how to write a thesis in English lit

* Do it in an era when few students (and certainly not you) have their own computer to use.
* Choose the computer lab of the English department at a small university. Make sure the lab is located in a tiny basement room with a couple of minuscule windows near the ceiling (showing the feet of passers-by to remind you that there is a world out there), limited air supply, about six working desktop computers and one temperamental printer.
* Choose to work on your thesis mainly on Sundays and in the middle of the night so you have the room to yourself.
* Choose as topic a modern work of literature but make sure it includes having to study Herodotus' The Histories in detail. A topic which you will have no use for in the future is preferable.
* Have the department choose for you (to your dismay) a thesis supervisor who is an eccentric Englishman who does not know how to dress or keep his office in order but who can discuss at length Medieval alchemy, celestial spheres, Orientalism in literature and other things that are utterly beyond your own understanding. Discover that he knows the exact formula for inspiring/pushing you to write, is able to descend from the celestial spheres and is in fact the best thing that has ever happened to you.
* Hum "ain't nothing gonna break my stride, nobody's gonna slow me down, oh no, I've got to keep on moving" while you write. Save your work on a floppy disc.
* Watch a certain film a hundred times and read a certain novel until it falls apart at the seams. Fill a large notebook with your illegible scribblings. Do some of this at a café where it is impossible to concentrate but which has great coffee.
* Ponder, "'till it drives you mad", the symbolicism indicative of national and/or personal identity, and the effect of post-colonialism on Sri Lankan-Canadian writers.
* Take endless, long breaks to surf the internet (a fairly new thing, and a limited experience in this era), reading Star Trek fanfiction and exchanging lengthy, eloquent and extremely funny emails with your email buddy Ole who is sitting somewhere else in the same city studying something really boring.
* Discover, after many long years of literature studies when you didn't really get it at all, the beauty of intricately symbolic writing. Let it affect your pragmatic heart.
* Make late starts a habit, and only call it a day when your brain and body scream for sleep or food. Ride your bicycle home through eerily empty streets in the small hours and feel strangely at peace while you wonder what your mother would say if she knew you were out alone at this hour. Count yourself blessed to be tripping over the same uneven cobblestones as students have for centuries and try not to wake your flatmate when you get home.
* Put your thesis on hiatus while you are busy working, holidaying or flirting. Email excuses to your long-suffering thesis supervisor.
* At last, spend a few hours coaxing the temperamental printer into printing your 70 pages, take them to the university publisher and pick out a handsome navy blue cover.
* Submit your thesis and revel in the feeling of being a published writer - conveniently forget the fact that in all probability, the two thesis examiners will be the only ones to ever read it.
* Realise that these were really the best of times and the worst of times.

* For a long time afterwards, occasionally entertain the fantasy that the author whose work you studied will one day read your analysis of his work (and be extremely impressed). Yes, Michael Ondaatje, I'm talking to you!