The theme of this blog was to talk about my Master's in a random field of geography, fun theory I came across in my readings, and travel hijinks. I'm writing this post without an internet connection, so do fact check me, but I feel I've been focusing on the travel hijinks. So let's lean into that shall we? Read on for my travel itinerary, how feeling goodbye to a home feels like as an amateur geographer, and a brief update on my Master's. Not necessarily in that order.
"Narayan, when are you done your Master's?"
I've said a lot of goodbyes and see you soon's the past few weeks, and this has been a question often asked. The short answer is *August, but that's made up*. The longer answer begins with this sentence: I am in a thesis based Master's, so I have to write a document that's acceptable as a thesis. A 'thesis' is a document that--at the Master's level--does three things:
Shows that you have background, to some degree, in a subject area relevant to a large degree
Answers some research question, to a less-large degree
Advances knowledge in the least-large degree
There's a surprising amount of flexibility in what counts as a document that does three things. It's *usually* a 50-100 page document following a structure of Background (to show expertise), research outcome (to answer your research question), and a discussion (to argue that you've advanced knowledge). But the people who determine you've done these three things when you write your thesis in this usual document are the members of your 'committee'. Your committee consists of your supervisor(s), a "random" tenured professor from your university's faculty, and (increasingly) a community member external to your university's faculty that you work with. Your committee decides if your thesis does the three things, and then you're done. But, and this is the tantalizing but, you are strongly encouraged to convert your 50-100 page thesis into a peer-reviewed article (or, gasp, *two*) after your Master's degree is nicely framed and tucked away on a bedroom wall. Writing a peer-reviewed article is hard. Writing a thesis is hard, for sure--no if's and's or but's about it--but writing a peer-reviewed article is *harder* (so they say). So in the usual document style, you're expected to do the harder thing after you've spent 8-12 months doing a decently hard thing.
Naturally some people decide to flip that structure. What you can do is write a document that's actually a sandwich containing one to two peer-reviewed articles (patties in this analogy). This document, folks argue, counts a thesis because it shows you've done the same three things with a pretty cool plus point: expert individuals, the "peers" in the peer-reviewed process, have decided that the two patties in your sandwich document are actually interesting enough to be published in a journal. In the absolute best case scenario, your two patties are published in (decently) reputable journals and when you walk into face your committee at the end of it all you can wear your citations as earrings. Of course, you still need to present this sandwich document to your committee but you have external validation approving that what you're doing is quite decent work. This route is hard, don't get me wrong, but it feels exciting and easier for my internship-pace brain to wrap around. Two 4-month terms, a paper per term.
Want to guess which route I'm going with?
Leaving Kitchener/Waterloo
Writing words for my Master's has been somewhat complicated when I'm moving out of my Kitchener apartment, packing for India, packing for Ottawa, and moving items not in the previous two sets into a scary storage unit in Mississauga. I've not officially moved out of Kitchener just yet (I have my packed bags for Ottawa ready in my room) but the feels have been hitting. That's a technical term.
I remember unpacking boxes for the first time into Waterloo in 2018. I think the address was 208 Sunview Apartments, flat 1101. I remember the flat number because it was the same as my paternal grandparents' in Mumbai. I thought that was a good enough omen. It was a sunny day and I was all of nineteen years old. In between then and now, I've spent so many nights not realizing how great of a city this place is. On a infrastructure level, I don't know what other city with 200k (in my day) people have the lifeline of light rail running through the city. Or a city that has a Hakka Indo-Chinese restaurant sharing its walls with a Korean BBQ and a late-night pizzeria that made garlic bread fit for the gods. All the while being minutes away from world-class bike and hiking trails (fight me). A place is so many things, holds so many memories, I don't think all of you really moves out in the end.
Poetry aside, I really haven't moved out completely. Still have a carload's worth of stuff ready to be packed for Ottawa sitting in my room. Which brings me to:
The road ahead
I'm now writing this in Toronto, hours before my flight to the UK where I'm meeting some friends from exchange. A week in Bristol followed by a flight to Bengaluru where I'm staying with my partner's family (thanks for hosting!) while exploring the city with some great guides :) A week in Bengaluru followed by a train (!) to Chennai for the big event: my cousin's wedding. This is going to be the first wedding in a long, long while that I'm attending where I have to do absolutely nothing. Here's hoping there's a slight, whimsical wedding emergency that I'll have to help solve (I feel ice cream will be involved, place your bets).
This biweek's article is In Praise of Print: Why Reading Remains Essential in an Era of Epistemological Collapse by Ed Simon. It outlines some usual arguments why reading print media (codexes, he calls them sometimes) is important. But it also has a very interesting point about how when you're in front of a screen consuming some videos, a part of you goes away somewhere. Ed Simon, incidentally, has this really fun book giving a history of the Faustian bargain (e.g. deals with the devil) and how that's changed over the years.
This biweek's quote is an excerpt from (probably the first time) Shakespeare's King Richard II
The purest treasure mortal times afford
Is spotless reputation: that away,
Men are but gilded loam or painted clay.
...
Mine honour is my life; both grow in one:
Take honour from me, and my life is done
Till the next!