I don't feel like posting this on my MULTIPLY ACCOUNT because I know that the moment I do so, a lot of my blockmates would instantly offer okay-lang-yan’s and kaya-nyo-yan’s. Not that i'm ungrateful for the sympathy and words of encouragements, it's just that it's too soon to be open to the prospect of, ehem, moving on.

Oh, don't be misled. I’m not talking about something earth-shattering here. All this drama is caused by the evil people of the University of Santo Tomas Faculty of Arts and Letters. Ha! And you almost thought I already had a love life.

Today was thesis defense day. I have to admit that I already knew that we didn't have an astonishing manuscript. Well, to be fair, we didn’t really get much guidance. Those who know the story behind our slow and painful hell will (undeniably and completely!!!) understand. But because I want to re-live the memories, here goes:

Our first thesis adviser sucked. That simple. Well, he's a pretty good advertising professor but he doesn’t know squat about research. But that was okay for us. We thought that he'd at least steer us in the right direction, helping us with the advertising part of our thesis but it turns out that when he said that he doesn't know anything about research, he meant it to the highest level of seriousness. He checked our grammar and that’s it. We did our best to come up with the most credible entries as we could, even though we felt that we were feeling around in the dark. This professor had a pending case with one of our classmate. My classmate alleged that the professor had no basis in giving him a failing grade and he further alleged that he has a screwy record (not the exact words, of course). One day, the professor texted us out of the blue and asked for a thesis consultation. We were sooooo excited. We thought that he would finally be involved in our thesis as our adviser and not just our personal grammar-checker. Imagine our surprise, dismay and annoyance when barely 3 minutes into our “thesis consultation”, he went into the topic of our classmate and his case and faster than we could say “no comment”, he whipped up a letter and asked us to sign it to be used against our blockmate. When we refused, he said it was okay but as a parting message, he said: “Baka gusto nyo nang magpalit ng thesis adviser, tutal, strained na yung relationship natin.” Just like that, we were orphans. That was around November last year. Imagine, with just 1 month before the submission date (which was to be pushed back to January 4), he dropped us with a barely baked thesis with no hard-hitting purpose or objective (but with impeccable grammar, if I may say so myself). Luckily, we found a new thesis adviser, with the help of our previously mentioned blockmate (whom we think we made feel very guilty. Hehe). We were bombarded with major revisions and that’s when we found out the extent of the mediocrity of our study. We, again, strived to salvage what was salvageable, giving up most of our Christmas vacation in the name of our thesis and graduation. We pulled it off. Or so we thought.
Fast forward to today, 10:00-ish in the morning, room number 111. Panelist number 1 (whom I fought with last semester, a story for next time) was surprisingly very understanding and even forgiving. Panelist number 2, however, had a lot of things to say. If I’m not mistaken, and I don’t think I am, he wants a major MAJOR MAJOR revision of our thesis, so much so that we would be practically changing the whole thing. With 28 units?! We thought we would die right there and then. In the end, panelist number 1 offered us with solutions to our thesis and panelist number 2 conceded that we could get away with our super squishy thesis. No tears were shed today but I think I speak for both my thesis-mates that our hearts and spirits were bruised.


On the up side, I wasn't at all nervous with the presentation. Aside from the fact that our thesis had the intellectual level of a kindergarten project, I knew all the concepts and I could defend them with my life (asus!). We concluded that we were more scared during advertising/IMC presentations than the defense. Also, we decided that adver/IMC presentations were more enjoyable, even though we had tough critics (our blockmates had to grill us for grades). And we'd rather do 2 IMC plans weekly than do thesis. I don’t get why we’re compelled to do research. Sorry to the fans of research. Give me production, give me brainstorming and briefings and presentations. Just don't expect me to have a brand-spanking-new communication theory anytime soon.

I'm super tempted to rag on the professors who are terrorizing us this sem but I think I’ll do that next time. It’ll be to easy to pour all my frustration on my poor professors.


And I’m tired of typing. =)