There, I've said it upfront and point-blank. It's a conclusion I came to couple of days ago, after achieving another milestone in my thesis-writing journey: the submission of the third and final draft of my thesis. Somehow, the intensity and stress of the past few weeks managed to inspire some soul-searching and reflections on thesis-writing. Now that I can finally take a brief breather, it's time to gather all those fragments of thoughts and piece them together into a coherent whole, so that I have something to refer to for those moments of doubt during the remainder of my thesis-writing journey.
Some days, everything is smooth-sailing and the words flow freely from my mind to the Word document before me. Other days, all that I learnt, researched and studied become such a frustratingly incoherent mass in my mind that I despair and come close to giving up. Do you know what the most challenging part about thesis-writing is? In my view, it is gathering all your ideas, the theories and concepts you learned and the research you did into an articulate, coherent and concise 16 000 word (NOT as long as it seems) long whole. Only those with true grit and passion need apply.
Despite the love-hate relationship, I've come to realize that this thesis means so much to me. It is the most personal and close-to-heart academic endeavour I have ever undertaken. To begin with, this is my thesis. I set out with a puzzle that I hit upon and wanted to investigate, put in a great deal of blood, sweat and tears into the investigation, and eventually came to my own conclusions. Of course, I received a great deal of support, love and feedback from the people around me, without which I would never have made it this far. Otherwise this is an independent study. As my supervisor keeps telling me, I'm in charge. I guess it's therefore natural that I want to succeed in an endeavour that is largely my own undertaking and responsibility. Attaining that First Class Honours is certainly a very attractive goal and a powerful motivation.
There is a deeper and more important driving force than the attractiveness of the end goal, however. The thesis-writing journey itself is also highly personal. I wonder if anyone else who has ever written a thesis or is writing one felt that they discovered more of themselves and their abilities in the course of writing? I did, and it was a startling revelation when it struck me how much I have achieved along the way. I used to be pretty weak in the Chinese language subject as a student in Singapore and I once had this Chinese tutor during my primary school days who gave up on me. Here I am today writing a thesis that involves reading and translating Chinese media sources. I used to get really bad grades for the Literature subject when in secondary school and decided not to pursue Literature as an 'O' Level subject as I felt sure I was hopeless at it. Here I am today writing a thesis that involves in-depth discourse and semiotic analyses to examine the visual nature of my sources and the language they are embedded in. I used to get weak grades for the English language subject in secondary school and my mother had to see my teacher to discuss my poor English grades. Here I am today actually writing a full thesis and I have been told several times along the way that I speak and write very well. The point of saying all this is to not toot my own horn, but highlight how thesis-writing brought out abilities and strengths in me that I thought never existed to begin with. Perhaps I'm a late bloomer? Whatever it is, thesis-writing has taught me a lot of myself as much as I have learnt about my topic of interest, making me much more confident in myself now.
The thesis-writing journey is coming to an end so soon, and things are actually looking bright. I received feedback on the third draft this afternoon, and my supervisor congratulated me on a job well done, saying that I have made a major improvement from the last draft and only minor tweaks are needed now. He even said that if I like, I could actually turn it into a journal article (after making the necessary tweaks of course)! This has got to be the best feedback I ever received in my life. To hear that my work has improved so much that it is almost journal-worthy makes all those sacrifices worth it, and more importantly, I have renewed faith in myself and my abilities. All that needs to be done now is to stay focused, make the necessary changes and keep believing till the very end.
Yes, I really enjoy writing my thesis.
