It’s over now– or almost, anyway. One more event– an exit interview with my professor and the program director– and, possibly, edits after that, and then I’ll have done everything I can do to earn my Master’s degree.
It’s been a long time coming.
Emma Grace asked me on our way to school the other day, “Mom, how long did you work on your thesis?”
As with most of the questions my children ask me, this one didn’t have a simple answer. It all depends, you see, on when I actually “began.”
Can I safely say I started on the project in the early spring of 2006? That’s when I, fairly nervous and even terrified, asked my brilliant professor — and he is, hands-down, one of the Smartest People Ever–if he would be willing to supervise my thesis project. I was delighted when he agreed and actually seemed pleased to have been asked.
But that wasn’t really the Real beginning, because I hadn’t decided (rather, We hadn’t decided) what the project itself would be. I had already abandoned submitting my novel as my final project, a decision that Seriously Complicated my life and was simultaneously Very Wise. But in the absence of that possibility, I Had No Idea what I would do.
So perhaps the start of the thesis project came in late spring 2006 when I met my professor in his spare and pleasant office, the one with the mullioned windows that give onto views of Duke Chapel. That’s when we decided that I would write about Joseph and His Brothers, a terrifically long and intimidating novel whose author I knew well from other studies with this same professor but which, at that point, I had never laid eyes on but which, as luck or Providence would have it, had just been newly translated into English by the venerable John E. Woods. (And I realize that that sentence is also terrifically long but that’s what reading German novelists can do to you).
Or maybe it started here, with plans to read the book during the summer of 2006. In the end I wasn’t able to manage that: the curriculum I was simultaneously writing in preparation for my return to teaching that fall took A Lot of my time and mental energy. Which meant that I did most of my Mann reading over the course of last school year, with doubled and tripled efforts during the later spring.
So I guess that I really started my Master’s thesis in the middle of May. That’s when I wrote and submitted and had approved my thesis proposal. It was right before the end of school (May 31st) and our trip to Kenya and Tanzania (June 1-16), and it launched the project in earnest.
Research started later in the summer, after we’d returned from Africa and after (finally) I recovered from the trip. But what with erratic travel schedules and other commitments, my professor and I couldn’t begin our regular bi-weekly meetings until August. And of course the start of a new school year always has its own consuming aspects, which meant that I didn’t really begin the actual writing until sometime in September.
So that’s when I started the thesis: September. That’s when I began spending Every Saturday and Almost All My Evenings working on research and writing. That’s when, unwilling to be separated mentally from the thesis project, I carried the 3+ pound book with me in my backpack up Mt. Mitchell. You can think that was stupid if you want to.
But somehow, even with all those Saturdays and weeknights committed to this project, I still needed more time. And this took the shape of two days off of work, during which I read and wrote and read and wrote some more. It also took the shape of the entire fall break from school, during which my family went to the mountains and I stayed home and read and wrote and read and wrote– you guessed it– some more. And when, the weekend before Thanksgiving, I finished the Last Chapter, I thought I was Nearly Done.
It was not to be. I worked most of the day on Wednesday and most of the day on Thanksgiving (thanking God for a husband who Loves To Cook!). And after our guests left on Thanksgiving night, I returned to work at ten p.m. and worked until four a.m. I got up at 8 a.m. and worked until 10:30, at which time I e-mailed it to my professor. We had a last meeting on Saturday and I worked on the thesis until 2 a.m. on Sunday morning. And then, Finally, I made last edits on Monday afternoon, printed it out, and hand-delivered it to the program office at Duke.
So I think, when Emma Grace asked me “How long did you work on your thesis?” my answer should, in fact, be Very Simple: A Long Time.
I loved the project. Loved it. I did not love it All The Time, but I Loved it. And I’m not entirely glad it’s over.
Crazy, huh?
Patience is all– an equanimity that, should a man not possess it by nature, must be wrested from a nervous constitution given to despair. Endurance, stamina, perseverance is all, and every hope bears the name “time.” “Give me time” is one’s prayer to the eternal gods “and it will all be done.” — Thomas Mann, from the Introduction to Joseph and His Brothers
