Thesis Diary 1: Kate

9.22.2021

Tom Brady has two first names. Ricky Martin. Elton John, Lea Michelle. Not gonna bother to fact-check if these are their birth names because I simply do not care and I just want to prove a point. Do people confuse their first and last names? I don’t think so. What does this have to do with a senior year film thesis you say? Let’s take it back to Kindergarten. JK, but people calling me Kim for the past 20 years of my life has struck a nerve in me that’s growing and bruising and scarring the more times this happens. People might say I have two first names and someone calling me Kim is no big deal, but really if you have been awake in this world for your life, you would know that Kim is one of the most common Korean last names on the planet. The dictator’s last name is Kim. Have people gone their whole lives thinking that Kim Jong Un was like Kim Kardashian? aNYWAYS this rant is because here goes my whole three years of college with one teacher whom I love and adore and thought we had something special but she addresses me in our first email concerning my thesis (she’s my advisor):

“DEAR KIM”

Girl….

Great start. By the way, this isn’t her first time doing this either. I know my email starts with “kkim” but every single student in my school’s email system starts with their first initial and last name. Like “tbrady123@school.edu”. So it’s just quite confusing to me. Enraging, but I’ll keep that on the low (after three years of classes with her).

I still love her though. Just gonna pretend I didn’t see her write my best friend’s first name correctly in his email.

So… thesis. Maybe my teacher hates me because I’ve had 10 (not exaggerating, I have 10 mini scripts) ideas in the past year. It’s not my fault though (it is). She expected us to have an idea ready to go and film and shoot it THIS SUMMER. In her junior year class that was alllll online, we spent the entire second semester working and “finalizing” our thesis script, making pitch decks, and pitching them to an industry worker she brought in. Sounds like I’m all set and ready if I went through all the trouble and did all the work right?

Ha ha. I scrapped that idea the moment I started working on the pitch deck. I’m just very good at bullshitting. I hated it with every fiber of my being. And now, I am back to square one. And in her email:

“Dear Kim,

Great that you are passionate about a new idea etc. etc. etc., have a script done by Sept 7.”

“Dear Teacher name,

Sounds great!!!!!!!!!! Hope you had a great summer missed you lots xoxox ur da best see u soon Sept 7 is totally reasonable and I definitely have at least half the script done

-KATE”

Hopefully, my thesis diaries are helpful to you, my dear readers, who are maybe also in their thesis year. Hopefully, this will also be helpful to me as I am going to be letting down LOTS of people if I don’t write these articles and, well, do my thesis properly. It’s like that Nathan for You episode where he takes embarrassing photos of people and sends them to their bosses if they don’t lose 10 pounds.




So the deadline I had was Sept 7. Annddd I didn’t do it. Yep. And after willing it to the universe that magically my thesis advisor would somehow forget (although she wouldn’t be a very good advisor if she did so I wouldn’t know how I’d feel about that), she emailed me yesterday asking if I have something to share. And I don’t! We’re off to a great start.

I do have an inkling of an idea. And I will say it’s gotten more fleshed out in my mind. I just… haven’t written it down. I think my fear of failure (ego) is holding me back.

School started this week and everyone’s been asking where we are all at in our thesis. Some girl is shooting this week (she has had a script since sophomore year) and others have just wrapped. However, many of my dear friends are in the same spot as me. I do need to get my shit together. With school starting and all these new things on my plate, time is only going to go by faster.