Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Longest Paper I Have Ever Typed

To the best of my knowledge, anyway.  I wrote 15 chapters along with the prologue and epilogue. As of now (prior to typing this blogpost),  I have typed and printed the prologue and chapters 1-8, as well as a title page and a table of contents page. Excluding these two pages, my current page count is 47. It's like the college thesis I never wrote.

What, you may be asking?  I didn't write a thesis in college?  Well, not in the way that most people are familiar with the concept.  I was a literature major and where I went to college, we had the option of doing a traditional undergraduate thesis with faculty sponsor or the senior seminar option. The latter will need some explanation. A class taught as a seminar (as opposed to being taught as a lecture) could be used as our exit requirement.  Various such classes on different literature topics were offered each quarter. An essay was required for the class. In some ways, this was like doing a thesis, but it was part of a credit class.  The length of the essay varied by each class and instructor. The class I took for this requirement was on slavery reading. I don't remember too many details about it, though. I always had  to type papers in college, but this senior essay was probably the longest one I had to do then. I seem to recall the required length being 10 pages.

I'm now pondering the idea of going to graduate school, thinking that if I should do so, I'll now be prepared to write a lengthy thesis. I am not certain of whether I'll be doing that, however.  For now, I want to finish typing my memoir, typing as many chapters as I can each day.

3 comments:

Crystal Collier said...

10 pages? That's all!? Yikes. Yeah, I think going back to school and writing would be a cakewalk now.

Jamie Ghione said...

Well, we did only have the academic quarter in which to complete the class essay and the quarter was only about 10 weeks long. I'm not certain, but those who chose the faculty-sponsored thesis had all year to work on it. Most fellow lit majors I met at school, however, chose the seminar option.

Stephanie Faris said...

Most of what I've heard from people is that graduate degrees only work if you're intending to go into careers that require one. Otherwise, it can be a waste of money...make sure you know what you're doing with it and that you'll be able to make enough extra money to make it worth it.