Revise? Rewrite? You Decide!

As often happens when things get busy, I have fallen into silence about this subject over the past few months. Which is not to say I haven't been working on it--sometimes I feel like it has taken over much of my life. So here's a little history before I update where I am now.

Right before school let out for the semester in December I emailed the requested revisions and another two chapters to my advisor. She promised they would read them over the holidays and get them back to me.

What arrived in late January was a massacre: things that had been fine were now problems, entire chapters needed to be restructured, and worst of all--they suggested I rewrite the entire thing from a different point of view. For those not up on your English point of view, its the difference between, "I looked at her and felt my blood boil" and "Jillian looked at her mother and felt her blood boil." Simple to change, right? Not so much. It's much more difficult than just switching pronouns. To say I was angry and frustrated is an understatement.

I refused to even look at it for a week, all the while venting to some of my friends. I wanted to give up and just take the extra classes. But I didn't partly due to the money it would cost, but mostly due to my stubbornness. In the beginning Dr. Hileman had told me that I didn't have to finish if I didn't want to, I could always take the classes. I looked back and they haven't had a thesis written since 2002. I felt like they were setting me up to fail. I think perhaps one of the worst comments I got was that my work was "readable." Now while I would argue that the purpose of literature it be read, what she meant was it was common and not scholarly. Ouch.

After I calmed down and got over my wounded pride, I took a long, hard look at the work. I decided to rewrite the work in third person for several reasons: it would be a good exercise for me and if it didn't work the committee couldn't say I didn't try. So I set about the laborious task of rewriting. By the beginning of March I had fixed all the original chapters and started working on the second section, but was nowhere near finishing.

When Grandpa had his stroke at the beginning of March my thesis sort of flew out of my head. I didn't even think about it for weeks. And then something strange happened. The Monday after Easter I just had this weird feeling that I needed to finish it. I don't know why. I started pushing myself, working hard, long hours. The pages poured out, sometimes easily and sometimes with great difficulty. I wrote close to 100 pages in four days. Friday morning I finished and proofed it for content and basic format. Normally I would have waited until Monday afternoon to send it off, letting it sit for the weekend so I could look at it with fresh eyes, but I felt like I couldn't wait. I just needed to send it off. That Friday night when I went to visit Grandpa I told him that I had finished and he seemed happy (well as best I could tell at that point). Grandpa had always been one of my biggest champions as I worked on this project. That was actually the last time I saw him and one of the last things I told him. And as we know, he passed away that Sunday. So you can take it as you want--maybe I needed the distraction, maybe I needed a creative outlet, maybe I just sensed what was coming.

I sent it off and began the waiting process, although I was so distracted by other things I didn't really notice. I went to work writing my introduction and then sent that off. My advisor emailed it back two days later with corrections and told me the bulk of it was still being read, but that it was very good. It arrived last Friday with only a few minor issues that I was able to fix by Monday. My main issue at the moment is formatting. They forgot to give me the formatting guide until about two weeks ago, so I've been working with that. Because of the unique nature of my thesis I have several questions that I'm waiting to hear back on. As soon as those are answered, I can fix my Table of Contents and then I'm done.

My defense is set for sometime in early June and I will officially graduate in August. So that's where I stand.

I have to say, going back over the latter part of the work, the stuff written during those four days, I think some of it is some of the best work I have ever done. The writing is strong, there are ideological questions to consider, the character work is well developed, and the action scenes (one of my weaknesses) are believable while still being interesting. There is a sword fight in there that would make my Stage Combat teacher proud.

So that's where things stand. I'm not sure what to expect from the defense. Hopefully they will give me a better idea in the coming weeks. I'll update once I have a go and a date on the defense.