Abstract Thoughts

Well, I revised everything now and turned it in for her to look at. I still have yet to write an abstract for it, along with putting together a table of contents, acknowledgements, dedications, and of course, finally giving the thesis a title.

Titles have always been difficult for me. I'll either think of one immediately that I love or more frequently, I will put it off until last minute giving some completely lame and uncreative title to the work. My favorite's recently: "Lost in Translation"-- a paper where we interviewed people for my folklore class and asked for idiom's. There were brillant one's like "Don't throw your gun in the cornfield" (or something to that effect) from German, meaning don't give up or abandon ship. It comes from WWI or WWII. That class was last year, please forgive me. My other favorite was "even the iron smith's house has wooden knives." The person who told me this just said that she hears her parents use it (I believe that it's Argentinian in origin?) but she did not exactly know what it meant, hence, "Lost in Translation." Brilliant. I got an A+ on that paper. Also in that class I wrote a term paper I titled "'I Will Follow:' The Passion of Bono and his fans." I suppose that the title could have been better, but compared to some of the other gems I wrote last year, such as, "Is Eric Lott Gay?" or "It's the End of Academia and I Feel Fine" you'd understand why those seem a tad more inspired.

This evening though, instead of dreaming up titles, I will be reading about what you need to put in your abstract. So far, it seems that I ask myself the following questions:
1. What was done?
2. Why was it done?
3. How was it done?
4. What was found?
5. What is the significance of the findings.

Hmm....My answers?
1. I read stuff and then regurgatated it .
2. Because it was the only way to get my degree.
3. Very painfully, through blood, sweat, tears, and dammit, lots of overeating and sleep deprivation.
4. That I didn't focus the project enough. There is no reason for a master's thesis to be over 140 pages (before the bibliography).
5. That I will graduate.

I think that this is not the sort of thing that one should include on their abstract and that I'll have to put this gray matter to work a little harder than that. I think that this project has been one giant mood swing for me that I'm still not settled into yet. When I started this project it simply was just to get my degree to help me in whatever future endeavor I planned to explore. It ended up being the Peace Corps. Okay. Then I got really into the thesis, and didn't mind working hard at it, and felt proud when I had done a lot of work or read a lot--I was making progress and keeping time with goals. I thought, "a PhD might be something worth pursuing" and then it just all went crashing down again, as I don't have the energy or interest to even clean up the project in a really thoughtful or important fashion. For me, it was all over as soon as they told me the defense was done. I admire people who can stick it out and pursue a doctorate in something, but I don't think that it is exactly what I want or need in my life. The question remains though, what is it that I want?

Right now, that would be simply, to be done with the thesis and have my apartment clean!