Thesis the End

And this is what I've learnt...

1. You can never start too early.
2. Writing helps the thought process, so start writing early.
3. You actually have to read the books you borrow from the library to be able to start writing early.
4. When you start writing early, you will realise how many more books you have to borrow to substantiate and beef up your arguments.
   
5. Yes, you can write the remaining 4,000 words in 3 days. But can you write the remaining 4,000 words and annotate, format, paginate, proofread, edit, double-check citations, photocopy documents for the appendix and print everything within 3 days??
6. ...By the way, did I say you can never start too early??
   
7. There is no greater cause of insomnia than sheer desperation.
8. It is possible to keep going, at full energy, for 60 hours with 3 and a half hours of sleep and 3 meals, if you're desperate enough.
9. The hangover from going for 60 hours with 3 and a half hours of sleep and 3 meals is unbelievable.
10. It is rather embarrassing, if you have been placed on the Dean's List seven times and won two book prizes, to be the last person in the department to submit a thesis.
11. It is even more embarrassing, if you've been avoiding your honours classmates for weeks to focus on your thesis, to be the last to submit and find out that everyone else finished days ahead of you...with 2,000 more words and thrice the number of endnotes and references to boot.
    
12. And it will be unbearably awkward to answer to your classmates, your parents, your brother, your girlfriend, your supervisor, and all other faculty members if your tardiness eventually costs you the class of honours they are all expecting you to get.
    

Having said that, there is a perverse excitement in turning in a sub-standard thesis, because I can't be sure of my class of honours till I actually find out. It's not a shit thesis, no. The argument is fresh and valid, but it's just not well-developed or sufficiently substantiated in some parts.

I guess the best way to sum up my current feelings is like this. When my girlfriend finished her thesis last year (and a good couple of weeks before her deadline at that!!), she said it felt like "giving birth". When a friend heard I'd finished mine, he too commented, "does it feel like giving birth"?

My answer: no, a much more fitting analogy in my case is that I was RAPED, couldn't decide whether or not to ABORT the baby, eventually decided to KEEP it but fell down a flight of stairs and MISCARRIED. That bloody mess I extricated from myself with a pair of forceps? Yep, that's my thesis. I hope you like it, dear markers.