thesis.student.life.

two weeks ago i had a little thesis epiphany, and i came to see more clearly what i was actually trying to do. and this not without a lot (and i mean a lot) of help from s who has all this while seemed to know what my thesis is (and should be) about. sigh. that conceptual breakthrough helped push my thinking forward and now the theoretical framework is taking shape, and there're four, five, case studies swimming to the surface. 

i've made a few good friends, all fellow grad students, all tearing our hair out. it's scary how everyone's thoughts and fears are the same - the self-doubts, the imposter syndrome, the helplessness, the lost-in-the-theoretical-woods, the tears. it's a repeated script - there'd come moments when, after a day's work, one finds one alone, and one'd start sobbing. L put it all into perspective one time during lunch, when after doing the requisite who-else's-luckier-than-us-who-can-do-what-we're-doing (delinquent, economically-unproductive, overaged and under-careered students), he asked, 'what's a thesis but a few pieces of paper piled one on another?' suddenly a thesis didn't seem that daunting (yeah ...). but what hammered it home was his profound observation that some students would never be happy until they'd handed in their thesis, by which one'd wonder, 'what's the point?'

it's already week 9 of the semester, and i've come to enjoy tutoring the three classes immensely. old habits are stubborn and many times i get off the rails on some burning issue that gets to me and i have to abruptly halt my hectoring self. apparently the students find that amusing. it's also a tough balance between not imposing one's politics and beliefs upon these fresh minds and inculcating in them a habit of rigorous thought processing. many times i find myself an entertainer, even when the topics of discussions are earth-shatteringly exciting issues of nuclear annihilation and the stuff of great and small power politics and everything else in-between. it's amazing how cynical one can get so young. yesterday i can't remember what, but i found myself ranting off, each sentence louder than the last, i think i was saying something about it not mattering what one's ideological position was but that it was informed by ethics and intense intellectualisation, and that if the university didn't encourage it the university would've had failed them but if they themselves as uni students didn't deem fit to engage in philosophical inquiry then they'd have failed themselves. i have this habit of sitting on desks rather than on chairs and i was almost falling off the edge. but there're also moments reminding you that teaching is still about interacting with a fellow being, like when students email you saying they're sick and have to skip classes, or sharing a personal problem with you, or just hanging around after class to have a chat, taking an interest in your work and life, and then there're the endearingly familiar moments of deciphering atrocious handwriting and appalling grammar, and then the rewarding times when they tell you you're the best teacher they ever had in uni. ah.

i'll be very busy the next four weeks, gotta revise my conference draft, hem up a 10,000 word thesis intro chapter, mark the eighty essays, and pack up my things, once again, into boxes, and continue leading the very nomadic life of mine.