What they almost never tell you about graduation is that it is bittersweet – as is every chapter that ever closes. You’ve made friends and acquaintances you might never see in person again but with whom you’ll share warm memories forever. Over is the life of late mornings, kitchen chatters with roommates, and coffees in the breakroom. Your shelves will be mostly emptied, and someone else will be grateful for the cinnamon and garlic you’ve left behind.
For me, graduation also meant the beginning of something I dreaded. The inevitable job search that would begin before I am ready to try my luck at university life again. The rejection emails I can hardly handle, the new environment, and the transformation this would mean for me. Leaving the academic nest I felt warm in, and the knowledge that I don’t want the latest thesis I wrote to be my last.
I wrote three of them in my life so far and, as one would probably expect, I have enjoyed the process of writing them with varying degrees. See, you’d expect that life circumstances would influence your experience – I wrote my first and second theses during a pandemic, marked by the rhythm of an uneasy oscillation between grief and small joys, and the third one mostly guided by the stress of earning a high enough grade that it wouldn’t mess with my GPA forever. Still, all I recall now is the satisfaction of handing something I am proud of, the smiles and kind words of my supervisors by the end of it, and the feeling of being so fixated on a topic I could have spent a thousand more hours on it if I had all the time in the world. I remember the drive.
I spent three weeks talking to my classmates about shoes and their relevance for film analysis as a symbol of death, legacy, and national mourning. It was strange, really, to have watched a movie and become so obsessed with a character’s shoe – to be so deeply convinced after only one watch that the framing of a Converse could somehow shift my understanding of the whole story if I focused hard enough. I never particularly liked puzzles as a kid, but I was now on the hunt for a bigger picture, following a hunch that I might never prove right until I did. And I remember that day clearly. I had just received Elizabeth Ezra and Catherine Wheatley’s Shoe Reels: The History and Philosophy of Footwear in Heels from the university library. It had the Wizard of Oz’ signature red shoes on the cover, and the librarian laughed when she read the title – admitted that she had been surprised that I would order such a niche book for research, and wished me good luck after I explained to her that I had been waiting quite impatiently to get it. Needless to say, I immediately got to read the introduction (foot notes – clever) when I got downstairs in the kitchen.
The shoes do mean something – and Jang Joon-hwan is a clever storyteller.
This anecdote sums up most of the curiosity I naturally find about seemingly insignificant details of life – for what is a shoe in the grand scheme of things? It sums up, more importantly, why I love research: it leads me to the puzzles I get to enjoy solving. And as I sit here, at the kitchen table in my living room, with all of my boredom, lack of drive, and uninspired rambling, I remember how it felt not to worry whether people thought my quest for the meaning of shoes was foolish.
I also spent a lot of time on butterflies – what are they framed to represent and how are they a reflection of identity shifts and transformation. I spared two paragraphs for them, which isn’t a lot but was constrained by a wordcount that systematically interrupts my rantings. It’s simple, really: the caterpillar is born, then cocoons, then turns into an entirely different insect. A metamorphosis as old as time.
In the middle of autumn, I am still wondering if this somehow could be my trajectory. I already feel so different than who I was a month ago, and the months or years before that. I held onto who I was comfortable being for a while, because I am forever scared of becoming something I don’t like – but what if it’s good? The rain and the snow will come, and I will cocoon. Hibernate with my dreams and aspirations, remember all of the things that led to this moment, and probably still refuse to say goodbye because I don’t have to. I am fine with cohabitating with all of these memories, but I am just afraid this grief has no end. Whether it has or hasn’t, it is all the same anyway, and I’ll have to lie in the bed I’ve made and wait until spring. Hope that all of the things I’ve spoken into the air form a clearer path when I wake up.
I don’t want the latest thesis I wrote to be my last.
andstillwedream 