Taming the thesis monster

Yep, I've been silent. Uncharacteristically silent.

Well, dissertations are socially alienating things. I personally believe that these evil, malicious extraterrestrial beings (disguised as humans of course) that are in charge of the education system in Sri Lanka  created this final year dissertation paraphernalia solely to depress the living hell out of long suffering students or perhaps maybe, if they are really lucky, to derive the satisfaction of seeing the hapless students toast their own heads in ovens.

The conclusion of my thesis- You really can finish off a dissertation in three days. But you'e got to be as brilliant as me ( ahem) for that..................... or have the same don't-give-a-flying-fuck attitude.

The dissertation is basically a parasite that feeds off your pain. Its nerve wrecking. You walk around looking like you've just got up from a 100 year old sleep (you can practically see cobwebs hanging from your nose when you get up once in a while for a trip to the bathroom), you don't eat unless some food 'happens' to fall withing your grasp. You don't bath, your hair resembles a 70's hairdo gone bad, you don't change your cloths, your room resembles a war torn area  that has been struck with a paper cyclone. Also, a dissertation may cost somewhere between 8,000- 12,000 bucks. Not counting the energy spent running around like a mad woman to cater to the absurd needs of those in charge of the education of our youngsters ;  Black leather hard-bound, gold engravings, lollipops to suck on while they read your thesis, etc.

Then there are the sleepless nights. The sleepless nights of actual writing of the dissertation and other sleepless nights of WORRYING about writing the dissertation. Sunlight and fresh air burns you at this point ( yes, you have become a workaholic vampire. Not the kind that SPARKLES in the sun mind you)  that you wince when someone ( usually your dear concerned mother) comes and opens up a window to let in some air and you screech your precious lungs off until she closes it again and leaves you alone to revel in your dark, somber paper-tornado-struck cavern of a room. Then there are the tortured nightmares. Nightmares of the computer crashing just minutes before you finish getting the printouts, opening the dissertation documents and finding that nothing had been saved, hugging the finalized dissertation to your chest but getting hit by a truck on the way to the department just seconds before submitting. And all this for an important looking big black book that nobody would probably even read.

And then comes the communication center crisis. You haven't slept for a week and you've finally managed to reach the conclusion of your seemingly never ending Anaconda of a dissertation and you are on the verge of reducing to a pulp anyone who so much as dare to snap their fingers in your presence.  All you need to get is some Sinhala typing done for the Annex of the thesis and wrap up this sordid nightmare once and for all so that you can breath without ever thinking about how Baudelaire contracted syphilis or how many women he banged before he said adios ( Or aurevoir). The communication women look you up and down as if you've suddenly sprouted two heads and seven arms (at this point you actually DO start wondering if you've biologically transformed in to a creature with two heads and seven hands as we humans evolve according to our practical needs) and spit out a couple of razor sharp words to the effect that you will have to wait. So you wait and you wait and you wait and finally you ask them again and they give you this smoldering ( yes, smoldering) look as if you've asked them when they've last had their periods. At this point, vivid images of death by unimaginably horrid ways come to your mind and your fingers are just itching to close in on their acne-marked necks just below their frowning faces, but you control yourself, out of pure love for your dear dissertation that has to be submitted before the police could pin you down for murder. Apparently, writing a 100 page dissertation is a lot more easier than getting the Annexes typed out by these horrible, horrible people.

World is full of evil, malicious women and most of them live in communication centers. Particularly in a communication center called Echo in the heart of Kiribathgoda. That very unpleasant,.highly disgusting experience deserves a whole different post for itself.

The point is, writing the dissertation is peanut butter and jelly sandwiches compared to the whole printing /binding/ engraving/ putting up with attitudes paraphernalia that follows afterwards. Why go for all the trouble of getting print outs, binding, gold engraving when one can simply submit the soft copy of the dissertation itself? Isn't that how things are done in reputed universities worldwide? Why are we any different? Do we have plenty of time to scamper around, balancing large piles of printed paper on our heads or is it that they think that we have separate treasuries stuffed full of cash at our homes in which we like to swim around in our spare time? Either way, it really is a mammothic absurdity this binding, printing, engraving lot. Shouldn't the students be concentrating more on the actual CONTENT that goes in to the thesis rather than wasting three or more precious days in trying to get the shallow exterior of the thesis up to scratch?