you can do is go ahead and print your dissertation before you’ve had the title page signed by the dean and sent to the pedel. It’s against the rules and I don’t advise it, but all the available evidence shows that this is, in fact, possible.

In other news, my plans for the weekend involve 200 books, a stack of little pieces of paper reading “Prof. dr. D.C. van den Boom”, and a pot of glue. And significant quantities of embarassment.

Notes:

  1. In English I believe it’s “beadle”, but that still doesn’t tell me much. [↪]