Sunday, November 21, 2010

How a Thesis is like a Newborn

In the following, I use the term thesis to refer to all the work involved in completing a PhD.

Ways in which a thesis and a newborn are similar:
  • both consume all of your time, significantly cutting into your social life and making you lose contact with some friends
  • both seriously interfere with getting enough sleep
  • both are something you put a lot of effort into in the hope that someday they will produce a meaningful benefit to the world, but you have to accept that most likely they will both go unnoticed by the world at large
  • both are capable of making you feel completely incompetent and unable to do anything right for what feels like forever
  • both are a good way to meet other people doing the same thing
  • friends and family give you advice on both, which is only sometimes useful
  • both have a very frustrating way of telling you that something is wrong, but not indicating in any way whatsoever what is wrong
  • both are expected to triple in size over the course of a year (different years of course)
  • both produce lots of meaningless gibberish

Ways in which a thesis and a newborn are different:
  • your thesis is never going to smile at you
  • your thesis never seems to be satisfied with what you have done
  • your thesis's problems can't be solved in a few minutes
  • nobody has claimed that putting your uncovered thesis on your naked chest is good for anything
  • your thesis didn't come into the world looking like it came from an alien race, you had to spend years working on it to provide that appearance
  • your thesis doesn't smell good
  • your thesis doesn't look like you, your partner, or any of your relatives
  • your thesis does not become more independent over time
  • your thesis will not be damaged by unexpectedly rolling off a table while your back is turned
  • you don't have to thesis-proof your house
  • you are not genetically programmed to fall in love with your thesis
  • people offer to make food for you when you have a newborn
  • people do not come over and ask to hold your thesis
  • people are actually interested in your newborn (some people, not everybody)
  • your thesis isn't your responsibility for 18 years (I sure hope not anyway)
  • you can drop out of a PhD program
  • neglecting your thesis is not illegal
  • you don't have to pay people to watch your thesis when you are unable to
  • you get to choose a partner for raising a newborn (most of the time)
  • you can't accidentally apply to, be accepted by, and enroll in a PhD program
  • there isn't a committee that decides when your newborn is good enough for you to move on with your life
  • removing a useless appendix from your thesis does not require major surgery
  • random strangers on the subway don't comment on or try to touch your thesis
  • when you first bring your thesis home, your pets don't react to it at all
  • nobody asks you to track how much waste your thesis produces
  • the soft spots in your thesis won't go away on their own
  • if you fall asleep with your thesis on your chest, you won't wake up to the feeling of something sucking on your neck
  • you don't have to buy any furniture for your thesis
  • most people know what a newborn is, but have not heard of sub-Riemannian geometry or astrodynamics
  • people never mistakenly think you study stars when you say you have a newborn
  • you are allowed to physically damage your thesis when you are mad at it
  • your thesis is not at risk of suddenly dieing because you put it down the wrong way
  • nobody thinks your thesis is "the cutest thing ever"
  • people don't post pictures of their thesis on facebook (or at least not large numbers of pictures)
  • you don't normally put your newborn on your resume or expect him/her to be useful for getting a job later
  • your thesis never learns to sleep through the night
  • when your thesis does something strange and unexpected, you can't call somebody and ask if it is actually normal
  • all your ancestors successfully raised at least one child, but most of them did not do academic research
  • when you talk about your child, people understand the words you are using
  • you can backup your thesis in case you make a mistake later or a hardware problem causes you to lose it
  • most parents don't pressure their children to get a PhD
  • you can pretend to not have a thesis for a few weeks before it causes a problem

3 comments:

  1. If you had posted this a few days ago, I totally would have asked "can I hold your thesis?" at the bris.

    And you should post a picture of your thesis on facebook!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh, I've known some people whose theses were 10+ year projects. Surely at least a few get into the 18 year range....

    ReplyDelete