Colin S. Kelly ’05, who wrote his History and Science thesis about the emergence of cosmology as a scientific discipline in the late 1960s, ran into a last minute crisis.

A week before his due date, Kelly came across an old dissertation in his field that “essentially refuted the foundational assumption” of his thesis, he says.

Although he created a group on thefacebook.com called “I’ve Spent a Year Working On My Thesis Only To Discover That I’m Wrong,” he was able to incorporate the counterargument into his thesis.

When Abigail L. Fee ’05 had to throw out 40 pages of her thesis about family planning in Ho, Ghana at her advisor’s request, the revision didn’t go smoothly.

“I rewrote the two chapters, but when I sent them to my advisor I forgot that I had titled the file ‘CHAPTER3-HOLYBALLSMYLIFESUCKS,’” Fee recalls.

Even without significant setbacks, senior thesis writers often struggle to meet their own high expectations.

For his thesis, Joseph H. Weintraub ’05 says he has produced the first critical English translation of Dante’s Latin Eclogues since 1902.

He says that exploring such a topic— one that has been largely understudied in the past—put a large amount of pressure on him to develop a definitive academic work.

“I feel like I have this tremendous weight on my shoulders to write something absolutely brilliant,” he says.

BATTLING THE CLOCK

For many, the process would not be complete without the occasional crisis of self-confidence.

“I did have some crazy freak-outs,” Weintraub says, recalling a time he phoned his Hasty Pudding Theatricals castmate, Nicholas H. Ma ’05, looking for solace.

“I called [Ma] crying on the last day of winter break because I hadn’t gotten anything done,” Weintraub said.

But Ma was also feeling the pressure of the clock.

Even with an early start to his research—with summer trips to Syria and Lebanon and a trek to the Middle East in the fall—he says he has his work cut out for him as Thursday’s Social Studies thesis deadline approaches.