Adventures in Higher Education: Letters from a five-foot by five-foot box

Thesis writing. It’s one of the most sacred undergraduate traditions. Ever since I saw the movie “With Honors” as an innocent and naïve eleven-year-old boy, I’ve had two dreams. One was to befriend a homeless man who makes a stirring speech in defense of the amenability of the U.S. Constitution in the middle of my government class and completely embarrasses Gore Vidal in front of everyone. The other was to write a thesis. To be one of the few, the chosen. To devote myself to one tiny subject for an entire year; to write the longest paper of my life. And most of all, to get a room on Olin with my name on the door.

There’s a stigma surrounding the thesis carrel. People actually compete for the privilege of getting to live in a room the size of a closet. The only other time this will ever happen is when you’re looking for an apartment in Manhattan. And at least there, you’ll probably have cockroaches the size of your fist to keep you company. But there’s something about actually having a carrel. It affords you some kind of respectability. It says, “I am too ambitious to merely write an essay” or “My ideas are too important and complex to possibly express in a semester’s worth of work” or “I never really liked going to the Gatekeeper on Wednesdays anyway”. If you have a carrel, people start looking at you like you’re some sort of academic superhero. Well, now that it’s finally happened, now that I have a carrel, I think there’s something you should know:

Having a thesis carrel is an exercise in managing your neurosis.

I won’t deny that I get an absurd amount of work done in my carrel. But that’s not all I do. In fact, that’s probably the least of what I do. An average night in my thesis carrel consists of at least two hours of checking the Anonymous Confession Board and worrying that every confession is directed towards me. That my friends are telling the entire campus what a horrible person I am, and that everyone who reads these confessions knows that I’m the person my friends are talking about. It’s a bit egocentric of me, I know, but I’m positive it’s happening nonetheless. Sitting in a small room for hours each night does funny things to your head. I suppose I could just make a conscious choice not to look at the that godforsaken webpage, but this way, at least I have an idea of what everyone is saying about me behind my back. And paranoia is really just knowing all the facts.

And perhaps it stems directly from all my incessant worrying over the Internet, but I swear I’m also losing time in that carrel. Or maybe time doesn’t exist in thesis carrels. I’m not sure. All I know is that the hands of my watch will start moving counterclockwise, I’ll blink, and it will be ten o’clock. Before I know it, the dining facilities have all closed and I find myself eating a pound of candy from Weshop in lieu of dinner. It reminds me of those stories I used to read about people who find entire hours of their lives unaccounted for, and then under hypnosis reveal that they’ve been abducted by aliens and had their memories erased. Except that I like to think I’d probably know if extraterrestrials had anally probed me. It’d be the highlight of my night. Instead, I usually end up translating first-century Latin elegiac poetry until 2 in the morning.

Which brings me to the other thing I do a lot of in my carrel. Inexplicably falling asleep in my books. If you ever check out a book and it has a strange stain on it that vaguely resembles the shape of Idaho, that’s probably from my drool and I apologize. But the worst part of sleeping in the carrel isn’t the neck cramps; it’s waking up and realizing that no one knows you were asleep in the first place. I started out simply being worried that one night I’d wake up after 2 a.m. and have to call Public Safety to let me out of the library.

But I soon realized it could get much worse: I could die and no one would know.

Most of my friends and loved ones have gotten used to the idea that I disappear into my carrels for hours at a time. It’s not uncommon that I go two or three days without seeing one of my housemates. If something were to happen to me, how long would it take to realize that something was wrong? How long would it take someone to realize I was missing? I could be lying dead in a ditch, or worse, buried under an avalanche of books I’m supposed to be reading for my thesis, and no one would know until the smell tipped someone off. And that could be days.

Even more worrying: What if I fall asleep in my carrel and wake up after 2 a.m. suddenly realizing that I am about to die? I couldn’t get help if I tried. I mean, it takes Public Safety at least 10 minutes to get to Olin and unlock the door if you get locked in. What if I don’t have that long?

So do me a favor: if you go a few days without seeing me, please check my carrel. It’ll make me feel a whole lot better. And if I’m not dead, I’ll show you my books. Or make you eat candy with me. Or something.

Thanks.