Another dissertation metaphor

Earlier this week, one of my professors suggested that the process of writing a dissertation is like having a jar of paperclips on your desk, and there's one paperclip that you can pull out so that all the other paperclips come out in one chain. Unfortunately, writing a dissertation (or any big, long project) is a trial-and-error process, meaning that you'll end up pulling out many wrong paper clips before you hit on the correct one.

The opposite view: Why can't a dissertation be more like a beer? You pour it out and even if it's a bad pour, you just wait a few minutes for everything settle and then it's fine. Plus, it's beer.

Pages written today: 3
Running page count: 18.5
(Yes, I know it doesn't quite add up from my previous post. I was too tired to update last night.)

P.S. My counting half pages is not an attempt to aggrandize the page count. Unless I actually write a full page, I refuse to count it (no cheating by rounding up), but as a compromise I allow myself to include half pages.