No One Cares About Your Thesis

Photo by Vasily Koloda on Unsplash

There’s a quote from Conan O’Brien when he was addressing Harvard students at the Class of 2000 Commencement Ceremony.

“A lot of hard work, a lot of your blood went into that thesis. And no one is going to care.”

An uproar of laughter came from the audience, but Conan was asking a valid question.

Does anyone really care about your thesis?

In Indonesia’s higher education system, all undergraduate students are mandated to complete an undergraduate thesis.

40 to 60 pages that will hallmark the end of each student’s university career, a codex to signify a student's success in absorbing the intricate theories bestowed by their lecturers throughout their years in class.

For many, the thesis has become a rite of passage. A milestone. A monumental achievement. A badge of honor.

Thousands of students every year spend countless hours working on their thesis. Some go through hundreds of data points to arrive at a single conclusion. Others invest in spreading forms through their social media (and their friends’ social media), offering monetary incentives as a means to gather as many responses as possible.

We put so much work into fine-tuning every detail, pouring our time into vomiting words into our word processors, and staying up until morning to fulfill arbitrary deadlines.

And then, we finish.

We tell our thesis supervisor, get a date for our thesis defense, explain to three lecturers why our thesis isn’t complete hogwash, and wait with anxiety as the lecturers discuss amongst themselves and finally say:

“Congratulations, you’ve passed your thesis defense.”

You’d think that it’d be a momentous occasion. And it is. For a brief moment in time, you experience the elation of surviving college. You feel like the past few months (or years) of sitting and typing furiously have paid off. Your friends post photos of you on their Instagram stories or send you food to stuff yourself with. You go to sleep that night buzzing with excitement, with a sense of achievement, excited for what lays ahead.

And then you wake up the next morning.

And not a lot feels different.

It’s a morning that’s just like the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that. The stories have disappeared, the sense of achievement has dissipated, and you’re left with the confusion of

‘what’s next?’

Your thesis sits in your computer files, likely never to be opened again.

You worked so hard for something that no one else might ever read.

So, what now?

I defended my thesis exactly one year ago (at the time of publishing). Since then, I’ve completely forgotten about what I wrote. Knife to my throat, I wouldn’t be able to tell you what papers I quoted or what conclusions I was able to pull from the data.

My 78-page thesis — which is the closest I have ever come to writing a novel — has only been read by three people (willingly) since I completed it.

My thesis will likely have little to no impact on any real-world policy. It will not change people’s life. It will not enrich the knowledge of anyone significantly.

And yet, that doesn’t erase the fact that I put my tears and blood into writing it. It doesn’t erase the sleepless nights I had, either because I was crunching data or anxious that my friends were graduating before me. It doesn’t erase the fact that, at the time, it was the most important thing in my life.

But here we are, one year later, and it barely matters at all.

So does that mean it’s worthless?

We’ve put the undergraduate thesis on a pedestal — one last hurdle, the final frontier, the main boss fight — before we’re able to finally break free from the chains of college. Yet it’s odd how quickly it loses its meaning once it has successfully been defended. How quickly people forget. How quickly everyone stops to care about it (if they even cared in the first place).

There are countless things that I’ve worked hard on that mean barely anything now. Organizing a competition, winning debates, applying for a job, the list goes on.

But it doesn’t mean they were worthless. It doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t do them again if given the chance.

There’s a quote that says:

“If it won’t mean anything five years from now, don’t spend more than five minutes thinking about it.”

But that’s not entirely true. Sure, some things aren’t going to mean anything in the long term. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give them your all. It doesn’t mean they aren’t worth pursuing.

No one knows what’s going to matter in five years. No one knows if they’re still going to have the same dreams. No one knows if the world we live in today will be the same in five years.

Not everything has to be remembered.

The fact of the matter is that you’re going to work on a lot of stuff that other people don’t care about. Articles people never read. Music no one listens to. Videos your friends won’t watch.

But what matters is that you care about it. What matters is that it’s a result of your hard work.

You put your heart and soul into it. You spent so much time thinking and making it. It’s your baby — figuratively speaking.

Just because people don’t care about the things you make, don’t make them any less valuable.

Just because no one will think about it a year from now, doesn’t mean that it’s forgettable.

You’re going to make so many things that won’t mean anything a month (or even a week) after you’ve finished it. Continue to make those things. Make small meaningless trinkets. Make sketches of scenes from your imagination. Make a beat from random noises you heard on the street.

It doesn’t have to last forever for it to mean something.

“Minding The Gap: Analyzing Variations of Sectoral Gender Wage Gaps in Indonesia.”

That was the title of my thesis.

In it, despite knowing that very few would read it, I wrote a closing paragraph for my acknowledgments section:

A quick final note for anyone who has read this far. If you’re a final year
student struggling with your thesis (which you most likely are, let’s be honest,
because who else reads this far), I want you to know it’ll be okay. Maybe you’ve seen your friends surpass you in writing speed or in intellectual capacity. Maybe your friends already have jobs lined up. Maybe you’re at a dead end in your thesis. But you’ll make it through. You’ll work it out. Your thesis is not your end-all, be-all. It does not and will not define you. Frankly, most of your friends, family, and coworkers won’t even read it. So just remember that the struggle is temporary, that your thesis is just a hurdle you need to surpass. I wish you good luck.

Writing a thesis is hard. It’s stressful. It’s anxiety-inducing.

But I still enjoyed the experience. I know I put my heart into it. I know I did my best. And I’m proud of my thesis.

Maybe some of you reading this are struggling with your thesis right now.

I just want to tell you that: it doesn’t have to be pretty, it just has to be done. It’s just a hurdle you have to pass. It will not define you.

But just because it won’t be remembered forever, doesn’t mean you can’t be proud of it.

Maybe you’ll never read it again. Maybe you’ll go off and become an adult without ever thinking about what you wrote for months. And that’s okay.

It’s still a result of your hard work. It’s still a culmination of your academic years. It’s still an experience that, like it or not, will always be a part of you.

So good luck, to those of you writing your thesis. The struggle will be worth it.

Maybe no one will read it, but who cares?

You still made it.

You’re going to make so many things that won’t mean anything a month (or even a week) after you’ve finished it. Continue to make those things. Make small meaningless trinkets. Make sketches of scenes from your imagination. Make a beat from random noises you heard on the street.

At one point you’re going to be so overwhelmed with making everything you do matter that you’ll forget to slow down and just have fun.