Bake something. Do you know how to make a soufflé? Why not? Discuss, with reference to recent experience(s) both positive and negative.
Tidy your room. But tidy it properly, in a way that will ensure it remains tidy. To what extent does the messiness of your bedroom echo the disorganised state of your mind?
Throw out the majority of your possessions.
Take a YouTube yoga tutorial. Stand at the top of your mat, lift your arms, inhale, bring them down, exhale. Feel the weight of your thesis lifting as you raise your arms up, up, inhale, bring your arms down and step back into Downward Dog position, good, exhale, rock unsteadily on your outstretched limbs, tip forward, knock the laptop off the coffee table and onto the floor. Stay on the floor for a moment. Clutch your ankle. No, I don’t think it’s sprained, either. Maybe put some frozen peas on it? Log onto Twitter and ask for advice.
That one chapter would be a lot better if you included that obscure quote from Virginia Woolf that you don’t quite remember. Re-read all of Virginia Woolf’s diaries.
Have you called your mother recently? Now would be a good time to properly consider doing that, and then to also not do that.
Look at your sources. Look at your sources’ sources. How come you never managed to learn anything about Heidegger? Think about it. Could you pick Heidegger out of a lineup of, say, German philosopher Nazi sympathisers? Probably not. Also, you have never watched Schindler’s List.
Watch Schindler’s List.
Go for a walk, and as you walk, practise mindfulness. Observe the different shades of green in each of the leaves as you pass. What do you think constitutes genius?
Remember that you are being paid by the university to write on a topic entirely of your own choosing. Isn’t that a marvellous opportunity? Meditate on your privilege.
Have you ever considered becoming a florist? Follow this thought by researching different flower arrangement techniques.
Clean the entire bathroom. Even the grouting between the tiles in the shower. Even if you suspect that mould is the only thing gluing the tiles to the wall. Even if it is four o’clock in the morning. Remember that nothing is a metaphor.
Lie down for a minute. Just lie down.
Develop strong opinions about the history of Miley Cyrus’s career using Buzzfeed as your only source material.
Try to reconnect with your personal narrative voice. Write a diary entry. Re-read your old diary entries. What is it that you think connects all of your previous relationship failures?
Check Tumblr for inspiration. Do this for no less than seven hours.
Go for a long drive. Lean into the all-consuming terror that you will somehow accidentally die today. Does this make you feel a) relieved that you will never have to finish the first draft of your thesis, or b) petrified that the world will never know you were capable of much more than an elaborately organised system of Post-its linking your meditations on Lucy Lawless’s strongest roles?
How do you imagine hell? Is it possible that one circle of hell is reserved for failed academics who are forced to spend eternity tattooing the most trite sections of their thesis onto their own body parts? Is it? Read some Dante.
Eat a good, healthy meal. Brush your teeth. Spend forty-five minutes in the bathroom sculpting your hair into an elaborately braided up-do reminiscent of the post-apocalyptic heroine of your choosing.
Highlight relevant excerpts from notes taken throughout the entire course of your undergraduate career. Bonus round: take extreme liberties with what counts as ‘relevant’. What does marine biology have to say on the topic of, say, Chaucer? Visit an aquarium.
To what extent has your parents’ love for you always, in some small way, been conditional upon your academic achievements? Discuss, taking into consideration the events of the Epping North Primary School Macrame Crafternoon of 1995.
Cut your hair. Mourn your loss immediately. Spend one hour Googling ‘hair extensions’ and one hour Googling pictures of Emma Watson, respectively.
Netflix.
Lodge your most recent tax return, last year’s tax return, and all of those other tax returns you neglected. Keep going until you reach 2009, or until you start crying bile, whichever comes first.
Will excessive drinking unleash your creative energy? Who can say?
Give up on everything else and make plans to sell your own brand of hand-made crocheted merkins on Etsy.
Learn how to crochet.
Have you considered what you should write after you finish your thesis? Make a list.
What would your life be like in a universe JUST LIKE THIS ONE, but without having to write a thesis to graduate. Make more lists.
Lay out a blanket on the floor. Arrange all of your research around you in pretty piles. Have a pen and paper ready to create an outline. Let the motivation flow through you. See your roommate’s Gilmore Girls boxset out of the corner of your eye. Lose several hours in Stars Hollow.
BRB sending this to my friend who’s defending next week in the hopes that it makes her laugh rather than cry
You need coffee. Not the coffee that is in your pantry. Different, new coffee. Luckily, coffee shops are good places to concentrate and write.
Go to a coffee shop. Catch up on all the baristas lives. Decide you’re too distracted. Move to the next coffee shop. “Oh hey, girl! You workin’ today?” Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
While I was writing/procrastinating my thesis, my best friend and flatmate was doing the same. We sat at two different libraries, and exactly in the middle of those libraries was this amazing ice cream parlor. Every day, one would send the other a text going “ICECREAM?!”. The answer was always, inevitably: “… ICECREAM!” and we would promptly abandon our work to meet up at the ice cream parlor for ice and shared misery.
At the end of that summer, the ice cream parlor people knew us by name, and would tell us they’d worried when we didn’t show up for two consecutive days.
This is a little bit too real right now…
http://xkcd.com/1403/
Which is to say hang in there and good luck!
I literally just came into my office after conducting a thesis defense and spit out coffee laughing at this. It actually might have gone better if the student had done this.
Awww, sorry about your coffee! And poor student/committee, I have heard horror stories of failed thesis defenses, but luckily never experienced one myself. That sounds rough if a sword would’ve made it better, then again, swords are pretty fun so…
This list is giving me flashbacks… And excessive drinking didn’t spike my creative energy, but I do have some great stories and close friends from it so I’d say it’s a win on the whole.
First of all, best wishes to any and all student toasties out there who have been/are/will be dealing with this.
Secondly, sweet Jesus am I glad to be out of school.
I second your secondly. All in favor?
AYE
Aye!
So say we all.
Motion is carried by acclaim.
Thanks! This is… rough.
Ayeeeee!
I can say all of this also applies to writing novels, (and oh God, especially to EDITING novels), down to the elaborate hair-braiding and wistful musing about the road not taken into floristry.
currently growing my hair longer in anticipation of the editing to come
The hair braiding: I definitely thought I was the only person who did that.
My hair’s too short to braid, but long enough to get in my eyes sometimes/just generally be irritating, so I spent a lot of time working on hairstyles to get it out of my face. Because obviously, as soon as it was out of my face, comfortably, with the right number and configuration of clips and application of product, I would no longer be distracted and would be able to write for hours at a time.
Your usename is the strangely appropriate icing on top of this comment.
Me too! And I figured other people daydreamed about other careers, but I didn’t know I wasn’t the only Imaginary Florist!
YES. My editing is breaking my soul so the internet is the only thing to help. And trimming my toenails too frequently. And the baking, oh the baking.
I am the ghost of thesis future and I am here to tell you: it will end. You will finish and it will not be perfect, but it will be done. You may continue to mold and shape it after you finish or you may ignore it for a while, allowing nostalgia to set in. You should be proud, even though it will not be perfect and even if someone on your committee tells you (contradicting previous discussion) that you aren’t a very good writer and that much of it will need to be rewritten if you want to publish. You should be proud. You will have done the thing. And he can go suck an egg.
I had someone in the year above me warn me that no matter how many times you edit and re-edit your thesis, whichever page you open to when you first open the complete, printed thesis will have a typo. This is absolute truth. It may be the only typo, but somehow, someway, you will open up to that damn typo. Just know that everyone else finds a typo, too.
Also, yeah, that guy on your committee IS a dick, it’s not just in your head.
I had my parents, one who does copywriting and one who teaches writing, both go over my (undergrad) thesis for typos. There were still typos (not many! But some).
true facts, both of them
God SO true. I recently opened up my dissertation (why?) and immediately found a typo.
Mine has a dangling modifier suggesting that the figures I was writing about didn’t have genitals.
I recently discovered a copy of my honours thesis, went ‘oh! I DO have a copy!’ reached for it and…. shut the box it was in and shoved it back to whence it came.
I do have a copy of it on a floppy disk, too. I am considering framing it.
Is the typo a memento mori of some kind? I wonder.
I mean, all theses/dissertations need to be rewritten before they are publishable. It’s not because the author is a bad writer, it’s because it’s a totally different kind of writing. This guy is a shitheel for making you (or uh, whoever we’re talking about here) feel bad about this totally normal and expected part of the process. You should not feel bad about it, any more than you should feel bad about having to wash the dishes after making a meal. It’s just part of the process.
Get out of my life! I am post thesis academic article writing now, and this rings TOO TRUE. I have spent most of my time thinking of things I could do other than this article, such as clickbait-ise a 14 volume book series, and writing about René Girard (RIP) and scapegoating on the internet.
My thesis was on women in late medieval/early modern lit, so my process was:
1. Read the toast dot net.
2. Read the Toast comments.
3. Troll through Early English Books online. Definitely research.*
4. Refresh the toast.
5. Oh hey look, another thing on medieval manuscripts and/or women! This totally counts towards my thesis!†
*no it isn’t.
†no it doesn’t.
Yeah, but EEBO is soooooo much fun it *should* count.
Early English Bake Off?
I’d watch that reality show.
SOMEONE IN TV WORLD MAKE THIS.
ALMOND PASTE EVERYWHERE
I always complain about how hard it is to navigate EEBO/how bad the metadata is… but secretly I love it because it gives me an excuse to read ALL OF THE PAMPHLETS.
“your search produced no results” lol I guess I’m gonna have to browse alphabetically, what a shame.
Right?! The hours I lost stumbling upon a treasure trove of information about bear baiting….
* and that other symbol my keyboard doesn’t have: Yes, they DO count!
Hey, that perishable food you like is on sale. You should make yourself dinner. In fact, you should spend make yourself all of the dinners, to freeze and eat for the next month; it’s what all the money-saving articles recommend.
Watch All Of Yesterday’s Late Night Talk Shows. Cross-reference. Repeat as needed.
Mine was, and still is, read all the internet. Even those opinions that you know are going to annoy you but you read anyway to see if someone is arguing against them well. Don’t miss any of it! It’s important, somehow.
Why my favorite non-writing pastime was omitted–eating peanut butter off a spoon while watching The Golden Girls–is a mystery.
Lucy Lawless best roles thread?
1. Lucretia (Spartacus)
2. D’Anna (Battlestar Galatica)
3. Diane (Park and Rec)
4. Premeptively putting her in Ash vs Evil Dead character here even though she hasn’t really been in any episodes yet.
5. Xena
6. SHIELD
I am my own post-apocalyptic hero-spo, thank you very much.
Crafternoon
And who among us hasn’t had a traumatizing primary school crafternoon?
I’m trying to think which is a more dire indication of what my life is:
1) that this list kind of made me want to go back to school (I’ve been mulling it for a while, it’s unlikely to be any time soon)
2) I spent like a full minute dwelling on the anachronism of ‘crafternoon’ and how that word didn’t exist in 1995
3) Did it? Wait. [spends five minutes googling ‘crafternoon etymology’ before I come to my senses]
It has been 12 years, and I am not even academia-adjacent anymore, and I still have nightmares. Oh, the nightmares.
Me too, me too, even longer , but still……….
As someone who writes papers for a living (e.g. college professor), my one piece of advice is taken from Slavoj Zizek — that is, write a paper by starting out as if you’re just taking notes rather than writing the paper itself. Notes are immaterial and make no difference and are precursors to real writing — that lightens the pressure so that you don’t have that feeling that everything you write must be perfectly cogent and logical. Then later you can string your notes together and revise them into the actual text but by then you don’t have writer’s block and an empty page staring at you anymore.
oh my godddd *weeps softly* thank you
That’s a lot like how I get started – just freewrite (usually along the lines of “ugh why am I even doing this, how can I possibly compare x and y, especially when x is doing this thing while y is doing that thing…”) and then I would accidentally end up with some decent content, at least some of the time.
I write paragraphs longhand in a notebook as they come to me (usually in class). I can then put those paragraphs together later, and it turns out I have several hundred words in the margins of my lecture notes.
NB: Lest I give a false impression, I have not been in school lo, these many years, and managed to escape from grad school relatively unscathed. But the “write a single paragraph when inspiration strikes” method never failed me.
Anne Lamott’s “Shitty First Drafts” is a similarly excellent counter to the academic insistence that one’s thesis should spring forth from one’s forehead like Athena, strong and magnificent and brilliant.
And a complete dirtbag?
(According to Mallory, anyway.)
Also you can be very snarky and silly in the notes, which helps. I wrote my entire dissertation this way.
I once justified watching 4 seasons of call the midwife in 4 days as “useful for dissertation research because it is about women’s health.”
I just watched all 3 seasons of Miss Fisher in like 5 days, though it has nothing at all to do with my thesis. Justified it with, “Well, I won’t get any work done until I know if Phryne & Jack ever kiss, so let’s just get this out of the way.”
My primary sources are (for the most part) sci fi films and TV shows. I first read this procrastinating from watching season 4 of Person of Interest, which I should’ve finished *ages* ago. I can justify binging on mediocre genre TV as it being legitimate source work, and I do.
oh boy I DREAM of finding a dissertation topic that will require me to watch television (although I’m sure that will make me hate the show and procrastinate by doing something else). I don’t think I’m going to be able to make this happen since I’m getting my PhD in health policy & bioethics, but a girl can dream! (I’m considering doing part of my analysis on tweets about abortion, but I think that also might be hell.)
You could always watch ALL THE SHOWS like “My 500-Pound Tumor”, or ALL THE EPISODES of “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant”…
“Health policy & bioethics as portrayed in popular media”.
Well, I adore my thesis, but yes, I’ve paid the price for working with TV shows. I don’t really watch live-action shows recreationally, that kind of escapism just doesn’t work for me anymore. There are days when I’m just unable to watch a single robot (and I never thought that would ever happen). I spend waaayy too much time on tumblr, I’ve listened to every single Welcome to Night Vale episode five times on average, and after doing the American Studies thing for over 7 years I am for the first time in my life actually interested in party politics, because as it happens I do like infotainment. Who knew. I just don’t really watch TV anymore.
And yes, analysing tweets about abortion sounds very interesting, but also like hell. You don’t bychance do posthumanist / cyborg reproduction technology theory things in any way? (I’m half-joking. I need the things, but I am also kind of repulsed by them. I need to go sleep.)
Oh man. Any hospital show will do for health policy and bioethics; I mean, didn’t you SEE that episode of Grey’s Anatomy where Derek tells Meridith not to operate on the woman with the tumor but she does anyway (and does it without him) and then the woman can’t talk afterward?
(Note: someday I am going to teach ALL my classes in terms of bad primetime hospital dramas.)
Excuse me while I just sob in a corner. It’s a bit too close to home, guys. A bit too close to home.
1) you need tea
2) you need toast
3) return to step one for as many cycles as you have teabags.
Then go buy more tea.
At the fancy tea shop that’s across town, because the fancier and more expensive the tea, the smarter the ideas to which it gives rise.
I am trying to decide if I should send this to my own wee grad students or not. Then follow it up with a cruel email that is just: J/K! First chapter needs to be in my mailbox BY MONDAY OR ELSE.
Do it!
I’m so in favor of this plan.
But everyone knows I’m kinda evil.
As somebody who is reading this instead of prepping for a class that begins in 33 minutes…. this is a bit close to home. Alas, eventual completion of a thesis and dissertation did not cure me.
Stare at the stack of unread books and file of unread articles.
Cry.
Netflix.
Rearrange the furniture. It will give you (literally) a new perspective on things. Rearrange the furniture again.
Write five words.
Delete five words.
Eat entire bag of Goldfish crackers.
Discover Kon Mari organization on interwebs. Refold all of the clothes in the house.
Cry.
Repeat.
TOO REAL ;________________;
(anybody want to help me finish this article that’s like four months overdue)
“Will excessive drinking unleash your creative energy? Who can say?”
Stay tuned.
But seriously, this whole piece is totally accurate, and I really needed a laugh today. Thanks, Ren, and thanks Toasties for your hilarious and supportive comments.
Since this has basically been my response to even the shortest of term papers for my entire life from middle school through three years of college, I am terrified of the day when I am confronted with a thesis.
I’ve also only written an undergrad thesis at this point, but my process also included the following steps:
-write about 22 pages in the course of 6 quarters
-“graduate” with an incomplete on your thesis in the promise of finishing it over the summer
– watch Sailor Moon on my phone for four months instead
-frantically begin to write and meet with advisor when new academic quarter begins
-finish the day before it’s due
– have the girlfriend proofread it until 1:30 AM
-print it at Kinko’s at 2 AM
-take the Caltrain and two busses to UCSC to hand it in
-profit
-I mean, don’t profit. Because comparative feminist analysis of two operas isn’t very profitable. But enjoy your finished thesis anyway.
These are all more creative than my alternative while I was thesis-writing, which was play Minesweeper/Solitaire or The Kill Everyone Project (yes I realize the latter dates me).
I still have nightmares and have accepted I always will.
I will always love anything that references merkins.
Look up the definition of “merkin”. Take as long as you need to reflect and come to grips with the inescapable fact that you exist in a reality where merkins are a thing.
Consider whether you can launch a thriving Etsy business making merkins out of a yarn you spin from a combination of dryer lint and cat hair.
This is perfection, I did far too many of these things while writing my thesis.
Start an ill-advised project updating legacy code. (I KNOWWWWWWW)
Spend way too much time driving to hot springs and sitting in them.
Read EVERY YA novel your library has.
Re-read the good ones.
Pick up where you left off as a teenager with Star Wars novels and read all of them. One book in, realize that you need to reread the three immediately preceding the one you started with because you can’t quite remember where Ossus is, or why Kyp Durron isn’t in jedi jail.
How come you never managed to learn anything about Heidegger?
I took a metaphysics course in my wayward undergrad youth, and a good third of the semester was spent on Heidegger. I pleased to report I did not learn a damn thing.
I actively avoid having anything to do with Heidegger. I’ll Aristotle with the best of ’em, I’ll even throw in a bit gratuitous Deleuze, but I won’t Heidegger. My PhD is a Heidegger-free zone.
Suspect that statement in thesis relates in some way to Hegel? Do not want to appear not to have read Hegel. Probably now is the time to Learn Hegel.
Open tabs on Hegel. Put lots of Hegel in Abebooks basket. Do not click Checkout.
Regard array of tabs on Hegel. Create bookmark folder and sort into multiple subsections.
Create more bookmark folders on all the philosophy that you discover while researching Hegel (reading none of it past the first two sentences).
Within 3 hours you have 207 bookmarks sorted into 28 folders. Job well done! You assuredly know Hegel now.
Return to thesis. Suspect this relates to Hegel…..
this is …….. highly accurate
I fell into a Hegel-hole for six months of my PhD, and I think it actually depressed me. I emerged a changed woman.
Tell all of your housemates what your thesis is about. Tell your professors what your thesis is about. Tell that random guy who you see sometimes at labor protests about your thesis–he clearly cares about labor issues, so maybe he’s interested in learning more about refugee employment policy in Jordan. Describe chapters you haven’t written yet, in great detail. Add flourishes, new twists and turns, sequences of arguments. Avoid ever writing any of this down.
Ah, you’re familiar with how I write fiction!
Three years after my thesis was done someone at a party asked me what it was about. “Why no one predicted the end of the cold war” I said. “Oh?” he said “Why didn’t they?”
Friends. I. Could. Not. Remember.
I definitely came here to avoid my thesis and promised myself that I would just read ONE article and, um, here we are.
(In my defense i emailed my advisor on Monday about a topic change and she hasn’t gotten back to me so I don’t even know for sure what exactly it would be most useful for me to keep reading, so…)
I once had a roommate who cleaned instead of working on her thesis. One day I came home to find her cleaning our windowsills. With an old toothbrush.
I do not think I have ever lived in such a clean apartment. It was amazing.
Remember that you are being paid by the university to write on a topic entirely of your own choosing. Isn’t that a marvellous opportunity? Meditate on your privilege.
This is, perhaps, the most brutal and insidious weapon in academia’s arsenal. You’re lucky to be here, lucky to be researching whatever you want, lucky to be spending time with brilliant professors and all of the books you could ever want, just learning. And you’re wasting it all, aren’t you? All of that knowledge, all of that potential, all of that staggering good fortune, and here you are watching Netflix instead of writing what will turn out to be a staggeringly trivial piece of academic literature. You monster.
/flashback
This is a little too real
My work is here is done.
My LIFE.
Even though I’m not writing a thesis (not there yet), this is the black hole that my Impostor Syndrome galaxy revolves around.
the Zodiac of Inadequacy with beautiful constellations such as Memories of Failure, Ghosts of Exams Past, Lost Opportunities, Analysis Paralysis, Under-Education, and the Twins of Doubt and Hubris
the Solar System of Ambition, with the gas giants Just Try Harder, I’ll Show Them, All the Good Scientists Were Super Young So I Need To Get Going, and the smaller planets Hope and Curiosity in the hospitable zone
the faint guiding star Love of the Craft
the dying supernova Your Life Gets Shorter Every Day So Carpe Your Goddamn Diem, sending out its poisonous high energy rays everywhere
uuugghgh………….
(but I’m not really this insecure… or am I? )
Is it weird that all this is doing is making me miss writing my thesis? So much crazed motivation to do all kinds of things!
I might miss sitting in the computer lab writing, but I’m not missing washing test tubes at 1 am… 🙂
Ring your mother who will explain that ‘borrowing’ beads from the primary school craft room will haunt you forever.
You left out ironing the entire contents of your knicker drawer.
This is gold. Hahaha, so true.
Shut down computer and FINALLY open book to start stuying for your exam, fall asleep after 3 pages, wake up, check email, decide to answer it later, but wait, that one looks urgent and you need to check something to answer it. Turn on cumputer…. now you are on this page!
(FINAL oral exam over 2 days with s days of preliminary testing, of all the exams of my Uni time, not like a big thing or anything. (Thesis to be written next year, hopefully.))
All I ever managed while writing my thesis was stare at Reddit . Not commenting, just reading, and occasionally, crying.
Decide your vexillogical knowledge is too limited for one studying medical anthropology. Learn all the flags of the world.
I have boxes in the basement that have been with me for two house movings. I've never unpacked them. I suspect they're just full of spider families by now.
Maybe you can deal with your cupboards of doom by planning another, totally important task, and then procrastinate it by re-organizing the cupboards? Does that work for you? No? Me neither.
It hangs on my wall outside my office cubicle. I am considering bringing my husband's federschwert to my defense, which will apparently now be in August. Three months after I have my baby.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.
Tumblr. Toast. I’m really about to start writing. Nosleep on Reddit. Repeat. Convert circadian rhythms to Martian time. Tea. Toast (the food). Sleep for 9 hours starting at midday. Repeat.
Me too
This is absolutely genius and hilarious and painfully accurate, and I can only imagine that it didn’t get comments because, like me, everyone who found it relevant was deep in the throes of academic panic in mid-November.
It did get comments, but then IntenseDebate flipped out and lost them all.
Oh god I’m so glad to hear that (and I see they’re back now! yey!). I felt like I was in a Twilight Zone episode… “Where IS everyone?!”
Learn to knit. Make a terrible hat that looks like an upside-down flowerpot. Learn to ride a bicycle all the way across campus with no hands. Tell your roommate you have never watched The Princess Bride. Allow her to make you watch The Princess Bride and fall off the couch laughing at the scene with the ROUSes because your dissertation is about obese rats, while she gleefully says “See? SEE?” Read all about the last czar of Russia, even though your dissertation on obese rats has nothing to do with Russia. Discuss seriously with your fellow grad students whether Mary Kate and Ashley resemble Treasure Trolls. Pile into someone’s car and drive 45 minutes to the nearest Trader Joe’s and then spend an hour wandering around filling a cart with frozen chopped basil and dried blueberries and wine bottles that have a giraffe on the label. Have a film festival with your roommate where you watch all the tomato-themed movies you can find (there are two, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and Fried Green Tomatoes, both of which are fantastic.) Clean under the refrigerator and find an avocado pit that appears to have been there since the beginning of time.