Thursday, February 07, 2008

and in conclusion. . .

I have just pulled another all-nighter. I'm sure my therapist and my mother won't approve, in that order, but I'm afraid it was necessary. Apparently my best thesis work happens when I'm not fully cognizant of what's going on.

Everything is now drafted, with the exception of the conclusion. You know, that part where I talk about what I mean by all those pages before. The part where I tell you you should care about all those pages before. The part where I. . .

It's not just tired. It's that I'm not sure what all this amounts to, other than graduation. I know I still feel passionate about contemporary American poetry, I still love these poets, and I think more people should read poetry, but that is a bunch of very general statements only loosely associated with the seventy pages or so that I'm ready to ship off to somewhere far far away.

How does this conclusion thing work, anyway? The Chair has told me to leave all critics behind and write as if I were talking to a class--if I were talking to a class about my thesis, it would be full of bizarre half-funny comments and warnings that graduate work can kill.

But hey, I just used the subjunctive, so I guess grad school taught me something.

No, wait. That was kindergarten.

6 comments:

Anna B said...

hahaha! who knows what the thesis means. and tell the chair that conclusions are way overrated. if they don't get what you said by the time they get to the end, then shame on them. that's how i feel about conclusions.

j/k. mostly. i'm just pumped for sanfran and the end of thesis party.

ambrosia ananas said...

Good work getting it written.

And I wish my kindergarten had been so informative. : )

Th. said...

.

Seriously---kudos to your kindergarten teacher.

Katya said...

For your conclusion, take a page out of Alma. ("And thus we see . . .")

Ginsberg said...

I think my conclusion involved comparing baseball to Romeo and Juliet or some half-cooked, half-crazed rubbish like that. I'm not sure if my committee members really even read it. Anyhoo, mostly don't sweat it, and just feel good for getting this far.

Aislin said...

What would you tell *me* if I was in this imaginary thesis-concluding class?

 

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