A quick confession - I had no idea what Gaudeamus Igitur meant until a few weeks ago. Apparently, as per the Wikipedia entry, it’s a well-known phrase among European universities - one of which I happened to be enrolled in (rather was enrolled in, as this post will elucidate). To be fair, I’m not ethnically from Europe, I didn’t grow up here for the most part of my life, and I’ve never had Latin lessons so there’s no reason why I should have known it. But thanks to the last couple of chapters in Infinite Jest, now I do understand what this fancy phrase means and signifies, and thus I can unashamedly make use of it for supposedly celebrating my graduation.

That also raises the general question of why Latin words and phrases are used so often in certain cases, but as with a lot of other things, maybe there’s no explanation. Whether it’s Habeas corpus or Aurum, we’re collectively so “up to something” at all times that we decided to let some words just be the way they are without wondering why we still use them. But oh well, all of that’s what the point is not.

The point is that I graduated from the Delft University of Technology slightly less than a month ago, wrapping up my Master’s degree in style, by…

…presenting to an empty classroom.

But, with the aid of digital machinery and a massive network of wires, I presented virtually to an audience who were curious to know what I had been academically up to in the past several months. It felt really strange to be presenting to pixels and furniture, but I guess there really was no other option - there’s this talk of a global pandemic that’s been haunting humanity for the past several months and has brought most of our erstwhile normal experience to a grinding halt.

What was regular visits to the university’s library turned into regular visits to the kitchen, what was taken-for-granted hanging out suddenly became “Should I really step out of the house?” dilemmas, and all thesis-related weekly meetings became virtual - and these are just some small examples among a whole lot of changes we’ve all had to go through in one form or ther other. All news outlets spoke of the pandemic and its primary and secondary effects, about governments and companies worldwide scrounging for a COVID vaccine, and on a more practical front some lifestyle changes one could make to accommodate this disturbance. But everything’s changed, in short.

And thus, amid all of this, graduating doesn’t feel much special. It feels like just another event overshadowed by something that has a stronger existential tone to it. I doubt the feeling in itself would’ve been much different even if the situation weren’t so strange, but the general level of satisfaction probably would have shown in some form of celebratory stuff. Graduating the first time certainly did feel special, so perhaps graduating a second time didn’t really trigger much of a dopamine release - or maybe the situation played spoilsport, who knows. Or it’s just a grim way of putting things.

Nevertheless, all in all, the experience of working on a thesis was quite new for me, and certainly very fruitful - going through a whole lot of research literature, getting lost, hypothesizing, discussing, constructive criticism - all of it did make me uncomfortable, but the good kind of uncomfortable, and probably has rewired connections in my brain in some direction. Good and bad are hard to define without metrics (that’s also debatable) but I’d like to believe this is a good direction.

There are just so many variables at play at the moment that it’s nearly impossible to strategize (coincidentally my thesis dealt with strategies assuming little or no uncertainty) and make long-term decisions with ease (are they ever easy?). Even without a pandemic around, this is an uncomfortable territory to tread on; but there’s only so much one can control.

The only broad plan I had in mind to finish this thesis was to make its end coincide with the end of reading Infinite Jest and I suppose that indeed worked out well - albeit with a 1-week mismatch (suprisingly IJ finishing earlier) - but technically, (SPOILER ALERT) Infinite Jest’s story ends with the first chapter of the book (oh well, non-linear story arcs), so maybe I messed up the plan completely!

Now to figure out what the next thing is, among the many things there are. Projections, calculations, and risks - so much to consider!