5 posts from March 2008

Now what?

Mar 31, 2008
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So I got comments back on my first draft of the thesis. The meeting with my advisor went really well, and he had extremely helpful and completely legit suggestions and comments. Not much was unexpected--I need to rework the intro and conclusion, which I absolutely intended to do because the ones I wrote were very much a place holder for when my brain became solid again and could produce actual writing, rather than babblebabblebabble which it was producing by the 25th hour of my thesis-writing march toward completion.

One of the suggestions that I was completely happy with was that I should just sit down and re-read the whole thing in one sitting so as to remove the repetitive stuff. I think it'll be useful also in order to create a well-worded and useful introduction and conclusion, as well as to get a handle on what I want to add (there's quite a bit to add, in my opinion, but we'll see...)

So now it's just making a list, creating an agenda, and getting to it. Tonight I'm making all the suggestions he wrote on the draft (which looks so much more foreboding printed out than it did on my computer screen), and I'm going to try to recreate the intro and conclusion. Tomorrow is April 1st, which means I have to hand in a draft to my second reader. So that'll hopefully be draft 2 of a draft, rather than it in its current state.

Because it's such a large job, I think I'm going to break it into themes--like fix typos first, then citations, then sentence structure, etc. etc. etc.

Here's where I wrote the thing, in my bed/library/nest/desktop/cafe, at the height of thesis writing the week of the 17th to the 21st:

Thesis Nest

I think all changes will be done at my desk, and will be aided greatly by extra large post-it notes all over the place.

Oh also, I am SO into Vampire Weekend this month, which is good, because they're coming to Brown for Spring Weekend this month.

04 Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa

Vox Hunt: Looking Back on March

Mar 31, 2008
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Show us something that represents how the month of March went for you.

This was March for me. Mostly I spent it writing these pages on that computer, in this window or on my bed, covered in books and fueled by tea.

Pages and Computer

Floating

Mar 29, 2008
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So as of the 22nd, I handed in a draft of my thesis to my advisor, who is reading it this week. It's Spring Break, and so the timing is all really confusing because I would have said that I'd be frantically writing all week (probably the smart thing to do) but instead I'm just sort of existing, doing nothing particularly productive, floating around. I worked at the Rock a few days this week, and Monday and Wednesday were spent mostly in bed sleeping, shopping, or playing Zoo Tycoon 2, which is a little bit of a bummer for Mac because I have to play it on the lowest graphics level or it spontaneously crashes, which was supposed to be fixed in version 1.1 but so wasn't...

I should have done a lot this week and instead I did basically nothing, which I'm currently justifying by the logic that it's Spring Break and I could be in Cancun or something and if I were there I'd be doing just as little school work.

Being half-done (that is, having a draft in but a draft that is drafty and very obviously needs more work and more research) on the thesis is a really odd half-state that doesn't suit me at all. I worked so ridiculously much on it for so many months, just plugging with a pot of tea and lots of stress, and now it's all sort of drifting away and I feel lonely and icky about it. It'll be nice to have comments so I can fix everything. I think tomorrow afternoon, after I get my homework for the week done, I'm going to just sit and read it (as devastating and depressing as that will inevitably be) and make a list of everything that needs to be fixed so I have a really good agenda of work. Because this week has been a lesson in how easily one can spend an entire afternoon playing computer games, how easily 2 hours can turn into 6 hours, how addicting it is. I forgot that time moves at the same breakneck speed whether you have stuff to do or not.

In that same vein, I'm graduating in 2 months, minus 3 days exactly. I'm going to Guatemala City to work in a lab from the end of June to the first week of August. (I'm flying home for my sister's wedding in July). After that, no fucking clue. The future's so bright I'm gonna hafta wear shades.

Caffeine, Typing, Books

Mar 18, 2008
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I realize now that I'm a bit punchy. This is the inevitable result of too much writing/researching/agonizing over my senior thesis. As Christian would note, I am losing perspective in the world because of the stress I feel over my thesis. Currently over 70 library books live in my apartment. They live in piles on the floor of my bedroom, on tray tables and in bookcases (if they're lucky). I trip through a sea of research notes, copies of my thesis sections, sixty-odd pages which must represent a thousand work hours of my life. My walls are stuck with adhesive sticky notes, some of which are lists and chronologies, while others record scattered thoughts and ah-hah! moments. I live in my writing clothes--fleece sweatpants and an Oxford sweatshirt Jill got for me while she was abroad in the UK. It's four in the morning, and I've written 8 more pages today, although perhaps 10 less than I ought to have by now.

When I finished, I ballet-danced across my hardwood floor, ate stale buttered bread from dinner, attempted to decide whether I should move on to the next objective or ride out my caffeine jitters watching late night / early morning television and drifting (hopefully) to sleep.

I feel as though I exist in a semester of perpetual finals, and I feel alone most of the time. I dream about bibliographies, sources, imagined research leads I missed. I toss and turn and have epiphanies in my sleep about the most effective way to organize a chapter. I think I thought I'd think this was cool. I think I thought I'd feel like a scholar or intellectual in a way that was not previously experience, as if writing this thesis was a right of passage or a microcosm of the life I will [/may] one day choose to lead. Instead I feel nervous, jittery, tired, disinterested, guilty. I feel as though I'm constantly late for an important meeting, that I'm constantly offending my professional contacts. Perhaps in retrospect this will all seem part of the process of academic writing.

I know that I have done more for this project than for any other single project. I know I have written more, read more, become more informed about the general context of the scholarship. I just wonder when I will feel as though I have actually done enough to warrant a general sense of contentment with this senior honors thesis. I dread the signs of spring for the first time in my life (I hate winter), because it heralds my oncoming deadlines and due dates. I wonder when my second semester senior experience will kick in. If I can produce a draft by this Friday/Saturday, which is my overwhelming intention, I hope that Spring Break will be the beginning of a more leisurely existence. I wonder if I missed out on an essential experience by taking on the workload that I did. It's hard to tell.

I miss you, social life. I miss you, leisure. I miss you, guiltless fun time. I hope to be coming home soon.