It's Time for the T-Thing

IT is the first day of August and I have not done any work on my thesis (hereafter referred to as the T-thing, for the word is too unbearable to say). In fact, I do not have a T-thing. Or an advisor. Or even a clue.

Now summer is not the time to be worrying about academic things, right? Especially when you're not taking summer school classes.

So why does my friend have a stack of books 10-feet high in his office? Yes, these books are for his T-thing. And he's actually read some of them. In fact, we couldn't go out one Saturday night until he had finished another chapter on the ratification of the Panama Canal Treaty. And he spent Friday afternoon--Friday--in a professor's office, discussing the merits of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Barf.

Still, I look at his books and say to myself, I should really have a T-thing. And I go to the refrigerator to get a Budweiser and contemplate whether a debate over the quality of foreign versus American beer would be an acceptable topic.

Why the hell wasn't I a Chemistry major? I've already done the research.

I awake sweating in the middle of the night, having dreamt that I was trapped in the movable stacks of Pusey Library while researching what Milton had for breakfast the day he started writing Paradise Lost. I thought publish or perish only applied to junior professors seeking tenure. I was wrong.

For me, sadly, there is no way out of this T-thing. I am a History and Literature concentrator. That means the T-thing is mandatory.

I contemplate suicide.

I know this is supposed to be the most stimulating academic experience of my lifetime. So why does the T-word put me to sleep?

Of course, not all T-topics involve extended visits to Gov Docs and weekend reservations at Widener Library. Another guy I know--Ken--has also spent the entire summer researching his T-thing. But Ken has managed to get a tan in the process.

Ken's T-topic is the low attendance of Blacks at major league baseball games. Ken decided to convince the Red Sox organization that free season tickets to Fenway Park were absolutely essential to his T-research. The Sox brass fell for it.

So while the weenie has spent the summer reading and I have spent the summer procrastinating (between beers, of course), Ken has spent the summer counting the number of minority fans at Fenway. Which, of course, doesn't distract him from Clemens' curve ball, or anything like that.

Do you think they would accept a T-thing on Bo Jackson?

KEN isn't the only one with the bright ideas. Terry decided to write his T-thing on revival cults.

He actually got a grant to hang out on the beaches of Jamaica and participate in the local culture.

Pass the doobage, man.

One of my Hist and Lit comrades is heading to Puerto Rico to do T-research for the last few weeks of the summer.

I didn't know they had books in casinos.

Luckily, my roommate Meredith has no idea what she's going to do about her T-thing. So when I need sympathy, I know who to call.

But on those days when I am delirious with T-Angst, and Meredith isn't around, I call home. What else are parents for?

"What do you know a lot about? What did you study last year?" my mother asks, as I stress over my T-less state.

Sorry, mom, I don't think they'll accept a T-thing on the Harvard hockey team.

Or would they?