the measure of a man…
… is his ability to complete one thing and begin another.
You may have noticed that your hostess is going through a small-scale existential crisis. The words aren’t flying onto the page; Sarah feels imbued neither with purpose nor with conviction. It’s a tough place to be.
Today, in the throes of attempting to look everywhere except at either my computer screen or the ream of papers surrounding me, I saw an old friend: high up on my mom’s book case was my Master’s thesis, sitting in proud red leatherette under a half-inch of dust. I pulled it down. ‘Have you read this?’ I asked my mom. She admitted that she hadn’t, but was quick to reassure me that she was very proud of me and that she was sure it was very good.
Now, if you want to keep your friends, pretty much the last thing you should do is force your Master’s thesis on them. I’m always looking round the corner for the person who found this tome a mesmerising page-turner, but I’m not holding my breath. In short: I don’t bear a grudge against my mom (although, you know, it was dedicated to her, and she hadn’t read the dedication either).
The thesis is very good. Did I think this while I was writing it? No. Did I think this when I defended it to a committee of my superiors? No. Did I think this when I saw it bound in red leatherette for the first time? No. It took a long time to see it for what it was, and a lot of that time was taken up in forgetting. Forgetting the bits that I glossed over. Forgetting the bits that were finished not because I’d said all I had to say, but because I was too tired of looking at the page, or had indigestion, or went out drinking. Forgetting all the rough edges.
Given some objective distance – viz. a lot of time spent not looking at it or thinking about it – I can return to the old MA thesis and thumb through it with a fond eye, not only giving the Sarah of 2006-7 a reassuring pat on the back, but seeing, as a historian, that it’s a fine piece of scholarship.
It was something I finished. It was something I thought I couldn’t do, and yet here it is, in living colour.
It feels good to have things done. I’m sitting here in amongst a pile of papers and books and, well, knitting stuff, and all of it (except the knitting stuff) is related either to a presentation I have to give next week or a scholarship application that I have to send, like, last week. All of it’s sitting here on point, tools to help me through this massive quagmire of writing and research that, for reasons passing understanding, I decided I wanted for myself.
But the thesis is here too.
It’s bound; there’s nothing I can do to it. If I read it closely enough, I can remember little tiffs with my supervisor, points of contention during the defence, but I read the words and think: I won. It’s finished.
It’s about the Elizabethan privy chamber. It has nothing to do with Anglo-Jewish women or medical ethics or hospital minutes. It’s not on point – and it is. Because I’m sitting here looking at it, knowing that this thing that I was convinced was beyond me is complete and well-done. It reminds me that I did it once, and it riles up the tiny voice in the back of my head telling me I can do it again.
The only thing that could help more is having my name on a novel sitting next to it. But one thing at a time.
Till next time, &c &c.
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