Our thesis protocols were submitted today and most of us had a bit of running around in circles to do before the closing bells chimed at 1 PM. I was especially peeved at the amount of paper that goes into the making of such a protocol. And given the fact that we had to submit 7 copies, in addition to keeping a few for ourselves and our guides, I guess I alone was responsible for the destruction of a miniature rain forest today. As the whole world moves towards e-solutions for education, this primitive system needs to change. It would make our lives a lot easier and massively reduce our carbon footprints to do away with this hackneyed submission method.
This system needs to come to the 21st century, but that is not what this post is about…
Today, after we submitted our protocols and were finally catching our breaths over some lunch at the cafeteria, we came up with a proposition to “record” the narratives of our thesis experience. The idea was to create a place where we could record the continuous stream of our learning, especially in association with the work we do for our theses, and hopefully come back to analyze them after a year or so to glean information about barriers and facilitators to research in our environment. This would be a chronicle of our experiential learning that we would be chronologically recording (almost in real time) on an online portal which we would keep open to the world and seek answers, support, criticism or plain old adulation… we are self obsessed tweens, after all.
Labeling this endeavor as our eThesis, the plan was to set about writing one post every week, recording the trials and tribulations of the past week. To seek answers. To raise questions. To question the hierarchical mores that often get in the way of doing work… in short, this would be a platform for us to appreciate or criticize the way we see Thesis work being done.
Now since we are all freshly-minted residents with minimal research experience to our names, it might be a bit of a stretch to expect anything more than plain ol’ bitching, but the way I see it, even this bitchin’ is an expression of our learning curves.
The challenge is to keep doing it consistently, for a long period of time. Not only shall this serve as a template for maintaining a log of our progress with the thesis work, it would also bring to light the qualitative and soft skills that we gain in the pursuit of doing our thesis.
So, with these intentions in mind, we are creating the eThesis blog/site. Hope you follow us there and keep up with the theses journey of a motley crew of residents!
