Fiat lux et facta est lux

My thesis (argument) only took shape in July 2004 - three years after I started the research and having worked on two field experiments. The primordial soup of ideas for the argument itself took three months to take shape in my head. I was forced to put them down in a structured form only because I was scheduled to do a seminar presentation to the school that month of July. In hindsight, that very much dreaded seminar was a blessing in disguise. Yet, I still mulled over the argument outline for about a couple of months and only started REALly writing the thesis (dissertation) after that. This meant that the final writing stage of my dissertation was from October 2004 to May 2005. Those eight 'home run' months were the most stressful ever of the whole duration of the PhD work.
* comic strip from Piled Higher and Deeper, 17 May 2000