Dissertation woes
November 3rd, 2009
Oh blast! This thesis writing business is really beginning to rile me up now. Because, you see, it's a whole lot of charade to begin with. Like any sort of bookkeeping, because that's what it really is, it's one daunting, limitless ocean of morbidity that is wetting my feet as I take my first steps with the intention of wading across. And to reach the land on the other end, I have but a skiff with a spatula for the oar. There is no humor involved and I am not allowed to make it interesting. I cannot write sentences like, 'While the academic world was nestling in the arms of its own complacency, it was hardly aware of what was brewing in one man's mind.' I have to be chronological and am not allowed to keep the best for the last - I cannot build it all up towards one nerve racking, palpitating sentence, 'Yes, my dear Mr. Hamilton - you've had it all wrong. Please have a seat for the shock of it all may be too hard for you to bear.' There is no room to exaggerate, to metaphorise, to embellish, to dream, to give voice to the passion that one does indeed feel sometimes in academic research.
In the golden lightning
of the sunken sun,
O'er which clouds are bright'ning
thou dost float and run,
Like an unbodied joy whose race has just begun. (-P.B.S.)
No, I am not allowed to do any of it. Rather, I must worry about how to expand the amount of my work so that it at least appears as if my last 4 years have not been completely squandered. At 66 pages currently, and with hardly a hope of going beyond 150 (doublespaced mind you), my contribution hardly appears a gushing spring of knowledge. It's more like a gentle, dying trickle from a broken tap in the middle of a parched desert. And Masters students routinely clock 200. I think I'll have to fiddle with the spacing, and tinker with the font, adjust the margins, and tamper the text in order to post such gallumphing figures.
Maybe I am exaggerating but that is one peeve that I have with the whole process of 'growing up'. There is something behind this that I feel strongly about and often feel saddened by. It's that we do not exaggerate often and well enough as we grow up. This ability of making things up from thin air, adorning it with beautiful false ideas, coloring it with dazzling deceitful colors, it not only leaves us to some extent as we grow older, it also suffers as we develop a condescending attitude towards it. And as this vitality shrinks within, we are left predictable, and immobile, all our ideas fossilized into useless sediments - just reminders of times gone by. And some of us go on to produce Ph.D. dissertations so bland, it's more fun a watch a glacier melt.
I totally understand , it sucks . Thats what happened in my Masters Dissertation. Include a lot of figues , graphs , charts and include all the results in appendices. You will definitely go beyond 100.
I bet, you should have a joined a cross-discipline program between literature and Physics 🙂 The last para so beautifully brings out a vedic Indian deep down you - the urge to leave the reader wonder where the history ends and myth begins!!!
I once u used the word "Paradigm example" in one of my papers and to date, my advisor lectures me for using such exaggeration.... Technical writing is simple, but not so simple for us simpletons 🙁
Hang in there. Write this big novella that will most likely never be visited by anyone anytime in the future 🙂 Sorry, that was mean 🙂
@Devendra: You obviously have low expectations of me :). Even when the pickings are almost non-existent, I was still expecting 150!
@Himanshu: Maharaj, you should read Wilde's decay of lying, seriously. I have a link in my link section. You will love it...
@'A Fan': Thanks a lot for being one :). It's always easy to make things complicated. It's complicated to make them simple. And we all naturally suck at it.
@Parth: If only I was sure of it... I would have copied the book of genesis after the Introduction :).
Lets say everybody goes through this pain and be done with it. I found one section where you can show your self, creativity etc. It is called acknowledgment. I filled it with sarcastic jibes at my adviser, faculty members and classmates. And to top it all I dedicated the whole thesis to soccer. Luckily my adviser knows me too well and I got my degree.
As a solace, you can try the same, and given your verbal skills you will do heck of a job. I hope your adviser and committee like it but if not then what’s in a degree! Big deal who cares! Be a man!
PS: I know the last sentence is totally irrelevant.
Ad-Vice noted :).
Well written Ankit- I think you captured the essence of this PhD. business. Amazing to think English is your second language... Good luck tomorrow, maybe you can use it as an opportunity to, as you put it, "exaggerate, to metaphorise, to embellish, to dream, to give voice to the passion that one does indeed feel sometimes in academic research."
Thanks man! I'm sure, at this point, you would understand the feeling the best. I hope to see you during the presentation and attend yours. I'm sure that like everything else, you'd simply ace it! And as far as exaggeration is concerned, what would I be without it? 🙂