{"id":7537,"date":"1996-06-21T18:54:11","date_gmt":"1996-06-21T22:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hub-dev.bates.edu\/magazine\/?page_id=7537"},"modified":"2017-09-06T13:43:34","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T17:43:34","slug":"thesis-envy","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/back-issues\/y1996\/summer96\/features\/thesis-envy\/","title":{"rendered":"Thesis Envy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\n\"Thesis
\nI wrote my philosophy thesis in three weeks at the end of\u00a0fall semester. My breaks consisted of writing five other\u00a0papers due during the same time span and preparing for two\u00a0final exams. I even had a motto: “Thesis is twenty-five\u00a0percent effort, seventy-five percent keeping your butt in the\u00a0chair.” I took to belting my legs together to keep me from\u00a0getting up from the computer. After three weeks of utter\u00a0hell, my thesis was finished. It was fifty-three pages long.\u00a0Imagine my anguish, then, when I found out that classmate\u00a0Andy Shriver’s thesis was two pages longer than mine.\u00a0Obviously, length does not indicate much of anything about\u00a0the quality of one’s thesis. Ask any senior poet, actor, or\u00a0painter, and they’ll tell you that the digits in your thesis’\u00a0page count give little evidence of the quality of the material\u00a0lying on said pages. What matters is quality, not length.\u00a0But however often we repeat that mantra, it doesn’t free us\u00a0from thesis envy.<\/p>\n

Whenever a senior busts through the two-hundred-page\u00a0barrier in an honors thesis, seniors everywhere wince. Why?\u00a0For men, perhaps it’s a challenge to their manhood.\u00a0Alternatively, it may be because seniors have conceptualized\u00a0their honors thesis as a child to be born. After all, the\u00a0thesis is a great weight bearing down on you, growing heavier\u00a0every day, conceived approximately nine months ago. Then, at\u00a0the end of a desperate final push, something new is created.\u00a0Thus, when absurdly weighty theses are mentioned, certain\u00a0painful images spring to mind.<\/p>\n

Honors-thesis students everywhere suffer a secret belief\u00a0that their thesis experience was the year’s worst. Morbid\u00a0announcements of inflated page counts are just one symptom of\u00a0that collective campus belief. The result is a culture of\u00a0angst that pervades the campus every March. That culture is\u00a0created by seniors sharing horror stories and creating rituals\u00a0that serve not only to indicate their misery but also their\u00a0ability to overcome that same trauma.<\/p>\n

Keeping a sense of humor is critical to surviving thesis\u00a0stress. Seniors often play games with their thesis, treating\u00a0it like a real person — the ultimate pathetic fallacy. This\u00a0is a good way of procrastinating while spending quality time\u00a0with the most important person in your life and staying free\u00a0to write if the inspiration strikes. Personifying the thesis\u00a0gives obsessed seniors and their theses a chance to hang out\u00a0together.<\/p>\n

One favorite game is stacking all the thesis materials to\u00a0see if the pile is taller than you are. Another favorite is\u00a0creating a fictional life for the thesis. For example, when\u00a0one thesis reached twenty-one pages, its author noted that it\u00a0could legally drink.<\/p>\n

Another honors-thesis ritual is the disaster story. Real\u00a0thesis shamans are those who suffer regularly from ridiculous\u00a0mishaps or undergo moments of horrendous anguish. A few\u00a0recent masters:<\/p>\n

Absolutely everything that could go wrong with classmate\u00a0Sarah Coulter’s honors thesis in physical chemistry did.\u00a0Coulter and her advisor managed to flood her lab their very\u00a0first day while “watering the laser.” She cut off a piece of\u00a0her finger with her Swiss Army knife. She also managed to\u00a0solder two pieces of equipment together, a protean feat\u00a0considering that she managed it without using any welding\u00a0equipment. The department’s new Pentium computer crashed\u00a0after two days. Complaining that the computer room was cold,\u00a0she wore my winter coat one night as a pair of pants. With\u00a0Coulter’s thesis, when it rained, it froze.<\/p>\n

Last year, Evan Halper ’95 managed to get through months\u00a0of thesis work uneventfully, only to get nailed at the end. I\u00a0can still remember Halper printing out the thesis on the last\u00a0day. As pages slowly spit out of the printer, Coulter picked\u00a0up a page. She turned to him and said urgently, “Evan,\u00a0there’s a grammatical error on the first line!” This process\u00a0repeated itself as each page printed out, until Halper begged\u00a0her to stop reading his thesis. He also had to face his\u00a0thesis panel without his advisor, who was sick. He didn’t\u00a0talk much about that experience.<\/p>\n

Two non-honors thesis students deserve some recognition\u00a0for the quality of their horror stories. Two years ago,\u00a0Christian Gaylord ’94 performed an original one-man play about\u00a0his hometown for his thesis. Some time after the production\u00a0was over, his thesis advisor asked him when he could read the\u00a0script Gaylord had authored. He responded incredulously, “You\u00a0mean I have to turn it in?” He had written it on various\u00a0scraps of paper whenever inspiration hit.<\/p>\n

That same year, another senior suffered through his\u00a0physics thesis. He missed two deadlines, receiving extensions\u00a0both times. Finally, time ran out and he had to turn it in\u00a0the next weekend. He had three days. He had written nothing.\u00a0His comment after the weekend was over: “Worst three days of\u00a0my life.”<\/p>\n

The clothes make the thesis. Suitable raiment is vital to\u00a0creating the correct style for your thesis, the summation of\u00a0your academic career. A properly attired thesis student can\u00a0foster one of two impressions about his relationship to the\u00a0work, and by extension, about the thesis itself.\u00a0There is simple, utilitarian fare: a sweatshirt and a pair\u00a0of sweatpants. There are a few simple rules to follow to make\u00a0this fashion statement. Don’t shower. Don’t shave —\u00a0anywhere. Don’t change your clothes; sleep in them,\u00a0preferably on a couch. This line of apparel says, “The act of\u00a0writing is such an ordeal that I can’t write until I stare at\u00a0the computer screen so hard that I get a nosebleed.” Warning:\u00a0This might imply that reading said thesis will be a similar\u00a0ordeal.<\/p>\n

The second thesis ensemble is formal attire. Dress to\u00a0kill. Wear only the slickest threads. This outfit symbolizes\u00a0the human struggle for survival and quest for the sublime\u00a0within a finite paradigm ruled by an uncaring and elusive god.\u00a0Unfortunately, no one can maintain this sartorial strategy\u00a0for long. All these rituals, games, and incantations create\u00a0an illusion. Perhaps that illusion is necessary for the\u00a0realization of the thesis, but it’s still an illusion. We can\u00a0recognize its beauty while understanding that this idolatry\u00a0obscures the fundamental force of creation: Will.<\/p>\n

David Kociemba ’96 is the former features editor for The\u00a0Bates Student. This essay first appeared in the March 13,\u00a01996, <\/em>Student and is reprinted here by permission of the\u00a0author.<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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