Oh, yeah, I have a twitter now! I haven't written a ton on it, but that might change now that my thesis is done and I no longer have to feel guilty about being on the internet.
...Oh, yeah. My thesis is done, too. That's... a thing.
Honestly, I have no idea how to feel about that. I know that some of my posts have been a bit doom and gloom about it, and I'm not going to lie, I still don't think I'll be ready to look at it again any time soon? I mean, it was a struggle forcing myself to reread it while I was editing it, which, you know, presented its own special challenges to the editing process. But at the same time, I was also right in that last post: it's amazing to think that I did that. I wrote something that's 150 pages, including the cover page and bibliography. I wrote something that requires not only a table of contents but an acknowledgements section.
(For the record? Writing the acknowledgements section might have been the most fun part of the entire process.)
So I'm fairly ambivalent about how the content actually turned out (despite the fact that my advisor actually said some very nice things to me, although to be fair my mom apparently linked her to my last post, so she might have been worried about my mental stability), but I'd still write it again. I'd choose this year, again. Not just because it means that I have pretty much no finals for the rest of the year.
But it's a good feeling, you know? When people congratulate me for finishing it and I can stop and think, "Yeah, I did that."
Admittedly, I turned my last sentence into a last paragraph at 12:15 on the day it was due, proceeded to frantically fix formatting errors for the next half-hour while stuffing a sandwich in my mouth, and then submitted it at 12:45, exactly two minutes before I went to class — but I still did it!
And then at 4 pm, the deadline, most of us thesis-writers (and some non-thesis writers) gathered on Olin steps for the traditional celebration. Wesleying got some great photos of us all celebrating in the rain:
We were drenched and half the people there were drinking champagne out of the bottle, and more champagne was being sprayed everywhere, and there were at least two spontaneous singalongs of the Wesleyan fight song, and it was lovely. I actually got into a discussion with some of my friends afterwards about anthropological theory regarding festivals as a release of stress and austerity.
(Also, speaking of Wesleying — which, for those not in the know, is one of the most useful websites to keep track of if you're a Wes student — two of my housemates and I got interviewed for their "THESISCRAZY" feature! It was me, Housemate Katie, and Previously Mentioned Housemate Natalia. Scroll down a bit and you'll see us. I'm the one with the awesome green laptop, looking super awkward! It's weird having a picture of me on this blog that isn't a badly-drawn-in-photoshop representation.)
So my thesis is done. It's... an odd feeling. It's sort of a cross between feeling like I should still be working on it — like I'm slacking off — and not being able to convince myself to do anything productive at all. There's a reason this post is being written at 2:45 am; it took that long to work myself up to it. (Don't worry, I'm going to sleep soon!)
Also, now I get to worry about things like finding a job. Still accepting applications for a patron who will pay for all my daily expenses so that I can sit around writing, cooking, and bumming around on the internet; if interested, let me know! Or, you know, if you feel like offering me some sort of paying job. That would also be cool.
It's April, man. Where does the time go?
On the upside, now all I have to really worry about for the time being are my dance and taiko classes, and those are fun, not strenuous. Well, they're physically strenuous, but in a really enjoyable way. Oh, and going to work; I get to do that, too. I can't really complain about that much. And I have proper baking time! This weekend I made some beehive buns, which I'm calling surprise buns because I gave them surprise fillings — various combinations of cream cheese, peanut butter, jam, nutella, candied ginger, and dried cherries.
I have plans, you guys. My housemates aren't going to know what hit them. There will be SO MUCH FOOD. And I'll do my nails again, and everything will be great.
Anyway, this post is starting to edge onto the long side, and I really should get to sleep — work tomorrow! — but I figure I should leave you with a collection of photos from my previous, thesis life. Which I am now done with.
This was the table where Housemate Katie, Previously Mentioned Housemate Natalia, and I — and occasionally some of our thesis-ing friends — basically lived for a week to a week and a half. Particularly once I realised that I needed to do most of my major edits within the space of two days (yeah, don't ask). You got up in the morning, you went to the table, you ate, you worked.
The timeline on the wall of my room, and various other notes and connections I tried making. That didn't work out particularly well, mostly because it meant writing things down three times -- once in my notes, once on the notecards, and then typing it all up again later. (Almost every hard copy book I read, I took proper notes in a notebook. There were A LOT of notes.) If I'd been able to scan all my notes in and then move them around in holograph form, a la Tony Stark's hologram tech in Iron Man, I probably would've used that technique a little more thoroughly.
Speaking of books... they would apparently end up in very random places around my room. Sometimes I would go to sleep with six books at the foot of my bed.
But that's them all on the shelf, where they belong. (Not counting the books that I read online, obviously!)
I sort of got the urge today to see how tall they all stacked up.
Just for reference... (That's actually about how high the snow got during that storm this winter!)
Anyway, I'm going to go to sleep now, ducklings. I hope you have a fantastic week.
[Original tags for this post: academia is whackademia,baking, Food, I STILL can’t believe it rained on the day I turned in my thesis,pictures of food,thesis, thesis stuff,whoops guess it’s time to think about the future now]
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