Today I want to give kudos
to two people who’ve had to put up with a lot of bullshit over the past twelve
months – my two Thesis Buddies.
When we started this
odyssey three or so years ago, we never realized we’d end up kindred spirits
who survived on sheer exhaustion, a few legal drugs, and lots of alcohol. For me the exhaustion was nothing new. I earned my undergrad and first graduate
degrees while operating on fumes and an average of four hours of sleep per
night – six hours would be a luxury. I
ate bottles full of ibuprofen and acetaminophen, settled my cracked-up
digestive system with periodic doses of loperamide, and battled pneumonia more
times than there have been Crusades.
What I found in my Thesis
Buddies were (and still are) kindred spirits.
I found another person in the program who understands that when we write
bad poetry we often receive good grades, and when we write good poetry we often
receive vile criticism and ridicule. I
found someone who makes better shadow boxes than Martha Stewart could ever
dream of creating.
I found people who were
(and still are) willing to be seen in public with me while they type
methodically on their laptops and I write old-school longhand in wide-ruled
notebooks like some kind of an anachronism.
It’s almost hilarious. We all
have computer bags, but mine is stuffed with notebooks, reading books, and a
pencil case of various writing implements (and always stocked with a
hand-powered pencil sharpener).
We handed in our thesis
drafts, some with great ease and others (wink wink) to near-incompetence. But – we finished. As of this week, the final thesis has been
submitted. Two of us finished in May,
and the final Thesis Buddy is officially beyond the Lunatic Fringe.
Bottoms up to us – we survived
another round of grad school, all three of us, signed and sealed and
delivered. The last one may have been a
bit of a straggler, but her topic is momentous and so is her final product.
Kudos – and may the Thesis
Gods accept the last of the three theses as quietly as they accepted the first
two. Not sure any of us could handle a
set-back when we are so close to closing this chapter and finally moving
on. Not sure the pharmacy will have
enough OTC drugs nor will the liquor stores have enough wine if that happens,
either.
Here’s to the Thesis
Three. May any and all gods have mercy
on our overly-edited souls.
