I'm in a state of shock at the moment. As of 10:00 am today, the horrible, monstrous, insidious, ill-formed offspring of my feeble mind, also known as my thesis, which has plagued me like a host of ten thousand camels tap-dancing on my shoulders in combat boots, is finally written. I actually wrote a thesis. I contributed something original, something on a topic which has not been covered, to the field of history. Forgive me while I faint.
Okay, had to get that out of my system - the faint, not the shock. No, I'm still in shock. I honestly never thought I'd be able to do it. I mean, have you ever considered what actually goes into writing a thesis? It is no ordinary paper. No reading a few books and then jotting down what you learned. For my thesis, I read 62 books, countless journal articles, more than 1,000 pages worth of US foreign affairs cables, more than 2,000 pages of declassified OSS documents, several US presidential executive orders, and a couple dozen newspaper articles. Oh, and I did that this semester . . . the same semester that I wrote the thesis. That would be why I am just now finishing the creature.
It's an odd sort of feeling, looking at the stack of pages that I created. I'm not sure yet whether to tenderly regard it as my beloved child or as a grotesquely mutilated fetus that somehow survived to make it out of the womb. I suppose I shall have to reserve judgment until my committee has reviewed the creature.
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