11.21.2009

Bureaucracy

Turns out that writing, recovering, editing and defending a thesis is not enough to earn you the right to say "I turned in my thesis." There is a process, a very specific process, one that involves formatting guidelines and $80 worth of paper, just so three copies of this document will sit in a basement unread for eternity.

While I sloughed through the graduate office's bureaucratic rigmarole, I did manage to find a few "little joys." For example:

1.) I had to come up with a title and abstract for my thesis. I took this to mean I should come up with a catchy title for my memoir and a snappy synopsis for my imaginary book jacket, clever little hooks that will get my non-existent hardcovers to fly off the shelves and on to the NYT Best Seller List. But there was just one problem: Somehow in the four years I thought about writing a memoir, I never gave much thought to what I would call it.

So strapped for time, I went the cheesy route.

In the vain of all the current memoirs on the shelves--Leaving Dirty Jersey: A Crystal Meth Memoir; Same Kind of Different As Me: A Modern-Day Slave, an International Art Dealer, and the Unlikely Woman Who Bound Them Together; and Going Rogue: An American Life--I was very inclined to use a colon.

Failed ideas:
- Project Runaway: One Woman's Determined Journey to Escape Paradise for the Recklessness of Hollywood
- How to Regret Your Twenties: A Guide to Excessive Drinking and Avoiding Your Mother
- Wah!: A Twentysomething's Refusal to Grow Up

The Winner:
- Under the Covers: A Memoir of Reluctance

(Sadly, this really was the best I could come up within a week.)

2.) In a thesis, anything copyrighted that's quoted or described in detail needs to be cited. I had two things listed on the "Works Cited" page of the most important paper of my academic career:

- Motely Crue. “Girls, Girls, Girls.” Girls, Girls, Girls. Elektra, 1987. MTV. 11 May 1987. Music Video.

- Crane, David, and Marta Kauffman. "The One with the Jam." Friends. NBC. 3 Oct. 1996. Television.

3.) When you turn in your thesis, you get a mug that reads "I just turned in my thesis." No joke. I filled it with beer and took four aspirin.

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