The thesis: to each his own

In late March, as Princetonians remained sequestered in the bowels of Firestone, one Rice University student seemed oddly envious. "I imagine the senior thesis is a project that begets intense camaraderie across the campus and, by extension, commiseration of the sweetest kind," he wrote in The Rice University Thresher. "Requiring a senior thesis of all undergraduates would provide campus-wide academic harmony." Meanwhile, my babysitting charges' father was appalled that college students would devote even spring break to their academics. "I was in Miami last week and you know what other kids your age are doing?" he asked, shaking his head. "They're on the beach. They're having fun."

Even from outside observers, the thesis evokes strong opinions. Is it an experience of intense self-discovery, or a tedious requirement that should be abolished? Is it the crowning achievement of our academic career, or just a ticket to graduation? "It is a rite of passage, and a silly one at that," a friend wrote in his blog. "It's the Friday precept or the Asian in Ivy. It's diversity training on Wall Street."

Seniors' stances emerged in their varying levels of commitment. An '04 recounted how one classmate worked on her thesis for two years, vowing to produce a tour de force despite admitting she was miserable. "I call this the 'Route to China' syndrome," he told me. "She was digging a hole so deep that the only way out was to dig to the other end of the earth. Or maybe she was just a Woody Woo major in Tower." After disappearing for several weeks, a friend emerged in Frist, dazed and disheveled. "My reality has become one giant Stata-warped hallucination where everything is a variable, I order things in importance of statistical significance, and if you're multi-collinear I'll just beat you up," he grumbled in greeting. Meanwhile, his roommate asked me in all earnestness, "Do you think it's possible to write an un-researched history thesis in three days?"

When we weren't discussing theses we were gossiping about advisers, who ranged from unbelievably wonderful to might-as-well-not-be-there. There was the one who fixed all the verb tenses in every draft, the one who commented on five pages of haphazard notes in seven thoughtful pages and the one who responded to a lengthy thesis proposal in an email two weeks later with one word: "Fine." Some of us never even met with our advisers after the obligatory fall introduction, let alone submitted pages. Others developed close relationships, for better or for worse. "I had this really awful dream involving my adviser and an episode of that Nickelodeon show, Double Dare," one senior confessed, his AIM profile reading: "Hours left — 146."

"I love it when my thesis adviser comments on my looks," said another, who met with him twice weekly. "He'll say, 'you're looking bedraggled today.' Once he said I looked 'snuffly!' " Sometimes, perhaps we got a bit too relaxed. "When you present some written work to your adviser and you accidentally type "count" without the 'o', that's awkward."

Did our advisers realize their power to influence our self-esteem? One senior cried for an hour after her adviser wrote in callous pen strokes, "This is terrible prose," and another was told that he would be lucky to receive a C. "I finally gave my thesis adviser a chapter," a friend announced, interrupting our congratulations to continue, "And then he said that what I thought was the central point of my argument should be a footnote."

To my own disgraceful pages, my adviser kindly responded by writing, "The only shot one has of doing justice to a work one loves is by way of failing to do it justice first — that is, writing, reflecting, getting feedback, revising, trying again. We only ever approach the perfection we dream of, but the only way we even get close is through a series of near misses."

I unfortunately never recovered from that initial failure, and I suspect many of us are disappointed with our final products. We invested months on projects that are, frankly, insignificant. But though our theses may have neither yielded "campus-wide academic harmony" nor allowed for sun-kissed, glowing bodies, we've emerged as true Princetonians.

We lie under the magnolia trees, laughing at people who have class and proudly wearing our Senior Week t-shirts, "Princeton: Only the Strong Survive." We're outside. We're having fun. Julie Park is an English major from Wayne, N.J. She can be reached at jypark@princeton.edu.