Coming down
So the dread thesis is finished now! Since there's still snow on the ground here, doesn't that mean that I kind of finished it during the winter?
it's kind of a no-brainer that the end of any project that's lasted for nearly two years is necessarily going to be a massive anticlimax of some sort, and I wasn't really expecting a lot of ceremony or anything, but wow, they really went out of their way to hit this one out of the park in terms of making it banal and laconic, didn't they? As it turns out, "finishing a master's thesis" means that you basically you just print out the damn thing twice, carry it over to the faculty office, fill out a form, and then they hand you a slip of paper with a date on it when you can ask them about the grade, and then it's off to the street with you.
I think I could've done with a bit more pomp and fanfare here. In anthropology, it is thought that the purpose of ceremony is to form clearly defined boundary markers in the transitions that happen to people. Well... I've known that this thing was done and finished for weeks, after I pruned out two chapters that weren't really doing much for the whole thing, and since then everything has just been hammering pieces together, making the images look nice, making sure there were no more spelling mistakes than absolutely necessary - busywork, you could say. In a way, it feels like there wasn't really any particular time when the thesis was actually complete - more like that at some point I just kind of gave up on it.
Even now, a week after, it feels like my brain still hasn't really caught up to the fact that my thesis is done. I still get dreams about weathered maps with building plans of obscure Iron Age palaces and old musty tomes discussing ancient cities in German. Which could be cool, except it's really getting kind of old after the last couple of months! I suppose it also doesn't help that half of my floor is still filled by piles of books for my thesis. It's like I'm literally living in the middle of my thesis.
Ah well. It is done, though. Now I suppose I ought to come up with something else for my brain to nibble on!
it's kind of a no-brainer that the end of any project that's lasted for nearly two years is necessarily going to be a massive anticlimax of some sort, and I wasn't really expecting a lot of ceremony or anything, but wow, they really went out of their way to hit this one out of the park in terms of making it banal and laconic, didn't they? As it turns out, "finishing a master's thesis" means that you basically you just print out the damn thing twice, carry it over to the faculty office, fill out a form, and then they hand you a slip of paper with a date on it when you can ask them about the grade, and then it's off to the street with you.
I think I could've done with a bit more pomp and fanfare here. In anthropology, it is thought that the purpose of ceremony is to form clearly defined boundary markers in the transitions that happen to people. Well... I've known that this thing was done and finished for weeks, after I pruned out two chapters that weren't really doing much for the whole thing, and since then everything has just been hammering pieces together, making the images look nice, making sure there were no more spelling mistakes than absolutely necessary - busywork, you could say. In a way, it feels like there wasn't really any particular time when the thesis was actually complete - more like that at some point I just kind of gave up on it.
Even now, a week after, it feels like my brain still hasn't really caught up to the fact that my thesis is done. I still get dreams about weathered maps with building plans of obscure Iron Age palaces and old musty tomes discussing ancient cities in German. Which could be cool, except it's really getting kind of old after the last couple of months! I suppose it also doesn't help that half of my floor is still filled by piles of books for my thesis. It's like I'm literally living in the middle of my thesis.
Ah well. It is done, though. Now I suppose I ought to come up with something else for my brain to nibble on!