Daniel Sweat
Features Editor
Well, it’s that time of year again. Spring Break is right around the corner, the weather’s starting to heat up and the Senior I.S. deadline looms in the not-so-distant future.
If you’re a senior and you haven’t already turned in your thesis, you’re probably spending a lot of time at your carrel, cranking out those final pages and putting in endless amounts of edits. Writing your very own senior thesis can be quite stressful, so here are a few helpful tips to cope with finishing your I.S.
1) Quit messing around and get to work. Considering that pretty much everything in this day and age is typed on a computer, it’s all too easy to get sidetracked and fall down a Google rabbit hole while you’re trying to work. One minute you’re writing about the political implications of having subjective conceptual schema, and the next minute you’re watching a hot dog getting caught in a mouse trap on YouTube. We’ve all been there. Of course, you can’t completely sever ties with your keyboard — you need it for work! But you can sever ties with your Wi-Fi connection. It’s a lot harder to avoid your work if you first have to make the conscious effort of turning your Wi-Fi back on. Think of turning off your Wi-Fi as just another way to put barriers between yourself and procrastination
2) Transfer money from your checking account to savings. If you’re writing an I.S., you’re probably going to graduate soon and head off into the real world. Now, there’s no flex or meal swipes out there in the real world; you can’t pay your rent with mozzarella sticks from Mom’s. So it’s always a good idea to start saving money whenever you can. Nothing relieves stress quite like the potential for financial security.
3) Plead for help from your preferred god. There are a lot of churches around here; maybe now’s the perfect time to make use of them.
4) Watch Family Feud. It’s about time we all had a talk about America’s most ludicrous game show. Literally anyone can be on Family Feud, and as Smash Mouth taught us, not everyone is the sharpest tool in the shed. In fact, a lot of the people on Family Feud have no business being there; they just had five friends lying around and thought, “Yeah, let’s do that.” The point is: not everyone who gets on Family Feud is all that smart. Odds are you’re probably a lot better at Family Feud than they are. So unwind by watching a suburban family guess wildly what you can order at a fast food restaurant (Kebabs? Really Jim?), while Steve Harvey smugly chuckles at them from behind his moustache. Use their game-show failures as self-affirmation.
5) Go to the Writing Center. TW: Actually serious content. Ok, a lot of you who are reading this probably already go to the Writing Center or get some other kind of help for your writing. But, in my opinion, the Writing Center is one of the most underused services on campus. A lot of the time, students only go to the Writing Center when they have a completed draft and want one more pair of eyes on it before they submit. This is a fine strategy, but the Writing Center can be much more than an editing service. Need someone to bounce ideas off of before you start writing that final chapter? Need help making an outline or brainstorming? Just want to talk through your I.S. with someone to make sure that you understand what you’re writing about? The Writing Center can help with all that stuff.
6) Stop reading The Wooster Voice. Seriously, why waste mental power on trying to decipher these cryptic memes?