Investing Time: When It Backfires
So my best friend growing up, Mike, made this observation about me: “You work really hard so that you don’t have to work harder later.” He told me this when I said that my summer should be easy because of how far ahead I was on my thesis. So the class to begin preparing someone’s thesis would be easy.
My thesis prep class is a one on one class with a faculty instructor. By then end of the summer you need 60 pages of ready to print work. I gave her about 90 pages on the first day.
“Here’s the thesis I’ve been working on since undergrad. I’m going to go off to enjoy my summer now. BYE!”
As you might have expected, this did not go as planned.
Meeting 1
She pretty much said that master’s thesis is supposed to be representative of the work I’ve done at during my master’s degree. She didn’t feel the poetry worked well with the fiction and so the poetry was kicked out. Also she didn’t kick out my fiction, but she just didn’t really talk about my other stories. She just said “Unicorn Hunting” is ready for print.
“What do you mean I have to write another 35 pages? I just need 60 pages. Didn’t I give you 75 pages of awesome stories?”
“No, you gave me 25 pages of AN awesome story and 50 pages of failure.”
Finally she said that it would be in my best interest if we worked on a short story from scratch together so I could have one more solid, finished piece in my arsenal. We decided we would work on new work for meetings 2 & 3 while using meetings 4 & 5 to edit.
“My friends have thesis advisers that are lazy, don’t show up, and/or let them get away with terrible writing. Why did I have to get a thesis adviser who cares about my development, supports my aesthetic, and worst of all has integrity?! You’re getting in the way of summer. I have a Universal Studios pass that’s about to expire, and I paid way more to get parking on the pass, and I didn’t use it enough to actually get a return on that investment!”
“I’m sorry, I guess I just wanted you to get the most out of our meetings. Hey, wait! You’re the one who ask ME to be your thesis adviser! You’re not the only one who has a summer, jerk!”
Meetings 2 & 3
The story I decided to write was ambitious and beyond my current skill as a writer. I had to develop more in order to do it justice. My adviser really guided me on exactly how to do it. I really can’t imagine the story coming out as well as it did without her help. Although, because the idea pushed me so far beyond what I was used to, not surprisingly my submissions were almost always tardy and short on pages.
I was supposed to give her a short story for meeting 2 and a new short story for meeting 3. I gave her half of a short story for meeting 2 and the second half for meeting 3. On top of that those pages were several hours late. She didn’t seem to mind, but I felt like if I were a better writer I could have managed the deadlines. So it just felt overwhelmingly like a personal failure, even though what I was doing was actually a personal best.
“You have submitted your pages 12-24 hours past your deadline. Your tardiness has made it impossible for me to print your manuscript before my flight. You will NOT receive gentle, personal, pencil notes on a physical manuscript which would be bound together with a doggie-shaped paperclip. Instead you shall receive a cold, sterile Microsoft Word document marked up with the comments feature. The only personal touch you will feel is my attempt to lessen the blows of your failures with smiley face emoticons.”
“That’s actually better. It’s easier for me to lose a manuscript bound together with a doggie-paperclip than it is to lose my laptop.”
“Oh, well, should we just do this from now on then?”
“I mean, whatever is easier for you.”
“Well, the university gives me free printing services, so if you want a physical copy…”
“Actually I have access to free printing services too, so–“
“Yeah, I’ll just send this to you, and you can decide to make it tangible or not.”
“I’ll probably keep it digital, because when I edit I can do a dual monitor setup with my TV and my laptop. It’s kinda neat actually.”
“We’ll do this from now on then. But get your work done on time!”
Between Meetings 3 & 4
In between this time I wrote The Art of the Dress: Lesson on Criticism
After the a lot of trying to think smarter rather than work harder, I still ended up working a lot to fix up the story. She replied with an e-mail saying that she wanted to talk about the story, which I mentioned at the end of my last post.
I had no idea what I could possibly do. I was getting some slight anxiety over it.
“I don’t know what to do anymore. Any of you girls have a gun I can borrow and a bullet I can have? No, I will not call the suicide helpline.”
Meeting 4
I must have had at least some sound logic in the Art of the Dress post. It turned out she liked it. I must have been reading into things from a place of insecurity, because she said she could sign off on it after a few slight revisions. Finally, all that hard work paid off and we were done! Ahead of time!
“Well, if we have 60 approved pages and ahead of schedule, then I guess I’ll just head over to Universal Studios…”
“I want you to write me another short story for our last meeting. It would be a shame to break your current momentum.”
“It would also be a shame if I let my Universal Studios pass go to waste, but I guess a writer is someone who writes, not someone who goes on the new Tranformer’s ride…”
Note: My thesis adviser is the nicest person and would never say the things I wrote in here for humor. USC mostly has a fantastic faculty of caring individuals, but you do hear the occasional horror story. I know this was told in the style of complaining, mostly for comedic effect. However, since my adviser didn’t let me be lazy, I’m that much further along in my work. And perhaps next year when I finish my final project, I’ll get to skate by on the work I did this summer, though I doubt it. I guess the real lesson I’ve learned is that I’m not the type of person who should get annual passes to theme parks.