The Dissertation and the Holidays: The Saga Continues

I went online hoping to write my end-of-year post (which I still want to complete), but I went to check my email and I found a couple of "surprise" emails from my advisor. I'll take the bullet approach to make this boring discussion more readable:

• On May 17 I emailed him my revised (4-5th drafts, all previous already read by him) chapters 1-3 and he only read and annotated them electronically today.

• In an older email (from the same day) he had said that he'd taken a look and liked those chapters, but I guess he changed his opinion somewhat. After a nice compliment on my dissertation being one of the best he's encountered, he went on to emphasize my "mechanical mistakes:" "(run-on sentences; lack of parallel structure, verb tenses shifts, awkward prepositions, passive constructions, weak verbs, non-specific nouns, too many qualifying adverbs), many of which [he] corrected, but many others which still need attention." He suggested that "You might consider getting a writing tutor as you are making many of the same mistakes repeatedly. Please do not expect your committee to correct your writing mistakes." Nice

I know this is pathetic and ridiculous and preposterous and maybe plain wrong, but I was wondering if anyone out there could help me or help me find help in this. I didn't plan to write this at all in this email, but I'm getting so desperate I guess I'm willing to just BEG for help. And maybe I could even afford to pay someone if only I got those piano lessons going again.

But this was not the worse part of the email. Guess what?

• The advisor is going on sabbatical next semester and he assumed I knew about that already!! What wonderful news to receive right when I'm about to embark in my very last semester of graduate school, no? He said he'll be available in April and I'm sure I can defend then, but I'll have only two weeks or so to make any corrections before submitting my dissertation to the graduate school on time to participate of the commencement. Can anyone tell me if two weeks is enough???
  
• I emailed him back right away and told him I'd go ballistic if I weren't able to participate. And he added another piece of news:

• My former advisor, who had been a KEY person in helping me edit my chapters is ALSO going on sabbatical. Sweet, huh? I emailed him too, but haven't received a response (the advisor said we can schedule the defense for the second or third weeks in April).

Well, I know everything will be all right and I've become much more thicker skinned and calmer, but I'll be infuriated if any other committee members are not available for April. What a nightmare that will be. But hopefully everyone will be available and we'll schedule the defense right away. By the way... my MIL was teasing me because I keep telling people about my commencement and inviting them and she was asking whether I had the defense scheduled and joking about it, since I don't. Oh well... at this point I guess I don't really care (although I do), I just want to get it done. It's just annoying if I can't participate because of things out of my control, like committee members being away.

Let me know if you have any suggestions of people who could help me and correct my English, OK? Yeah... I guess I should have known that he'd pester me about it to the very end. Second rate foreign speaker of English that I am. Humpf.