Manuscript March: If My Thesis Were a… Film Genre!

It’s Friday! Time to ease back a bit and let off a little steam. So gather ’round, thesis-writers, and let’s play a game.

It’s called “If My Thesis Were A” (IMTWA for short) and to play, you have to liken your thesis to something. For instance, you might play If My Thesis Were a Pet or If My Thesis Were A Politician. Then you have to decide which pet or politician your thesis would be. (For example: a ferret, or Richard Nixon, or perhaps a ferret who resembles Richard Nixon.) Then you give your reasons. Got it? Good.

OK, here we go! Today, we’re playing If My Thesis Were a Film Genre.

Now, my apologies to video store clerks (do they still exist? I don’t know and therefore clearly need to get out of the library more often) but it is going to be impossible to choose a shelf to put my thesis on.

It’s possibly a thriller, because every time I look at my chapter structure I bite my nails in Hitchcock-level suspense. Will this structure last through my next supervisor meeting? Will vast swathes of text need to be reappropriated to form a new chapter? Is this structure any more logical than every other potential structure?

I see dead...
I see dead ends!

But it’s also clearly a horror. I frequently find myself in a dark room of a Saturday night, hearing strange noises in my introduction, and approaching cautiously while sensing the horrifying danger of something evil lurking there. Don’t open the door to the introduction! I tell myself, but it’s too late. I open the door and: AAARRGH! A logical inconsistency leaps out at me, hacking my Saturday night into oblivion.

Scratch that. My thesis is an arthouse film. It’s slow, contemplative, and you frequently need subtitles to get through it.

No, actually, my thesis is a comedy. I can only infer that because sometimes I end up laughing hysterically when I’ve been working on it for too long.

self portrait
Self-portrait at 3am after a mammoth writing session.

Well clearly I’m indecisive. Help me out here, AUT postgrads. Where would you place your thesis on the shelves of your local Video Ezy?

About Anaise Irvine

Dr Anaise Irvine is the Editor of Thesislink and leads the Researcher Education and Development team at Auckland University of Technology. Her PhD research analysed how contemporary films and novels represent genetic engineering as a social justice issue. These days she works with researchers at all levels to improve their research skills, and the most obscure of her own research skills is being able to turn novels into phylogenetic trees!

5 thoughts on “Manuscript March: If My Thesis Were a… Film Genre!

  1. hahahaha – love it Anaise! Not writing up a thesis but will have to do up a report for my study and I can definitely say that it will be very ‘documentary’!!! 😉

  2. Nice one Anaise…so far mine is a Sadomasochistic farce, featuring a flock of sheep and a bumbling and deluded policeman.

  3. V funny Kate. Mine would be a suspense movie, because I am never sure what’s going to happen next. However, there must be Poriot in there somewhere, because after much detective work, i seem to get through each problem.
    REady for the next suspenseful bit.

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