Freedom's Just Another Word For Nothing Left to Lose

After working without ceasing for over three weeks on my thesis - and by "working without ceasing," I am talking about getting out of bed, walking to my desk with a cup of coffee, firing up my mac, and opening up the newest round of unending edits from Dr. C and not stopping work until it was time to go to bed...frequently at 3 am - I found out today that I cannot graduate with my friends in August. Here are the things that I thought first:

--my paper really is as bad as I thought.
--I am a severe and incredible failure.
--I am not supposed to be doing this and dropping out would save me a bunch of cash.
--I will never stop receiving edits from Dr. C.
--I am in hell.

After yet another round of hysterics and a good long discussion with three of the greatest people in the world - Courtney, MJ and Gary - I began to look at this completely differently.

I can take my thesis back. It had gotten out of control and I had long ago stopped feeling that I was doing much more than taking transcription. Why this happened the way that it did is not important to me - I know that I have done more than I'm required to do in order to graduate by at least three times. Dr. C said I had at least two theses, possibly three, in my one thesis, but this still, of course, is not quite enough. I don't have the required thesis, completed and defended, and I won't have it by 7/20 which is the deadline. And in order for me to meet that deadline, Dr. C said she would have to have "another day like yesterday," when she spent all day on my thesis...sort of like my past 21 days have been. Guess what I haven't done recently?

--Bathed
--Walked the dog
--Shopped for food
--Laundry
--Cleaned the house
--Written for fun
--Smiled
--Played
--Enjoyed life

Guess what I'm not doing now? Thesising. Guess what else I'm doing? Shopping for other schools. And smiling.

Hater.

If this is academia, I do not want it. I wish to withdraw my nomination for possible scholar of anything.

I hate this. I would rather be ignorant, barefoot and pregnant, voting Republican and losing teeth in a trailer somewhere in Georgia than doing this.

Can One Have Thesis-Induced Illness?

I am revising, revising, revising. I am revising to the point where I no longer know what my point is. I no longer can trust myself to write a sentence, or to place a comma. I am paralyzed by my repeated attempts and subsequent failures to get this right, to say what I want to say. My thesis is slowly and sadly morphing into something which has much less me. I am struggling to continue to find my voice in my writing, at least in this particular piece of writing, and am finding less and less of me there.

Today is the first day in a very long time that I have wept with the frustration of this choice that I made. I would give 10 years off my life to be able to go back and unmake these decisions I have made in the past few years. I would fix so much, and do things so differently, and I would know very little about Women's Studies and even less about warfare and Cindy Sheehan.

I was really proud of what I was putting together, and saying, and now I'm just ready to be done with it. If I could throw in the towel right now, and find a job and start paying on my school loans, I would do it. In a heartbeat. I would have my life back, I would have a break, and oh god how I need a break. I'm exhausted, and I no longer have the time to do laundry, or go to the grocery store, or walk the dog. There is a giant clock ticking in my head, and it's a countdown to defense, and really, I have stopped caring at this point.

T Cubed: Totally Trashed by a Thesis

Will this hell never end?? I swear to God, there are days when I am working so hard on this thing I forget to eat, I forget to bathe, and I would forget to sleep, were it not for the fact that Hon passes my studio on the way to the bedroom, saying, "When are you coming to bed?"

That being said, I still know about Paris Hilton, and her Legal Issues. Being as how my thesis does deal with the media, and Cindy Sheehan the activist, said activist just having thrown in her Activist Towel, I make it a point to keep up with the news. Plus, I am addicted to the news (and not of the E! variety, but more along the lines of Jim) and also, I have a Certain Interest in the News, a/k/a The Boy and where he might soon be calling me from. (Yes, yes, that's gramatically incorrect! I know! I know! This thesis bullshit is really bringing me down) Anyway...I am not particularly enamored with the stars and how they spend their days. But great googli moogli, it's hard to avoid this Paris Fever!! And I fear that perhaps it has infected all the good folk at the various teevee stations! Get my swoonin' couch and clutch the pearls!

And the crowning jewel in the "Stupider Than a Bag of Hammers" crown? Paris herself knows, and calls out, the media for their idiocy:

I must also say that I was shocked to see all of the attention devoted to the amount of time I would spend in jail for what I had done by the media, public and city officials. I would hope going forward that the public and the media will focus on more important things, like the men and women serving our country in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places around the world.

From Think Progress.