This Is the Thesis That Does Not End

But soon. That day will soon come!

Confession, folks: I never handed in my thesis edits for my MFA. This has been a constant joke on my other blog and on many occasions I’ve attempted to work on it, have other writers help me fix it, give myself deadlines, etc. Still, it remains unedited.

The story behind its incompleteness is long and boring, the short of it being things didn’t go my way and I threw a massive six-year tantrum. But I am currently looking to expand my career options and realized that an unfinished MFA might hold me back, regardless of the many years of experience I have under my belt. So I read through the 25-page paper again to try and motivate myself to work on it.

I was definitely nervous to get through it, even though I think I had read it as recently as a year ago. But I read through it without pausing to make notes. While I was doing so it occurred to me that some sections were really good and sounded very academic. Then I got to two or three sections that were pure garbage: they had nothing to do with the thesis statement and was a cut-and-paste job from another paper. I became upset and frustrated with myself–I really wish I hadn’t been so lazy and taken this assignment more seriously. And another part of me is embarrassed that I handed in such an uneven paper. Professors read this; it had my name attached to it. And it was not my best.

In the end I actually questioned whether or not I am as good a writer as I think.

However, whatever hatred and resentment I may hold in my heart for this paper’s existence, I need to finish it, and desperately want to shut off the perfectionist inside of me that wants to scrap the entire thing and start from scratch.

Courtesy of an AIGA/NY event I attended last week.

Let’s see how this goes.

What’s the name of the monkey on your back?

xoxo,
Raquel Ivelisse