I just submitted my senior honors thesis to the Schreyer Honors College for approval. Please, hold your applause.
The two-year process of preparation, reading, research, writing, rewriting and editing is finally over. The heavy storm cloud of a deadline hovering over me every day has finally cleared away.
It was a long and arduous process. It is tried and tested by patience, dedication and sanity… repeatedly. There were days I didn’t think I would ever finish it, and days I didn’t know if I wanted to. Now it’s submitted, a week and a half early, and I thought it prudent to reflect on how I got through it all.
I truly could not have completed this project without the help of my wonderful faculty advisor. I came across a lot of students who did not meet with their advisor throughout the process, would only send them drafts for edits, and had to try to pace their writing accordingly.
Having a good relationship with my advisor wasn’t just about gaining his edits on my writing; it was about discussing ideas, revising thoughts, and research questions and being able to reach out with even the smallest grammatical questions throughout the entire process.
Without my advisor, I would have felt so overwhelmed by the process and often still did. Whenever I felt like I was drowning in research terms and trapped in the undertow of self-doubt about my ability to succeed, I would set up a meeting with my advisor.
Being able to share my ideas, worries, questions and half-formed concepts with another person, especially someone so intelligent and dedicated to my success, was like breaking through the tide.
I have been and will forever look fondly on the support system I had while writing my senior thesis.
This was not an easy semester for me. I did not lower my semester course credits to make time for my thesis; instead, I had to add this important project on top of my typical coursework, job and extracurricular workload.
I found throughout the semester that I would sit down to work on my thesis and be pulled in different directions immediately. With such a large project to work on and a deadline in April, it was easy to find other assignments to draw my attention away.
“Sure, I have to work on my thesis, but I have a paper due tomorrow night. Maybe I should work on that instead.”
Sundays became my thesis days. I would set aside the entire day and put my mind into one thing: the thesis. It helped me so much to draw a line in the sand and make sure there was nothing else I had to work on during those days.
I distinctly remember sitting in the lobby of the Nittany Lion Inn at 9 p.m. staring at my computer screen with hate in my heart. I sat down to work at 1:30 p.m. that day and promised myself I would not leave that Inn until I had finished the data and methods section.
Now it was 9 p.m. I was starving, frustrated and growing sick of the blue and white furniture around me for some undesirable reason. It was one of the many times I felt like a failure for growing frustrated with my writing. After staring at variables, graphs, tables and data points, I was starting to lose my mind.
I guess I got through it the only way you get through something: just do it. Looking back on the process and those moments of doubt provides only a sliver of clarity in hindsight. I did it.
Even in the worst moments of overwhelming stress when I truly thought, after all this work, that I would fail, when I thought I couldn’t stare at my computer for another second, when I worried I wouldn’t ever get it done. I did it.
I am so proud of my thesis, and I knew I would be. I knew that once I finished it and had a great piece of work I could look back on and be proud of, it would all be worth it. And it is.