My old computer's memory is just about spent, so it is time
to get rid of some of the paperwork I have clogging up the techno-file
folders. The lion's share of this computerized
filing system belongs to the blog and the back-log of blog entries written and
published but never stored anywhere. I
need to finish transferring this stuff to Cyber-Land, and I'm months and months
behind in doing so.
While revisiting the madcap adventures I've had since
January, it also appears to be a torturous exercise in futility and
despair. You see, these recent files
hold the saga of my thesis being lost.
The first time it is lost, it isn't really a big deal. My first reader, who is also my thesis
advisor, hands me the edits and instructs me on how to proceed, albeit two
weeks later than she receives the manuscript.
The problem with this whole proceeding thing? She fails to print out, edit, or even read
the last 40 pages. Seriously. More than 31% of my entire thesis is missing
… and my advisor doesn't even notice. That tells me two things: Either my thesis is
so good that she doesn't even realize she's 40 pages short in her reading; or,
more probable, she didn't read bullshit.
My second reader, the one who was supposed to have it all
read and set to go, the one holding up the entire production -- He doesn't even bother to read it. Sure, my thesis arrived in plenty of time,
two weeks to spare before the deadline, but he emails me back that there is no
way he is going to read my thesis in 24 hours, as if that is MY fault. Dude had two weeks. Whose frigging fault is this? More bullshit.
Printing out these tales of woe this afternoon while
deleting computer files, I start reliving the nightmarish end of my last
graduate school semester. It was
horrible; it was awful; it just about sent me to the insane asylum.
However, there are some rays of goodness in it all. In between the ranting and the spitting and
the pitch forks, I get to spend time with two wonderful women with whom I had,
before this partnership, a casual, see-you-at-grad-school relationship. Thanks to the power of good timing and bad
advising, these two wonderful women rally around me and talk me off the
ledge. Okay, they talk me off the ledge
more than once. Truly, we rally around
each other and talk each other off many ledges in the course of our directed
study thesis writing fiascoes.
Today while sorting and pitching, I re-read the tales of the
coffee houses we invade, our preparation to present our theses and writing and
research, our half-drunken practice session where I cannot decide what to read
and suddenly open to the most gut-wrenching part of my thesis, and soon we are
all bawling our eyes out. I re-encounter
the presentation and the dinner afterward, hanging around Salem Beer Works, and
the rejoicing that goes on because we all presented, all three of us, even
though only one of us has actually finished and had her thesis approved at the
time.
Since then I've received my transcript and received my
degree. It doesn't un-sour the bitterness
I hold against my second reader, an asshole of a creative writing teacher who
is supposedly an acclaimed poet but couldn't "verse" himself out of a
blank page if it bit his left ass cheek off and spit it back at him with
completely written poetry carved into the buttock.
The one thing reliving this adventure via my old blog entries
has done, though, is remind me just how deeply I miss my thesis mates. One has been very busy with her own family
this summer, and the other has been off in Germany trying to have a vacation
and finish her thesis all at the same time.
I've let my writing go a bit without their support. Honestly, I've kept blogging and doing a
little writing on the side, but anything thesis related has been off
limits. Today is the first day I've been
able to open, let alone read, any of my thesis since I filed it in May. I needed to walk away from it for nearly ten
weeks, it was that horrifying an end to the entire experience.
When my writing mates can reconvene, we will get back together
and do something wonderful. A couple of
the times when we got together, we couldn't write, physically were unable to,
and once we even played with clay-like foam because writing our theses had
reduced us to gibberish. We were like
newly-broken mental patients with every symptom except the drooling. Okay, maybe I drooled a little. I was reasonably rabid toward the end.
I wish my memory were as easily erased as my
computer's. I wish I could edit the last
few weeks of grad school to be more satisfying and magnificent, to be full of
the glee and cheer graduates are supposed to feel, to be able to walk across
the stage instead of being told I'd need special dispensation because Asshole-Poet-Boy
refused to do his job and because my advisor, though I respect her, claimed to
have read my entire thesis when she really only saw 67% of it.
Whatever. I'm over it
now. My degree is in my hot little hands
and my thesis has been jettisoned to the techno-cloud. The next time my writing mates call, I'll
arrive with a fresh notebook and a new set of pens. I have faced the files, and they didn't
hurt. Well, not much, anyway. Like yanking a bandaid off without a second
thought -- a quick intake of breath, a stabbing pain, but then instant
recovery.
I'm ready, ladies.
Text me; I'm truly ready.
