Quit Your Thesis Kvetching!

As a Social Studies concentrator, I committed to writing a thesis before knowing what such a project entails. Now, watching my sister and her fellow seniors churn ’em out, I am beginning to realize how much it blows. That is, I have a great deal of sympathy for those in the throes of their second chapter.

But sympathy only lasts for so long. At some point, after the tears have dried, the advisor has been pacified, and deadlines have been pushed back, this whining business has got to stop. Today, you may bemoan your field research on the migratory patterns of the lesser white-fronted goose, but tomorrow, you’re going to milk those 80 pages for all they’re worth.

You self-promoter, you.

“So you were an Environmental Science and Public Policy concentrator?” asks the suspicious McKinsey interviewer.

“Yes,” says the former-thesis-writer-turned-anxious-job-applicant. “But,” she casually adds, “I did compose a senior essay concerning North Korean defectors, their effects on American industry and, in turn, climate change.”

“It was mainly empirical,” she adds off-handedly. And without hesitation, she is hired as a highly-paid consultant.

So quit bellyaching, and save the complaining for your actual deadline. But when you’re sitting in your cushy office, be sure to give me a ring—I will have just finished my magnum opus on the HMS Iron Duke. It will be mainly empirical.