SHREDDING THE PAST

Finally.  No, truly, I am finally ready. 

I gather all of my files from my thesis and from the last class I took in the spring semester at the university and put them into a pile.  I take all of my drafts that have edits either written on them by the advisor or emailed to me with track change from other grad students, all the stuff I printed out to work with for the last few months, and I start feeding the papers into my shredder.

This is a wonderful idea until the shredder shits the bed.  My thesis breaks my shredder with as much precision and malice as it tried to break me.

So, I go and buy another shredder, a better shredder, a tougher shredder.  Tonight I sit down with the remainder of the papers and the new shredder because it's almost recycling time, and I want this bullshit OUT of my house.  OUT.  Gone.  I don't want to see any more "helpful suggestions" about The Thesis That Almost Killed Me.

I plug the new shredder into the outlet, get out the remainder of the giant pile, and start feeding the machine.  It's extremely cathartic -- the shredder makes angry, boastful, powerful noises.  It creates better shreds than my weaker, cheaper, dead shredder did.  I fill one bag and start on the second bag of shredded documents.

Suddenly … nothing.  Nothing at all.  Motherfucker.  My thesis has murdered another machine.

"Shredder killer!" I scream at it.  "How can you do this to me?  I HATE YOU."

Then I unplug the shredder from the wall, grab pliers and tweezers, and start picking out the jammed pieces from the teeth and cogs of the machine.  It fights back for about fifteen minutes, but, in the end and on the fourth re-plugging, the shredder spins to life with a grinding sigh.

It only takes about five more minutes to finish off the giant pile.  Sorry, neighbors, if the electrical surge needed to massacre my creative genius interferes with your quiet evening or with your cable reception, but I am not stopping until I'm done.  All these comments and edits and notes are going out with the next recycling.

After all the sucker-punching this thesis handed out, after all of the blood and sweat and tears that poured from my brain, after eight weeks of wondering when the hell the university might see fit to actually mail me the degree I busted an artery for -- After all this, I'm ready.

(Wringing my hands and kicking the shredder): Out, damned thesis! Out, I say!—One, two. Why, then, ’tis time to do ’t. Hell is murky!—Fie, my university advisors, fie! A writer, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?—Yet who would have thought the old thesis to have had so much blood in it.

Out, indeed, you miserable thesis edits.  If I never see you again, it will be one day too soon.