“Should I write a thesis?” 

It’s a question I’ve been asked on several different occasions, and I’d be lying if I said that I have a simple answer. 

In short: no. I think most students probably shouldn’t write theses. Writing a senior thesis is undoubtedly among the most grueling, debilitating and degenerating academic endeavors one could put themselves through before attending graduate school. From beginning to end, the process makes you doubt your abilities. It is a massive investment of time and mental energy: resources that, for some, are likely best spent in other areas of life.

Locating your topic in a sea of interests. Narrowing that topic down to its most fundamental elements. Outlining. Revising. Writing. Being paralyzed by the fear of writing. Writing anyway. Hating what you’re writing. Conceptual crisis followed by structural breakdown. Fatigue. More research. Writing. Crying… you get the gist. It’s not a pretty process. 

The first thing I wrote down in my little gray notebook of ideas for my project was, “Remember that you’re in control — this doesn’t control you.” Well, that was a bald-faced lie, because it rarely feels like I’m in control of a project whose page count I’ve long since lost track of. 

For heaven’s sake, I’m writing on alienation — and for a not-insignificant period of time, I have felt alienated from my project. Is that not the most ironic twist of unfortunate events you’ve ever heard? It’s humiliating, honestly. Almost as humiliating as crying in my advisor’s office … but that’s between him, myself and God (and by God, I mean Karl Marx).

In all seriousness, a senior thesis takes it out of you. It will challenge you in ways that you couldn’t have even imagined were possible. It will lead you to doubt yourself time and again. You will never loathe the writing process more than you will as you write a thesis. 

Nevertheless (oh, c’mon, you had to have seen this coming), I think writing a thesis is worthwhile for some. I think it can fundamentally change your relationship with knowledge and with forming a position (not merely an opinion — and yes, there is a difference between the two) on a topic. 

The immediacy of our access to information in the digital age has given us the false impression that we must form our opinions on topics — big and small, significant and minute — with that same sense of immediacy. It is almost as if the speed at which we can access information has instilled in us the belief that mere access to the volume of information on a topic is sufficient to form a position on it. I disagree. I think this belief is misinformed by the false impression that having unbridled access to information has lent us. 

We’ve become all too comfortable forming opinions that are insufficiently informed merely because we have access (largely untapped) to information. This has transvalued our relationship with knowledge, making it one based in the breadth of information we have access to, as opposed to the depth of it. Consequently, we determine whether we know something by our gauge of how many things we know about it, as opposed to whether we understand at all. 

Writing a thesis forces you to become knowledgeable about a topic. Owing to the intensity with which you research a topic, write about it, research more, revise and repeat, you come to really know that topic. You sit with that topic for an extended period of time, moving about it, stretching it out, seeing how far it can take you. And that forces you to really come to a position vis-à-vis that topic. 

We simply don’t do this in our daily lives. We are incentivized by a culture that moves at warp speed to form opinions instantly and to move on with our day. Writing a thesis slows you down. It forces you to really grasp the totality of a topic, and I think that this can, indeed, change your relationship to knowledge and how you regard forming opinions. It is truly for this reason that I believe one should consider writing a thesis. Yes, it looks good for graduate school applications, it provides you with a sense of accomplishment and it actually gives you something to respond with when some professor you admire (and, above all else, wish to impress) asks you what you’re working on. But above all, it changes your perspective, and that, in my view, is what makes it so valuable.