'Bane of existence,' senior theses represent traditional rite of passage

For most seniors at colleges and universities across the country, spring is a time to savor the college experience before diving headfirst into the 'real world.' But for Princeton seniors, spring is marked by countless late nights in Firestone carrels as they struggle to polish their senior theses.

Hyped up on coffee and Wa Bolis at 4 a.m. in desolate computer clusters, many seniors wonder why they must spend their springs slaving to finish their theses. Perhaps they will be comforted to know that they share this experience with almost every living Princeton alumnus.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the University gave high-ranking seniors the option to do independent work, said Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel in an essay outlining the evolution of the University senior thesis for the revised edition of the Princeton Companion, forthcoming from Princeton University Press.

In 1904, departments allowed students to substitute one of their departmental courses for a 'pro-seminary,' in which the students read and discussed independent papers at weekly class meetings.

Under the Special Honors Program (1913-1917), high-ranking seniors completed independent work instead of taking a fifth course. A few years later, the faculty instituted the Four Course Plan. Though the plan did not mention a senior thesis, it required all juniors and seniors to do concentrated work in one department.

Departments soon began to use the thesis to cap a student's academic experience of "independent thinking, investigation and writing." The biology and English departments required the thesis in 1927, and the art and politics departments followed suit the next year. By 1930, many students expected they would have to write a senior thesis in order to graduate.

"It was just a given by the time I was an undergraduate," said John Hall '35, who had to write a combined thesis for the English and French departments.

Roger Brigham '28 was a junior when the English department began to require a senior thesis. "I was going to college, and I did what was expected," he said. "That was expected. I don't remember there being any controversy."

Though music, theater and architecture students had produced creative theses in the past, creative writing student Bob Keeley '51 was the first allowed to write a creative thesis, but only under two conditions: He had to complete one-third of the text by September and in addition write a 120-page preface, analyzing the novel as a form of literature.

"The preface was excellent — the novel is terrible," Keeley said. He characterized his thesis, entitled "Saturday," as an experimental novel about a day in the life of young man. In his preface, Keeley included humorous attacks and caricatures of professors and their theories.

"[My girlfriend and I] went to Florida for spring break. I wrote it on the beach with a typewriter," Keeley said of his preface. "You could sort of make up things and pretend to be an authority on the novel. I didn't even have any footnotes."

Career choices

Though many theses do not extend to the students' later work, some theses act as jumping off points for students' future careers.

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Professor John McPhee '53, who wrote the second creative thesis, a novel entitled "Skimmer Burns," is now a renowned creative nonfiction writer. John Bogle '51 developed the blueprints for his $400-billion financial advising firm, the Vanguard Group.

Michael Rosenfeld '84 wrote a musical murder mystery, "Dead GiveAway," which was later broadcast on cable television. Maria Katzenbach's creative thesis, "The Grab," became a bestseller, and Wendy Kopp '89 laid the foundation for Teach for America.

Despite these success stories, most seniors still view the thesis as a source of unwarranted suffering. Jill Smolowe '77, describing the senior thesis in an article for the Princeton Alumni Weekly during her senior year, called theses "the bane of every Princeton student's existence."

"It starts as a distant and incomprehensible word your freshman year," she continued, "creeping up silently through the middle-class years, only to pounce with a fierce vengeance in the autumn of your senior year."