It was thesis day today, and I'm pleased and a bit proud to be able to announce that when I left the office at 4:30 every single student had turned in his or her thesis. There was one surprise -- a detail-oriented and responsible student who somehow managed to forget that she was supposed to turn in more than one copy -- but it was otherwise utterly smooth sailing.
I'm pleased because writing a reasonably coherent 60+-page research paper at 22 is not a small achievement, and they've all achieved it. I'm proud -- and it's a fairly parental kind of pride -- because I know that my deadlines and feedback helped each of them make it to the finish line. And that's really cool.
It's interesting to note in passing that the two last theses to come in were two of the three that were the farthest along when I read drafts ten days ago. Since one of those students is my advisee, I know that she was working her tail off all week; and I'm betting that the other student was doing the same. The department assistant told me that the the two students who turned them in first had, in fact, had a pact that they would do so. I found this sweet but also strange, that turning in your thesis earlier on the day it was due than others should be a goal. There are all different kinds of writers in the world -- and while most of us need the adrenaline rush of the deadline, it varies pretty widely how closely we actually want to cut it. For a whole variety of reasons, I've been willing to cut it closer and closer as I've gotten older.
It's been a rocky road with these nine students. I wrote about this -- obliquely and not-so-obliquely -- last semester. The group as a whole never really cohered, and I can see this as clearly as ever as I read their acknowledgments: there was one group of three; another group of four; and then two others, more on their own. While that's inevitable, I wish that they had played more nicely with one another over the course of the fall; and while I have a sense of having done some good things with this seminar (and it was one of the harder teaching gigs I've had), I have an ongoing sense of failure about not having found ways to make the big group work.
My own undergrad thesis advisor joked with me at one point that spring that on the day theses are due you would find faculty in the department office looking over the acknowledgments their students had written. And it's interesting how true that is, now that I'm on the other side. But, you know, we do work hard for our students; and it's really nice to be thanked.
A student once pointed out to me that *all* pride (in others) has a parental note to it. I use the term a lot more carefully now...
Posted by: meg | 05 April 2008 at 10:19 AM