THE LONG HAUL

As someone gets ready to savor and exult in the hard-earned fruits of protracted toil, I keep realizing how writing a PhD. thesis is one of the most boring tasks I have set myself up to. It's a document which you write...for whom and what exactly? You have written the papers and manuscripts, you know what you have done, and now you are simply formatting your published work for someone else's pleasure (pain); I never loved Copy + Paste as much as I do right now. Plus, the thesis will be handed over to the PhD. committee one week before the thesis defense and they would be expected to scrutinize the words with a fine comb. Of course they would.

Then, as the previous weary warrior notes, one has to distill the wisdom or lack thereof of almost six years in 45 mins. Plus, I am no Robert Oppenheimer; after my defense no professor is going to plop his head to his side and exclaim, "Phew! I am glad that's over; he was on the verge of questioning me". And once I am done, nobody is going to give a quark for that document five years from then, or probably five days from then. And yet here I am, trudging through the parchment as though it were a sheaf of golden leaves.

But perhaps I need to do it after all for that last cup of coffee. I owe the dust settled on my computer monitors that final act of homage. I need to carry on. Otherwise the terrorists have won.