Completing My 26-Mile Thesis

Hey Steph,

Remember that one time that you shared a blog with your sister? Yeah, that was really cool. It's nice having an online missive conversation with another person instead of retaining a one-ended conversation the way you have for the last several weeks. Well, guess what? I'm back!

Yes, the terrible monster who shall not be named, but I like to call "my thesis, urgh," has relinquished its control of me. I am safe and have arisen from this hard-fought battle of long hours, tired typing fingers, and pillow screams of anger as a . . . MASTER.

What's that?

Oh, you've been dying to call me Master Amanda? Oh, go right ahead.

Ok, really, you don't need to ever call me that. But I would like to take this one self-indulgent post to plant a landmark in time, and like pretty much everything else I let swirl around my head, the following thoughts have general application.

Steph, I started this journey to complete my master's four years ago. And when I began, I saw it as taking several classes and writing a long paper at the end. The paper was secondary in my mind at the time. Little did I know the weight of that paper on my shoulders, day in, day out, month after month, year after year. (Does the phrase "little did I know" remind you of the movie Stranger than Fiction, also?)

At some point, after I'd actualized just how hard this puppy was going to be, I pulled up the first 40 pages of my thesis and realized: "None of this matters. None of it. No one cares what I am writing."

It was a pretty low point. The only thing that kept me going was knowing that if I quit, I'd regret it the rest of my life.

Then I realized that maybe I was under false pretenses that the information I collected in my thesis mattered. Maybe I was just running a marathon. To the outside world, it really doesn't matter that an individual runs a marathon. I mean, do we celebrate when someone traverses 26 miles in a car? Not really. There's nothing important in the actual coverage of 26 miles on foot. But we still respect people that have run the marathon. Why?

Courtesy Sangudo

Well, marathons are hard.

See, we're not impressed by the fact that they moved their body from point A to point B. We're impressed that they diligently trained to be able to run a little further day after day. We're impressed that even with all that training, they fought the temptation during the race to give up and finished the marathon anyway. We're impressed at their strength and their persistence and their emotional and physical stamina.

So maybe writing a thesis is more about the diligence and the persistence and the problem-solving that occurs within the confines of a single brain because no one else understands the problem in the intimate way you understand the problem. Maybe it is about doing something hard and mostly alone.

I guess this is the pep talk I would have given myself in those moments of exhaustion and nihilism. And maybe it's the pep talk I'd give to anyone in the middle of accomplishing a hard journey:
You're going to feel small. You're going to feel inadequate. You're going to feel weak or dumb or a faker among experts. But maybe that's the point: Imagine the feeling of completing this journey when you felt that way the majority of the time.

I've felt it. It feels pretty great.

master's degree: a certification that an individual knows more than anyone else on the planet about something nobody cares about

Cheers,

Amanda, M.A.

P.S. I promise to never mention my thesis again--ever. :)