The Thesis Saga (Part 1)

I hadn’t much energy to care, lately. I had once written a few goals I wanted to achieve before 25, and I ended up not achieving anything off the list and dammit, this year is the last year I am 20 something of age. I am 4 years behind schedule, apparently. 

And trying to be as brutally honest as I could be, I would like to clarify that I haven’t graduated with my Master’s degree yet – one of my supposed goals before turning 25. Last year, a few days before my hiking trip to Ledang, I received a ground-breaking news in the form of my student status on the School of Graduate Studies’ portal – from previously ‘thesis submitted’ to ‘terminated (gagal berhenti)’. 

I was devastated, but I had nobody else to blame but myself. At that night, I bawled my eyes to sleep. I had my viva voce 3 years ago, on 16^th April 2015, just fifteen days living with GST. On that fateful day, my thesis was thoroughly criticized, excruciatingly condemned, and academically crumpled.

“This thesis is only deserving of a bachelor degree…”

“If it’s up to me, I would give you resubmit (meaning I had to redo my labwork, reanalyse the results and rewrite the whole thesis)…”

“If really, as you say, you’ve referred to 200 journals, then you won’t write this thesis this way.”

“Your English is so bad, you really could have used a proofreader.”

Having all your convictions destroyed in one day in a matter of hours was a fierce blow to my self-confidence. The viva started at 9:00 am and ended after 2 hours. The moment I walked out of the door for the examination committee to deliberate, I knew that everything has changed. I knew my thesis was not perfect, but to be summed up as one level lower than it should be is heartbreaking. If it’s not even deserving of a Master’s degree, then what have I been doing the past 3 years of my life?

To be told that my English was bad, man, I helped proofread my friends. I even helped a friend to edit his thesis abstract. And both of them graduated with my help, but none of their English was criticized in the viva room. 

I was recalled into the room to be handed the verdict. I passed my viva voce with major modifications – to say that I was glad was an understatement. I could not imagine having to go back to lab for another year, resubmit my thesis and re-sit for another viva. I was given 60 days to do the corrections according to the examination committee’s comments. My external examiner, a Professor from a neighbouring university who was especially ruthless to me and won’t listen to my explanation remarked “Should you encounter any problem, you could meet me later.”

I was confused after the viva. I was too shocked over the cruel viva session that I was certain I was having PTSD episodes afterwards. It took the graduate school one month to mail me the official transcript containing comments from the examiners, at which point half of my 60 allocated days and half of my motivation have passed. 

I tried to do the corrections during working hours, but my demanding job scope at that time means I couldn’t even pass 1 sentence without being brought back to the cutting edge ground of my work. This frustration leads me into sending a resignation letter, but before I could do so, my boss gave me 2 weeks off from work to settle the thesis. The first day I was away, something came up in the office regarding my work and I had to come to the office to rectify some errors. This set the tone for the following days – I was anxious if my office needs me and the distress cost me so much of my focus and determination. 

My week flew so swimmingly during which I was jittery, deprived of sleep and depressed trying to decipher the examiners comments and do the corrections based on them, all at the same time scared of being summoned to work should anything arises. One simple sentence of the comment could mean a world, as in ‘this chapter should be thoroughly revised’ and the aforementioned chapter is 57 pages long. When the time was over, I could only confidently do a few minor corrections, and the major ones left untouched. 

Under the pressure of not completing the corrections and having to go back to work, I then made a mistake. I gave in to their commentary during the viva. “Maybe it’s true, I can’t be good enough. That no matter how hard I try, and no matter how much time pass, it won’t change anything – I was bad. Maybe my thesis is only deserving of a Bachelor degree. There is no point in trying.”

“If this thesis ended up being referred to in the future, all they could see is a mess and wondered how did this thesis end up being accepted and archived?”

“Even if I could rewrite this whole thing, it would take years with my current working commitment. I mean, ‘tremendous efforts should be given to rewrite this chapter’ could even mean I had to refer back to all my 200 references and rephrase and paraphrase everything and I don’t have that time and I don’t even remember where did I save all those journals!”

So with that mindset, I decided to quit. Because I felt like I was a fraud, who tried to cheat my way through the system and grant myself an easy success. That I was never good enough, I was only a façade. That me doing my Master degree was a failure right from the start because I was too proud to admit that I was stupid.

...to be continued