My Senior Thesis and a Virtual Finish to College
On Monday May 4, 2020, I took my last college class. I sat outside in my yard in suburban Delaware enjoying the first moments of spring, logged on to Zoom, and began the course. Halfway in I had a sudden realization – this was it. This was my last college class. College is not necessarily over yet, I still have a few papers to turn in and a virtual commencement to attend, but the era of class instruction - one of my favorite and most important parts of college - has come to an end.
This was certainly not how I expected to end college. I thought I would be preparing for final exams and papers in Butler Library, taking photos with my friends in our caps and gowns on Low Steps and outside of the Diana Center, and attending graduation festivities. Instead, every few nights my friends and I call each other over Zoom - lovingly titling our calls “Corner Zooms” after the “Corner Room” on the sixth floor of Butler Library (our favorite study spot on campus) – and I will turn my papers in virtually just as I will receive my diploma. Of course, I’m disappointed. This is not how I thought my senior year and my four years at Barnard would end. But I also feel incredibly grateful. To have been taught by professors genuinely interested in helping their students grow academically, to have taken classes that made me excited to get out of bed every morning and learn more, and to have made a group of incredible friends over the course of four years.
A few nights ago, the Corner Zoom met online to celebrate turning in all of our theses. One of my friends wrote an English thesis on Shakespeare, another wrote one thesis on 19th century German art for the art history department and a second on postmodern literature for an English degree, a third wrote his history thesis on colonial slave narratives, and a fourth friend wrote a thesis on the depiction of the AIDS crisis and gay men in popular cinema from the 1980s to the present. As a double major in political science and history, I wrote a history thesis (instead of a thesis, Barnard’s political science department has students write three long research papers as a capstone to three colloquia, at least one of which is taken in one’s senior year) on American foreign policy during Nixon’s first term, focusing on how and why the United States exploited the Sino-Soviet split of the late 1960s and early 1970s to pursue a rapprochement with China before the Soviet Union and what effect this decision had on the course of the Cold War. I am in awe of my friends and their academic accomplishments. I am in awe of their fields of study, of the way that they have thrown themselves into their research, and the ways that I have seen them grow academically and personally throughout the year.
The process of writing a thesis was one of the most academically difficult yet rewarding experiences of my time in college. As I completed the final read through of my thesis, certain that there had to be a typo hiding in the 80-page document that I just could not see at the moment, I began to reflect on how momentous submitting a thesis truly was. This thesis was not just the product of a year’s worth of study, it was the product of four years. It was a thesis that started my second semester of freshman year, when my first-year roommate convinced me to come with her to a class titled “U.S. Foreign Relations” that she was interested in during “shopping period” so that she did not have to go alone. It was in this class that I decided I wanted to major in history, to continue exploring these ideas of the power of the United States in the international sphere, the decision making processes that leaders went through to justify action or nonaction in the Cold War, and the implications of these decisions that continue to reverberate in political relations to this day. It defined what courses I took in the next three years and it helped shape a thesis proposal that I spent months pouring over, turning into research done from the stacks of the library, writing a draft from the Corner Room, and hitting submit from the very desk in my childhood home where I received the email that I had been accepted into Barnard’s class of 2020.
When I’m asked about my time in college, particularly from prospective students wondering if it was particularly competitive or difficult, I will look back fondly on the late nights spent with my friends cheering each other on when our topics became too complicated and the support systems we built to encourage our different academic and personal interests. Sitting together in the Corner Room we created our own community, sharing snacks and making deals with one another to “finish one more page and then we can take a break,” or “do thirty more minutes of research and then we can go downtown and watch a movie.”
Although I would love to celebrate the final moments of college with these friends and with the larger Barnard community that gave me the support to grow and explore and discover myself academically, personally, and professionally, I know that the 18 year old who jumped up and down shouting with excitement seeing the word “Congratulations!” on my laptop screen, unsure about what the next four years would look like but incredibly excited to move to New York City and find out, would be so proud.
-Jodi Lessner