I have a love-hate relationship with my thesis. I’m proud of my research and I love what I’m
writing about, but 3 years in and I’m tired of the process and sometimes tired
of my subject. Sometimes I want to research something else, and it feels like
I’m cheating. It’s spring break, and
once again, I’m reminded that grad students don’t get breaks. Spring break in its wild and bad-choices
nature is reserved for undergrads. I’ll
be spending my spring break grading and working on my thesis. A thesis is somewhere
between a child you give birth to, and an abusive lover. It’s needy and completely dependent on you
and is a product of you like a child from your womb. At the same time, it also tells you that you
are a great writer and a terrible writer with hardly 30 seconds between. It will slap you in the face and then come
crawling back saying it can’t live without you (and a quick addition at the
end: “and who are you kidding, you can’t really live without me either.”) It
takes up all of your time and makes you feel guilty for spending time with
anyone/anything else.
I am SO CLOSE to ending my relations with my thesis, but
sometimes it feels so incredibly far away, and so impossible. And then when I’m
done with the editing bit, I have to defend it.
I can hear myself now, begging to my committee, “It doesn’t mean to be
so needy. It’s still young. Please be patient.” Or worse, “It’s not a bad thesis, it just
slaps me in the face sometimes.”
I’m going to hell.
This morning, as I reflect on the last few years, and what
this thesis has meant to me, I write a letter.
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Dear Thesis-
I remember when you were just a twinkle in my eye, a tiny
little seed of an idea swimming in my brain.
I had all of these dreams for you. You, my little brain child, would
help me pave the way, make the Lovoll name known.
Then you became a teenage prospectus, and you got a little
bit of an attitude, and if I might say, a bit of an ego. You thought you could do everything, and you
set out to do it, but forgot that you are still a child, and you are completely
dependent on me. I will never get back
the sleep I lost doing transcriptions for you late into the night at IHOP. I’ve put blood, sweat, and tears (so many
tears) into raising you, and you give me nothing but the silent treatment (or
at best, more tears.)
After awhile, you became a little more mature. Physically, you were 100 pages, so you were
clearly growing up, and I slowly realized I was not your mother. You went through a Jekyll-Hyde type
transformation. My thesis child, whom I
cared for like a child, was now somehow an angry, feelings-eating, abusive, and
occasionally violent monster. The words on the page would paralyze me, in fear
of getting slapped again, in fear of letting you make me cry again. You made me
feel stupid, worthless, helpless, and above all, like I didn’t belong. You
would send me away crying and I’d come right back to you in the morning and cry
again. I don’t know how our relationship got like that, but it was bad.
Sometimes I blame you for ruining other things in my life; other times I blame
other things for ruining you. Either way, I had to break up with you, and
ignore you for awhile. Eventually, after
talking about you to some other people, I no longer referred to you as some Mr.
Hyde angry monster. I found the antidote
to make you stay in the form of Dr. Jekyll.
Thesis, I don’t think you’ve read Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
(it’s not on your reference list), so you should probably know: that’s not
necessarily a good thing either. Dr.
Jekyll was egotistical and although he might deny it, liked the idea of playing
God. He let his work consume him
completely which is how we came to Mr. Hyde in the first place, and his other
relationships suffered for it.
Thesis, I don’t want to be Dr. Jekyll. I am your keeper, but I will not become the
kept. Your work is almost done, and I beg you, when it’s done let it be done. I don’t want to carry you with me to new
projects; I can’t take the risk of letting you become Mr. Hyde again. So
basically what I’m asking, Dear Thesis, is that when we are done with this at
the end of the semester, please leave me
alone. I’m tired of reading about No Child Left Behind. I’m tired of getting depressed with all of
the things wrong with the education system.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of you. You wouldn’t
exist without me, after all. I will
always be proud of you, and always have a little place in my heart for you, but
that doesn’t mean I want to see you ever again. I don’t. I love you, but you
can fuck off.
I hope you don’t collect too much dust, sitting on my shelf.
Love and hate always,
Ani
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Y’all, I recognize my thesis is an inanimate object. I also recognize this probably shares some
weird shit about my psyche. But in all
honesty, this is what it feels like to write a thesis.
I hope you all make bad/fun/wild choices over spring break
while I sit at the coffee shop with my laptop. I can live vicariously through
you.
