[0rph3u5]

This is it ... might be unassuming but this is it.

Handing in your Bachelor of Arts-thesis might not be the greatest leap in general but to me it is huge and I want to share in that significance with you all - as HLP is kinda a home away from home on the Web.

Seven years ago and about 4 four weeks ago, I applied and was accepted as Chemisty-student at Christian-Albrechts-University in Kiel. Back then I was happy. Coming right out of my military service (for which as it turns out I may not exactly have been suited), going to the University and studying science was where I wanted to be.

Too bad that by 2010, things had not turned out the way I wanted. Partly because the transition to university life hadn't gone as smoothly as I hoped and I was set on the path to a psychologcial meltdown (again), partly due to the fact that I had started to ask the wrong questions - questions of the how? and what? had been replaced by questions of the why?. And last but not least I had managed to fail a major exam.

So I set out on a different academic path, and quite by accident I arrived on the doorsteps of the Philosophy- and History-departments. In the more crowded but less hectic humanities I found a sweet-spot to rest and recuperate from my previous troubles. What was planned to be termporary solution became permanent as soon as I got going.

It was not a straight road either, littered with heartache, panic and stress but also with opportunites to once more show what I am actually capable of, encounters with great people and most of all time to be whatever I liked to.

While the low point of the journey has undoubtly been 2013 - which almost neatly contains the father's cancer diagnosis and following death -, the past one and half year have been its high point, with me achiveing above all plans and cutting down all that I had put off academically and personally. And now as a final note, my Bachelor-Thesis "ties the bow".

I will soon be starting on my Master of Arts because I can't leave things half-done. There is hoping I can finish that while I am still in my twenties.

[The E]

Congrats!

What's your thesis about, if I may ask?

[0rph3u5]

What's your thesis about, if I may ask?

It's a study into how the failure of an arcitic expedition was reviewed by its contemporaries in the 1910s. It is mostly focused on the Germany, as the expedition in question was a german enterprise.

[General Battuta]

Holy ****, dude, congratulations. That's an epic saga. (I'm so sorry about your dad.)

Failed arctic expeditions are a fascination of mine. I just read a decent book about the Franklin Expedition. Really cool topic!

[Mongoose]

Congrats! Looking back I really wish I had changed my own course of study instead of trying (and mostly failing) to ride it out, so I'm glad you were able to find something that worked for you.

[Klaustrophobia]

Granted I'm not terribly familiar with humanities degrees, but that's the first I've ever heard of a thesis for a Bachelor's degree.

[AtomicClucker]

Grats on the BA degree. History/Politics are great backgrounds if you intend to start something like editing, writing, or even light journalism into current events.

And yeah, arctic expeditions have mostly been disasters, but few have managed because the leaders realized the needs to adapt or copy the locals that lived in frigid climates.

[Jeff Vader]

You rock, man.

[T-Man]

A congrats and E-pat on the back sir ; writing one of those truly destroys your soul by the end (know from experience) but it's definitely worth it. Sounds like a great topic to write on too (particularly if history and philosophy was your focus).

All the best with the marking, and with your MA too. (congrats on that; a big thing in itself at that level ).

[0rph3u5]

For those who like to know:
My final papers were in the mail today... including the thesis grade: 2.3 on a scale from 1.0 to 4.0 (with 5.0 as blanket for a failing grade). I've yet to recieve a full evaluation of the thesis but I can think of a number deficencies (e.g. I didn't research much in daily press of 1913) which might have resulted in that grade.

My total graduation grade is higher than that but not by much (as it is the weighted "average" of all my grades).

[Dragon]

Congratulations on your degree. At first, I thought that was actually pretty good, but then I remembered that Germany's scoring system works backwards... Still, this isn't that bad. In here, they go from 3.0 to 5.0, with 2.0 being a blanket failing grade (1.0 is not in use above high school, though I suppose someone doing something like setting the whole lab on fire could net that. ), so your result would amount to something like 3.7, which is a reasonable (if not stellar) score. The subject is certainly interesting, early polar expeditions in general are fascinating to read about.