Thesis deadline season has arrived once again at Harvard University.

Widener’s stacks are being replenished as writers return their books, and the faces of missing seniors are reappearing in classrooms and dining halls across campus.

The endless nights, the untamed beards, the caffeine kicks, the weight loss, the weight gain—all spectres of the past for more seniors with every passing due date.

With most thesis due dates falling in the weeks just before spring break, deadlines range from March 1, for History and Literature, to April 22, for Engineering Sciences.

Unlike schools such as Princeton, which require undergraduates to write theses, only about 50 percent of Harvard students choose to do so, according to the Class of 2003’s Senior Survey. This results in about 800 theses per year.

However, according to the survey, about 70 percent of Harvard College students enter their concentrations planning to write a thesis and around 60 percent start one.

For many of the writers, the thesis is the axis around which their lives turn.

“My thesis was determining the books I read, the music I listened to, the movies I watched, what time I went to bed at night and woke up in the morning, kind of like a domineering romantic partner,” says T. Josiah Pertz ’05.

Dr. Craig F. Rodgers, counselor and psychologist at the Bureau of Study Counsel, recognizes the dominating grip that the thesis has on many senior writers.

“The thesis can easily consume the rest of the writer’s life unless the writer actively works to counterbalance this dynamic,” he says.

For the most part, professors acknowledge this fact.

Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Avi Matalon, who teaches Foreign Cultures 90 “Tel Aviv: Urban Culture in Another Zion,” says he tries to help seniors by exempting them from attending section.

“This to give them more time to free associate, which happens to rhyme with free procrastinate,” Matalon says.

TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS

Even with extra time spent researching, thesis writers often have to modify or trash large portions of their projects in the face of new information or advisor disapproval.