With the deadline for his honors thesis fast approaching, Peter James '07 said he has often been so absorbed in his work that he sometimes forgets to eat meals.
James, who will earn honors in geology-physics/mathematics with the successful completion of his thesis on the elastic and inelastic behavior of the oceanic lithosphere, said he often spends one to two days in the geology department before returning to his dorm room, usually pausing only to take brief naps on the department's couch.
As he scrambles to wrap up over a year's worth of research and mathematical analysis, James can take solace in the fact that he is not alone in his plight. While many of their peers enjoy the onset of spring in their last semester on College Hill, a select group of seniors are working furiously to put the finishing touches on ambitious and demanding academic exercises - writing theses.
Michael Gladstone '07, who is working on an honors thesis in history, has taken full advantage of the Friedman Study Center's long hours - he said he spent nearly 72 consecutive hours at the Friedman in the last few days before spring break, leaving only to eat and grab quick naps in his dorm room.
Yet even now, in the home stretch, most seniors interviewed by The Herald expressed more enthusiasm than regret about their decision to complete a thesis.
James seemed nonplussed about his irregular eating habits. He said doing a thesis has been one of the most valuable experiences he has had at Brown.
"It has been really good to think through a fundamental problem from start to finish," he said. "It brings closure to your time at Brown and makes you feel like you have accomplished something you couldn't have gotten anywhere else," he said.
James, whose thesis topic came out of an Undergraduate Teaching and Research Assistantship he did during his junior summer, said he is having some difficulty wrapping up his thesis because he often finds new avenues on his topic that he would like to explore. "I have notebooks and random printouts all over the place," he said.
While, technically, he has written only five pages, James said "he is not too worried" about being able to finish his thesis.
Rochelle Hartley '07, a biochemistry and molecular biology concentrator, has 21 days until her thesis is due but said she has also not produced much written material as of yet.
Hartley, who has spent the last two years researching a specific protein involved in liver cancer for her thesis, said she is also unconcerned because "theses in the sciences take a much longer time to where you are at the writing stage, but once you get to the writing stage, it goes faster than if you were doing a thesis in the humanities."
Hartley said she decided to do a thesis because there was a research requirement for her concentration and she decided it would make sense to tailor her research for a thesis. Hartley has spent much of the past two years working in a lab at the Liver Research Center, part of the Alpert Medical School's division of gastroenterology.
"It's a lot of work, but it's also very rewarding when it comes out on paper, to see everything that you have been agonizing about legitimized," she said.
"If you enjoy research and its challenge, it's worth it do a thesis," she said. "It helps you to think in a different way and to organize your thoughts in a different way, and I think it gives you a lot of skills that you can use in the future no matter what you do."
Gladstone said writing a thesis has been "a lot of fun" at times. He said he has enjoyed working closely with a professor as well as conducting primary research. Gladstone spent the spring and summer of his junior year abroad doing research for his thesis in Brussels and Paris.
It was particularly challenging to do research in another country, he said, and he had to "jump through a lot of hoops" to get access to certain archives, but when he found a large tome in English that contained much of the information he needed for his thesis, it paid off.
"It was a great discovery that really proved essential to my thesis," he said.
The history department averages 25 to 30 honors theses per year, wrote Professor of History Kenneth Sacks, the coordinator of the department's honors program for the past six years, in an e-mail to The Herald. Honors students in history are required to take a three-course sequence in order to write a thesis.
"Writing a history honors thesis is in many ways learning to be a good detective: it can be quite challenging, but in the end most think it's been great fun," Sacks wrote.
The procedure to grant honors varies by department, but generally each thesis is read by several faculty readers who decide whether the thesis deserves honors. Some departments also require an oral presentation about the thesis.
Gladstone said obtaining honors was not his primary focus in choosing to do a thesis.
"It's more about the process and the project itself," he said. "I don't really think people do a thesis just because they want honors."
Would he do it all over again?
"You really have to be dedicated and self-driven, and you might need to be prepared to travel," Gladstone said. "But for me, it's been a substantial and worthwhile project that has helped me to figure out that I really wouldn't mind doing this for a living."
