Thesis Hell

The thesis. It hangs over the head of any senior, and for most of us, it's a second-semester project that seems to suck away the joy of a pending graduation and liberation. It's time-consuming. It keeps us from going out. It makes you drag your feet reluctantly to Sterling Memorial Library to leaf through books that haven't been checked out since your grandparent's honeymoon. But there's no getting around it, so you go.

There is one vindication to going through the hell of writing a senior thesis--though it certainly doesn't apply to everyone--and that is the satisfaction that comes from doing original research and ending up with a piece that is far longer than anything you've ever written. Ever. It takes a full eight minutes for my printer to spew out drafts of my essay. It's LONG. And it has your name on it. And if you've been in as much time as most Yalies do, chances are that it's not complete crap. Dare you admit it? That your senior essay is actually something you can be proud of? Most Yalies are too busy complaining about the work they've put into it that they never get around to saying that they might be writing on a fascinating topic. I'm lucky enough to be in the Mellon Forum at Trumbull College, where seniors present their thesis topics and the progress on their research throughout the year. It's amazing what these kids are doing. One of my friends is writing about shipwrecks in colonial America. Someone else's essay is on his labwork on blazars and the impact of blazar research on theories about the universe. Another girl who is majoring in microbiology will be presenting her work on a certain enzyme that may lead to a breakthrough in the treatment of breast cancer. (My favorite talk was by my former-suitemate Leslie--she's a linguistics major and used her time during the Forum to give us a brief and super-informative lecture on linguistic theory and the intricacies of speech recognition, complete with demos of distinct syllables in Hindi that non-Hindi speakers can't tell apart.) Sure, it's a pain in the ass and Sterling isn't anyone's idea of a happenin' place to spend spring break, but all too often we fail to acknowledge that some of the essays getting churned out by soon-to-be-graduates are actually worth reading.

Not that I think mine is worth reading--but I'll tell you about it anyway because it's eaten away too many hours of my precious, senioritis-infected for it to remain unmentioned here. So like I said in my entry yesterday, I'm an East Asian Studies major with a concentration in China. I studied Chinese for six months in Beijing followed by another summer in Taipei, so theoretically, it's getting pretty good--which is why I'm required by the major to write on primary sources in Mandarin. (Did someone say that sucks? Oh, that must've been the voice in my head.) To get around having to do my entire analysis in Chinese, I decided to pick a topic that would let me work in Japanese too. Add in a slight interest in education, and voila! My topic: a comparative study of Chinese and Japanese high school history textbooks. Oh, and it'd be way too arduous to write on everything they have to say, so I picked one world event that has sparked the anger and indignation of people on both sides of the Japan Sea for the last sixty years: the Nanjing Massacre. Cheery stuff, let me tell you.

The summarized version of my essay is that Chinese and Japanese textbooks write about the Nanjing Massacre (in fact, about pretty much everything that happened in the 20th century) very differently and it's problematic for the future of Sino-Japanese relations that these two East Asian powerhouses can't find some historical common ground. So much of the antagonism behind the recent deterioration in their relationship is based on disagreement over Japan's conduct during World War II, and it's not ever going to get better without an active effort on both sides to teach kids the whole story. Luckily, there does seem to be some progress being made--historians from Korea, China, and Japan came together to jointly publish a modern history text entitled History for the Future in 2005 (pictured above). Even so, the tide seems to be against cooperation and trust when it comes to Japan and its Asian neighbors. I sympathize with both sides, and conclude my paper with recommendations on how relations may be improved.

There you have it--my essay in a nutshell. If it sounds interesting and you want to read it, shoot me an email because I am in dire need of feedback on this baby. (My senior essay advisor has been immensely helpful but seems slightly too caught up in my inability to use the semicolon properly. But she also didn't know the difference between the fire-bombings of Japan and the atomic-bombings of Japan, so maybe I shouldn't get too upset...) It's due April 20th, and until then the guillotine will be glistening above my head.

And to all of you seniors out there who are still slaving away...g'luck! It'll all be over soon.