*A LITTLE UPDATE*
I’m writing this about a week after I submitted my thesis, and this thesis stint turned out to be a shitty air-conditioner, for I only acknowledged the background hum of stress once it was polished and submitted. What remained was a long-lost calm that made me want to toot my horn in front of the Dalai Lama. Everything became brighter because I was spending time that I did not have on photography, listening to music and above all, actually reading whatever the hell I wanted to read.
Looking back, I still remember being a wide-eyed freshman, gasping at every assigned reading, assessment and opportunity to get wasted at the university’s pub. Back then, 2,000 words sounded scary and smoking felt like the coolest thing. After five years of being in this bookish biome, however, 4,000 words felt like dessert after a seminar. In my third year, I got cocky and started complaining about not having enough words to work with, only to find myself humbled by the thesis.
The thesis was an exception to the rule. The large word count wasn’t a blessing, because unlike one of those starry-eyed couples who proclaim: our love is more than the sum of its parts, the affair between a large word count and a thesis topic only produced terror, especially if one’s supervisor kept dangling the o-word (original) in every email. This terror put everything on hold. Friends, hobbies, plants and taking out trash all took a backseat while I seemed to have forgotten how to type.
This general paralysis dragged on well into March this year and one day when I was dreaming about the taste of champagne at my submission celebration party, I woke up to a buzz followed by a telegraphic email from my supervisor that read:
Back from Cambridge.
Meet Monday.
Anything for me to read?
Sent from my iPhone
And there it was: the academic bugle that sounded a call to panic, assigning me the task of producing 15,000 words in two months…
The journey was filled with trials and errors, but I am alive and did manage to submit the final draft without suffering irreversible psychological damage. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, paralysis only comes from one source: being too attached to certainty.
There’s this poem by David Wagoner that I kept in my notebook for a while titled “Lost”:
It’s an immensely comforting poem for people who want to stop at nothing to obtain absolute certainty. On some level, the desperate need to understand turns the cravings of today into the desires of tomorrow, so that we’re always planning for a future already known. Suppose we apply this thinking to a research thesis. In that case, we will limit ourselves because the final solution is already anticipated without realizing that the truly interesting answers happen at the edge of understanding in the region of uncertainty.
This is what I was afraid to confront: the dark and shapeless woods where my thoughts could lead me astray and cripple the thesis. However, after a few weeks of writing into the unknown, I realized that being lost was a good thing because I became truly receptive to fresh insights while I made some intellectual leaps that were impossible to conceive. I started treating every potential paragraph as a powerful stranger, inquiring after what I didn't know instead of forcing a solution out of sheer cleverness.
And there it was. 15,000 words formed themselves in two laborious months. It marked the end of a chapter in the academy but perhaps the start of a new format for this newsletter.
Weekly posts for A Mug of Insights!
Like I said, my honours year put a lot of things on pause and one of the things is my love for photography. I love visuals just as much as ideas, and I’ve always craved a medium to combine both observations and interesting food for thought. So, over the next few weeks, I’ll play around with the format of this newsletter and find a way to combine what I’ve been consuming and thinking alongside interesting visuals.
So as a preliminary structure, each week we’ll divide the newsletter into three sections: Integritas, Claritas and Veritas. The concepts came from the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas and I first read about it from James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. You can look up the precise definitions of these terms, but in our case, they’ll only serve as interesting labels to divide my weekly thoughts, observations and reading materials.
The Format
In Integritas, I’ll summarise my week in an insight or event. It could be a short essay on a selected topic, an announcement or a fragment from a work-in-progress.
In Claritas, I’ll select a location or a sight I’ve seen that week and explain why the scene captured my attention.
In Veritas, I’ll share some of the interesting articles and books I’ve been reading that week.
In addition to these weekly newsletters, I’ll still be researching and writing longer extended essays for paid subscribers. If you’re keen to join our community, click the button below for either a free or paid subscription!
That’s all I have for this week: a life update plus the future of this newsletter. Stay tuned and I’ll see you next week for the first issue of this new format!
Robin
I don't know if this relates but, I once heard this line from a movie: "Why is it that the words that we write for ourselves are always so much better than the words we write for others?"
I've taken this quite literally and always write for the sake of my passion, even if I don't understand the topic.
Also, Good job for finishing your thesis!
Congrats on finishing your thesis! Very excited for what's to come now