How I actually made the first full draft

Making a full draft of the dissertation is time consuming and requires attention to many details. I found that one way to approach this milestone was to break up the tasks. Go through the entire document and check for consistency in headings: chapter titles, section titles, numbering. Next, check every table: are they uniform? Are they numbered correctly? Does every table have a title? Did I consistently capitalize 'Table' in both the text and in the title under each table? Then, read the whole document and check to flow. Is anything choppy? Anything missing? Did I spell something wrong? It is always embarrassing to receive edited copies of my drafts and to find corrected spelling mistakes. In the past round of revisions, I had to correct my spelling of 'Ottawa' and 'capital.' Oops.

Once all of that was done (and it took over 4 hours), I double checked my references. I included a references section for each chapter as I wrote it. Combining these references into one document was also very time consuming. I have a program that automatically creates bibliographies for me, but it doesn't use the formatting I need for Geraldine. I painstakingly changed the placement of the date, italics and other bibliographic information to match the style guide used by the top journals in my field. Some day, I will thank myself for doing such a menial task. Today is not that day. There were many copy and paste commands involved in making a document I was happy with. At the end, I had to check everything again for consistency. There are probably still errors, but I hope a committee member will draw my attention to them (and I luckily have committee members that will do such a thing). Finishing the references section took about 3 hours.

But wait, there's more?!? Dissertations also require a bunch of pedantically formatted pages at the beginning prior to chapter 1. This is called 'front matter.' The front matter must be numbered with Roman numerals which appear at the bottom of the page, whereas each chapter must be numbered with Arabic numerals in the upper right hand corner. I haven't figured out how to tell Word that I need two different systems, so for the time being, the front matter is a separate document. Ugh. So what goes in the front matter? A title page, an abstract, a copyright page, a dedication (optional), acknowledgements, a table of contents, a list of tables, a list of figures, signature lines for the dissertation chair and graduate school to sign off that everything is official and I might be able to go on vacation after graduation... I hate making tables of content. It is a very tedious task. To my joy, I discovered that I have no figures in Geraldine, and therefore do not need to make a list of figures. My table of contents is 3 pages long. Again, at some point I will be glad that I already took care of these things, but right now the only thing I can think of is having to change the page numbers in the table of contents after I finish revising the chapters. BUT, Indi wanted a table of contents with the full draft, so he got one.

What else needs to go in a dissertation? Thankfully, not much. I have two appendices in Geraldine. I have a few corrections to enter into my database, but after I do so, generating the appendices will not take long. They will be formatted neatly and should please the committee members who have seen earlier drafts of messy data. I also have to include my CV at the end, and Indi must sign that as well. I  don't know why this is required. Maybe to communicate "I am the committee chair and I did read (at least part of) the last page?"
Because my raw data is so big and it's the part of my dissertation typologists will actually want to read, the end matter will be over 100 pages.

I think my department will need to order more paper before April. Assuming my committee members will each print copies of my dissertation, it will take about 4 reams of paper. Considering the other doctoral candidates who hope to defend this spring, the department will likely need 3 extra boxes of paper. This does not include any MA students who will defend their theses this spring. Do departments work this into their budgets?