I’ll start with the ending: three Mondays ago, after 2 years of work in a lab and several recent months of panic and suffering quiet perseverance, I turned in my thesis. It arrived at the biochem office 51 minutes after the deadline.

This was after I wrote an abstract in 10 minutes (4:30pm), an entire chapter of results in 5 hours (11:00am), made two figures overnight (12:00am-9am) off of data collected from experiments 2 days before. If had gotten to the office 9 minutes later, the doors would have closed and locked away any hope I would have had of graduating with honors.

Fortunately I made it in time. Unfortunately, I showed up completely soaked, having biked 15 minutes from my lab through a rainstorm and Boston’s rush hour traffic, dodging cars and raindrops the size of marbles. My thesis was safely folded inside a bright orange biohazard bag, the first waterproof thing I could grab before launching myself into the downpour.

Earlier in the afternoon there was a celebration for all the thesis writers who were not deadline-challenged, complete with champagne, cheese, and fruit plates. By the time I got there, though, the office was almost empty. One senior stood holding an empty champagne flute and stared with a dazed expression at the trays strewn with crumbs. Tom, the advisor collecting the theses, humored me with a laugh and offered me a drink after I proudly produced my biohazard bag. I dutifully threw back the champagne in a single gulp. I was thirsty and ready to celebrate, but more importantly, I was told to hurry up so people could go home for the day.

It struck me then that advising undergrads must be like herding cats. Ambitious, feral, and intellectually immature cats. You have to keep us on track through several years of thesis research and classes. Every step of the way we’re in danger of falling through the cracks. Some can’t find a good lab, others lose steam after starting their research, and a few are almost there just when they have a panic attack, become completely unmotivated, and start to nurse regrets about life decisions completely unrelated to the thesis or even academics. (Or maybe that was just me?)

It also struck me that large parts of my thesis are…well, not quite what my college sophomore self 2 years ago would have wanted from his future self. Especially the part I wrote on the day it was due. Why didn’t I work harder? Why did I spend all fall semester taking walks around Boston and not doing any work? Don’t I LIKE science? More importantly, why haven’t I started to look for jobs this summer or next year? Is it too late? Am I winning or losing at the game of life?

These are all very important questions, which is why I’ve spent the last 3 weeks putting them completely out of my mind. So next time you see me walking along the Charles, when everyone else is in class and I have a paper due in an hour, ask me what I’m doing with my life. I might need the reminder.