I'm sorry, I can't. I'm hanging out with John Doyle Bishop tonight

With classes starting on Wednesday, I am officially about to start my final semester of grad school. Well...my final semester of classes for grad school. My qualifying paper (aka thesis) still has to be written--and there is no telling how long that will take.

One of the biggest drawbacks of my program is the fact that it doesn't build in time for thesis writing. Our counterparts at NYU had a thesis writing class last semester and have something similar in the Spring. But at FIT we are on our own to squeeze extra research and writing in with the regular course load. The result? There are A LOT of "graduates" of my program who have yet to turn in their thesis after one, two, three, even four years after their coursework ended. Once you are out of school and working, I think it gets pretty difficult to stay motivated and finish work on something that has no official deadline. As much as I would like to think "Oh, I'll never end up like one of those people," I'm sure that most of those people made similar vows when they were in my shoes.

While I can't guarantee when it will be done, I look to be in good shape so far. First of all, I got my topic officially approved in December, which makes me one of just two in my class to have completed that step. Second, the nature of my topic forced me to do work over break. At first I was worried that doing something Seattle based was a dumb move. I work in a fashion library in New York, wouldn't it be smarter to pick a topic where 90% of the research could be done at FIT? But the hidden benefit of a Seattle topic was that I had to get started on research while I was there. If everything had been New York based I could have easily talked myself into not working at all (I can do it later, right?).

When I got back from Seattle I took some time off from thesis research. But then, one day at work, I got filled with an anxious desire to work hard and get this sucker done. One thing that motivated me was a short project to reorganize the FIT theses we have in our department. Now they sit across from my desk and I can't help but think "I want mine complete and sitting on those shelves! I want people to read it! I want it to be bound with my name and a little white number on the side!" The second motivating factor was a discussion I had with a researcher about my topic. I get really excited when I tell people about John Doyle Bishop and all the interesting things I've found so far. When work ended that day I couldn't wait to get home and start working.

In the weeks since, I have somehow stayed extremely motivated. I get work done most evenings, and when I look forward to the weekend I get excited imagining how much I might get through. The amount I still have to do is daunting, but I am encouraged by how inexhaustible my energy seems to be at the moment. It is borderline freakish the way I look forward to research and can't wait to be taking notes. Once the semester starts I'll have to put it on the back burner, but I am hopeful that my excitement will motivate me to make time. My goal is to get as much done as possible during the semester, and then finish it over the summer. I can't count my chicks yet, but at the moment their hatching prospects seem pretty good.