Research

While filling up one of the forms for our PR application I was suddenly asked if I did a thesis. After some thinking, I realized that I actually did a thesis while I was in college. I can still vaguely remember the title of my thesis and I simply wrote down what I remembered and having written it down I was mostly sure I had written the correct title. But then I was asked who my thesis adviser was. And then my mind drew a blank.

I spent several minutes trying to search the Internet for clues as to who my thesis adviser was. After much difficulty and effort I finally stumbled upon a name: Noel Torreta.

There was a joke in college that people who got into the University who found the academic requirements too tough transferred to my course: Communication Arts. The school was known for its sciences and in a sense the humanities department was an afterthought. But they did try to make our lives difficult nonetheless.
For the most part we got away breezing through the course with our stock knowledge and innate communication abilities.

Life for the most part was easy. I didn't really remember studying as much as my dorm mates during exam weeks. But then my fourth year came and it was time to choose: do a practicum or choose to do a thesis alone. I chose the latter.

All in all, I spent almost a year doing my thesis. I started my thesis when I took my ENG 10 (Writing Scientific Papers) class and the next semester I formally submitted my thesis based on the research that I had done in the semester before.

In those last few weeks when I had no more classes to attend, I crammed every bit of my time writing and revising my thesis. In those days I had no laptop. I saved my thesis on a floppy disk and I printed my drafts on a dot matrix printer. There was no auto save feature on the word processors. I remember that at that time I was no longer staying at the dorm and I had to commute several times from house to the university every time I had to submit a new draft.

After several drafts and late nights I remember that it was almost time for graduation and the deadline for submitting the requirements was nearing and it seemed like my thesis was nowhere being finished when my adviser finally had mercy on me and decided to give me a passing mark.

That ended the hardest part of my academic life in college. I almost swore to myself a couple of weeks later during graduation that I was so tired of studying that I could not imagine going to school again.

Back to my research. I found out that my old adviser passed away at the age of 55. And the article that spoke about his passing reminded me that I was not alone in the difficulties that I faced. I have forgotten a lot of things from the academic side of my college days, but I will have a hard time forgetting the challenges of producing a thesis by myself. And for that I am thankful.

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