Ten thousand apologies my friends. I had hoped when finals rolled around this semester that I would have honed my study skills in such a way that I could maintain my normal blogging schedule.

Sadly, this has not been the case.

Just to catch you up to speed, Tuesday's legal writing final consumed the better part of nine hours, while my closed-book exam over Property Law on Friday looks to consume the better part of the next two days. I had no idea flash cards could still be useful in 17th grade.

Fortunately, tonight my mind is in a rather different place. The recollection of ancient days was sparked by an article yesterday in the campus daily of my alma mater discussing senior thesis writers. One Prof. offered this sage assessment of writing a thesis:

“You will never do anything more challenging,” he said. “Basically, you are creating knowledge.”

[Link]

I agree with the Professor that a thesis creates knowledge. I agree that it was challenging and a welcomed 'gut-check' for things to come. But as the sunsets on my 1L year, I humbly disagree that it is the most challenging thing one will do.

On the other hand, if you can handle the rigors of research, and you can deftly hammer out roughly 125-200 pages of writing in a semester (or two terms) while also wading through the dense mire of scholarly articles and academic texts, then chances are law school will pose few challenges when it comes to writing and analysis. Of course, learning to hash through thousands of cases, and the particularities of issue-spotter examinations is an experience of the wholly other variety.

Even so, reading the story and burning the midnight oils this time of year brings back many a found memory of my undergraduate days- a couple of which I will recount if you will indulge the wistful.

The one thing I will long remember of my thesis adventure is the pungent hazelnut coffee served during all-nighters in Novack Cafe. Ubiquitously, all-nighters occurred the night before I owed a chapter of my thesis to my adviser. Almost always I had not started said chapter. As an adviser, Prof. Clarence Hardy was a gentleman and a scholar of the first-order to me throughout my efforts. His background was in African-American religious studies, but he proved to be an intrepid faculty adviser who ably shepherded me through the various constructs of Native American religious identity. I remain indebted to him for his patience.

Nevertheless, my late nights were also odd for a couple of reasons neither of which included my stellar work ethic on the project. They were odd mainly because a thesis at Dartmouth was structured to occur during the winter and spring term of one's senior year. The idea was that spreading out the time frame for work and completion would allow students to avoid a pinch during their final term in Hanover. My own experience indicates that the policy promotes procrastination as much as it promotes better time management, but this I leave to the powers that be.

The second oddity is that the real crush of my thesis occurred a full term earlier because of the 2004 election. Given my political interests, I was forced to submit my thesis proposal rather late into the fall term of my senior year. Let's just say that it should have been submitted well in advance. Only upon returning to campus for senior winter, and only after I had conducted much of the research during Christmas break did I learned that my project had been approved by the religion department. When the green-light came, I ended up starting the project a full term and two-weeks behind everyone else. As a result, many nights were spent in late repose, not really stressed but sufficiently tethered as to despise the late hour.

Turns out, Novack Cafe was a place for good company. There were students of all stripes holed-up in its chic, florescent confines. Most were science majors pursuing the Dartmouth equivalent of pre-med. Others read Dostoevsky. A couple wrote for history. Some worked on engineering. Given that the engineers' final project is the same every year, I hardly considered it on the level of a thesis, but they worked hard on it. (Note: Admittedly, this assessment probably speaks more to my specific jadedness than to reality. The car was pretty cool its personnel notwithstanding).

Another remarkable thing about Novack was how widely our vices varied. Some pounded Red Bull. I tossed back coffee. Others pounded Odwalla. One good friend made it a point to take regular breaks for cigarettes. Every hour on the hour. His was a fairly, recently acquired habit secured during a trip through France and Belgium. I never understood his predilection except to say that it accented his black leather jacket and Belgian lineage. But I always appreciated his contrite humor. In all, it could be said that we were a happy motley of the wee hours. Were Sinatra to be a student on our campus, he would surely have been one of us.

Of course, our late evenings would end before any of us realized how fleeting the time would pass. As our years drew to a close, I spent fewer and fewer hours in Novack. My friend would defend his history thesis and I would watch. The engineers' car would barrel down Tuck Drive. And I will never forget the confusion I felt walking the final draft of my thesis over to my adviser. While the faculty defense of my thesis would loom, and my public Q&A was yet to be had, a small part of me groaned inwardly as the finality of it all set in. The Lord said it is finished. And so it was.

Naturally, this too would reach an ultimate consummation. My recollections of handing in my thesis would shortly be eclipsed at seeing friends and more than friends drive away from the green environs surrounding my dorm. Like cars on the horizon, many of these relationships, bulwarks of life in leafy New Hampshire, would gradually come to fade away too. Three relocations and three different states later, it now seems so far away.

With my thesis was handed over to the religion department faculty, I would go on to a successful defense some weeks later. By most accounts, my public Q&A was a success as well. In fact, the written product would go on to win a modest prize much to mine and Prof. Hardy's surprise.

But somewhere on the Hanover plain, a single tear fell and mixed with the dew that morning as I crossed the Dartmouth green. I felt a sharp pain that I would experience again, many times, in the whirl of life's constant of change: I felt like I had lost a dear friend.