Best way to format my dissertation ??

I thought I knew how I was going to put my dissertation together. Not anymore. I had a meeting with Kiwi on Friday and he seems to have changed his mind, but he hasn't convinced me yet that this is the best plan. So over the past 6 years my project has been rather all-over-the-board. Every committee meeting my third aim changed. That wouldn't be so bad but I've spent months and months (years) going in various directions, only to have either hit dead ends, or was stopped by Kiwi before I could finish a series of experiments. Thus, I have a lot of experiments (i.e., series of experiments) that were never finished.

I also have nopublication. Kiwi decided a long time ago he wanted my entire dissertation in one manuscript. I tried to change his mind several times but never succeeded. Now he has put me a hard situation. We are writing this manuscript and are leaving several pieces out as 'data not shown." Here's the tricky part, I want to show the DNS in my dissertation. I also have to divide my dissertation into chapters. The standard is to use publications as chapters, which kind of follow your aims. Well, I will have one manuscript which contains ALL of my aims. I can't just have one chapter. So we decided that we were going to break up the manuscript into three chapters, following my three aims and include everything we left out. Sounded good to me! But he's had a change of heart. Now he wants me to focus on my manuscript because of the committee, insert it as Chapter 1, which will encompass all my aims, add the DNS in the appendix, and "make-up" a fourth aim. Yes, you heard me right. That is why I'm here on a Sunday, instead of working comfortably from my apartment. I'm pouring through 5-6 years worth of lab work, a lot of which was never finished, trying to come up with a 4th aim. I was venting to FD and we both agree this is a colossal waste of my time. Kiwi said he hears me say how I've done a lot of work so why not include it in a fourth aim, which yeah, I have, but he's stopped most of it. Now my 'homework' for the weekend is to see if I can make my experiments that were 'not publishable' and didn't work as 'we wanted' fit coherently into another aim. And he said I'll have to figure out some way to explain 'around the data' during my defense as to why this should be included in the thesis since it isn't publishable.

Grrr.

So, I have three days total to 'make-up' a 4th aim, finish my manuscript figures, write figure legends, and finish my methods and results. My series of meetings with my committee members starts Tuesday afternoon and since my committee doesn't care about "aims" I'm only going to talk about my manuscript. But I need the fourth ready in case they want to know if there is 'anything else' besides the manuscript.

And I still need to figure out what the last component of the manuscript means. The data didn't turn as we expected. Which isn't a bad thing. Except now I have to explain it which I'm having trouble doing, and Kiwi doesn't know either. And since it's the last major part, I just know that's what the committee is going to question. When my dissertation became a 'cell biology' project it started being out of my element. I've never even had a cell biology class!!