How to format your thesis: A step-by-step guide to the most challenging aspects

Importing Figures:
1. Import 20 multi-panel high-resolution .tif figures and marvel in their clarity.
2. Cry after Word crashes and is no longer able to open or recover your most recent save.
3. Bang head on available flat surface.
4. Import figures again.
5. Repeat steps 2-3 several times.
6. Post to Facebook about how and why your computer is a piece of garbage and why can't it open the stupid file, it isn't that big and this is a stupid problem and Word is a stupid program and this whole thing is stupid anyway.
7. Reach through the computer screen and punch the person who comments and tells you to write it in GoogleDocs.
8. Abandon all hope for clear, high-resolution figures. Import fuzzy, low-resolution images.
9. Continue onward after losing several hours.

Page Numbers:
1. Follow guidelines: "Click on the first page of the document. Insert page numbers as specified, lower right corner not in the margin space. Start with "i" and continue with Roman numerals. Then add a section break at the first page of your thesis body. Insert page numbers and start with "1" and continue with Arabic numerals. The first three pages of the dissertation (title page, signature page, and copyright page) should NOT be numbered."
2. Spend two hours staring at formatting options, trying to figure out how to avoid having page numbers on the first three pages of the document when you are supposed to start on the first page of the document to insert page numbers.
3. Try all of the page numbering options.
4. Click every button on the toolbar.
5. Insert section breaks on the first three pages. Click every button again, several times.
6. Magic.
7. Continue onward after losing several hours.

Table of Contents:
1. Enter pages and sections/subsections/etc into table of contents.
2. Spend two hours typing "........[number]" 
3. Realize you have 115 subsections to your thesis and that you have typed "......." for 115 different lines.
4. Align to the right side of the page so the page numbers line up.
5. Align back to the left side of the page because the indent formatting for sections --> subsections --> subsubsections no longer line up.
6. Justify.
7. Align back to the right side of the page.
8. Align headers to left side and things that end in page numbers to the right.
9. Undo.
10. Align back to the right side of the page and hope that nobody looks too closely.
11. Continue onward after losing several hours.
12. Re-number approximately 75 sections every time you edit your thesis. Daily.