My final year found me miserable. It brought with it the sudden realization that the academic journey that I had started as a confused, scared humanities student six years ago, would soon be coming to an end. The prospect of leaving a place that had become my second home and delving into the uncertain contours of the practical world made me jittery with emotion. However, my senior year was dogged by another hurdle that had to be overcome before I could engulf myself in nostalgia-my final year thesis.
As a freshman, I had entertained the notion of a research thesis with excitement, imagining how I would take the task head-on. How my thesis would be hailed with merit, sending shock waves in the literary world. The whole department would be enthralled with awe. I, I imagined, would work relentlessly to produce a thesis worthy to be published!
Alas! I couldn’t have been far from reality. For when I finally sat down, a blank paper in front of me, a pen in hand, ready to jot down my history making proposal, nothing of literary consequence distantly crossed my mind. And then it finally dawned upon me. By amusing myself with unrealistic fantasies I had done nothing- except amuse myself.You see, I thought an individual had to stand on an elevated threshold of literary maturity in order to fulfill such a task. And after a general perusal of the thesis section at the college library, I found myself increasingly inadequate to accomplish the arduous task of writing and researching a ten thousand words document.
Thus began my final year, inflicted with a sudden sense of incapacity and foreboding. And how I dealt with this mammoth of a task you may wonder; by needlessly prolonging the inevitable. I shrouded myself in a shawl of procrastination. Kal se research shoro karoon gi was a silent promise I made myself every day and which I horrendously broke the very next day. But procrastination kills. It kills the happy moments that life offers you everyday and violates that pure, untainted laughter that such moments elicit. For even though you may shove your worrying assignments and tasks at the back of your mind-they stay there; trespassing and violating your sense of peace. Until you sit down and work.
This is the lesson I will remember and cherish the most that my last year at university taught me. Being scared and daunted by one’s academic requirements is naivety and foolishness. After a late proposal submission and a thesis that I had to withdraw mid process, I sat down and started from the scratch. This time I left my insecurities in a corner, and endeavoured to work unperturbed. There were some glitches along the way and no my thesis has not been a source of awed pandemonium in literary circles. It is in fact far from it. However, it is the best that I could muster, given the time constraint and my initial attitude.
I believe I am taking away a lifelong lesson; a stitch in time saves nine. A work that can be done on time should not be prolonged unnecessarily. I learned it the hard way but I am sure glad that I did. Instead of making memories each day at campus, laughing away the trivial incidents between rounds of samosas and fries and savouring each moment with the class fellows who I would soon be saying teary goodbyes to, I opted to drown in a self-created pit of distress and pity. But I intend to not punish myself again and you should too. And to all those who will be rendering their final year research thesis in the near future; sit down and write, and stop procrastinating
