Spring brings a lot of things with it. Sunshine. Flowers. Love. Sandals. Even more excuses to procrastinate. Sports I’m actually interested in watching. But for me, more than anything else, spring means freedom. Freedom from that Sword of Damocles that’s been hanging over my head for this entire year. It means my thesis is over. I can return the scores of books piling up all over my room. I can turn in my carrel key and end my long-term affair with Olin. My thesis is over. Done. Kaput.
It didn’t happen the way I had expected it to. As I had imagined it months ago, I always thought I would finish my thesis mere hours before the deadline. I would forgo sleep and subsist completely on a diet of coffee and Little Debbie Oatmeal Cream Cakes for an entire week. And then finally, at some ungodly hour before the sun has even thought to rise, I would stand up from my computer and pump my fists in the air. I would be smelly and exhausted, but I would be victorious. I would be an academic warrior, equal parts Derrida and Rambo. I would have a sweat-stained bandanna around my head. Once I realized what I had done, I would give a primal scream and I would break something. Maybe a window. Because that’s how much of a badass intellectual I would be.
In reality, I finished my thesis in the Info Commons at 10:00 on a Monday night, three days before theses were due. I had showered recently, eaten three meals, and was even wearing a clean pair of socks. There was no celebration, no flagrant acts of violence. I didn’t even pump my fist in the air. I told my girlfriend I was done and then started writing a response paper I had due the next day. By all reports, it was an anticlimactic ending. But then again, I was too tired to do anything else. I was too tired to even imagine what my life would be post-thesis.
You would expect that the first few weeks after you finish your thesis would be a time of freedom, of various forms of debauchery. You would expect them to be fun. But after months of sitting in a tiny room for a few hours each night, the only sounds being people typing and coughing, you kind of forget how to have fun. It takes a little while to get back into the swing of things. The first thing you have to learn to do is to stop thinking about your thesis constantly. It’s hard to let go.
I’ve heard several metaphors offered for what it feels to finish a senior thesis. Someone said it was probably like what our parents felt sending all of us off to college. Someone else said it felt like a break-up. And someone else said it was like feeding a dragon your first-born child. But for me, handing in my thesis is probably the closest I’ll ever come to experiencing post-partum depression unless the events of the Arnold Schwarzenegger film Junior prove themselves eerily prophetic. You carry this paper around for nine months, and as time goes on it gets bigger and bigger. It makes you irritable, tired, and on occasion, nauseous. Writing a thesis is like giving birth. Or, to be more honest, it feels like being a 16-year old giving birth in the middle of a Burger King and tossing your baby in the dumpster on your way out. Because not only do you feel grossly unprepared and immature the entire time you’re writing your thesis, but when its all done, you’re left feeling vaguely guilty and without the kind of closure you hoped for.
I don’t think my thesis is bad by any stretch of the imagination. My ego is much too large for me to ever think that. It’s just difficult to let go. It’s difficult to give up something you’ve invested a year of your life into.
College is a naturally transient environment. You never live in the same place for longer than a few months. Your circle of friends changes drastically. So do your classmates, your professors, your mentors, and your area of studies. Even the dining service workers change every now and then. People come in and out of your lives without warning. College students are naturally going to cling onto any hint of stability they get. This is probably one of the reasons why some people have unhealthy relationships. This is probably one of the reasons why I did not disown my freshman year roommate when I found out he had masturbated on my bed. Because I need consistency.
When I was hesitating about whether to do a thesis last year, one of my professors called me into her office and asked me, “When is the next time you’re going to have the time and resources to spend an entire year studying something so in depth?” She was right, and in the end, I’m glad I wrote a thesis. Beyond the sense of discovery, beyond the academic growth, beyond the prestige and pomposity of saying I did it, beyond even being able to use it as an excuse in any possible situation, it was about permanence in what can be an impermanent world. It was about doing something that will hopefully last, something I can call mine.
I have the entire rest of the spring to worry about impermanence, to worry about changes and the next step. But for now, I take a little comfort in thinking about how, very soon, I will receive a book with my name on it.
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