{"id":93507,"date":"2015-04-02T11:23:20","date_gmt":"2015-04-02T15:23:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=93507"},"modified":"2025-02-05T16:31:27","modified_gmt":"2025-02-05T21:31:27","slug":"video-for-bates-seniors-honors-thesis-ends-with-a-kiss-and-tell-ritual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2015\/04\/02\/video-for-bates-seniors-honors-thesis-ends-with-a-kiss-and-tell-ritual\/","title":{"rendered":"Video: ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ seniors celebrate the end of thesis with a kiss-and-tell ritual"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“It makes it seem real,” says Quincy Snellings ’15, explaining why, even in the digital era, she feels good about printing a copy of her yearlong honors thesis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Printing her thesis was, in fact, part of a sweet ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ ritual that helps seniors commemorate a pivotal moment \u2014 the completion of a thesis, a signature achievement on the road to a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ degree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, all departments offer a thesis option; most require it. A select few seniors, around 10 percent, reach for the brass ring and undertake an honors thesis.<\/p>\n\n\n

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These days, seniors who do honors work upload digital versions of their theses to an online repository called Scholarly Communication and Research at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. Seniors who do semester- or year-long versions still print and bind their final theses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regardless of the type of thesis, many seniors take part in a ritual that seems to have arisen within the last few years: A senior will invite a first-year student to help bind a copy of the thesis. After the binding, the first-year gives the bound copy a kiss, as a sort of blessing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even the seniors who’ve done an honors thesis, and thus don’t need to print it out, partake of the ritual. Its origins are murky, but the new ritual may have filled a gap left by the demise of an honors thesis ritual, that of hand-delivering four bound copies of their completed thesis to Office Services, whose staff would fete (and hug) each senior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the end of that ritual (because seniors now upload their theses), the new ritual may have emerged and spread to other seniors doing semester- and year-long theses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Besides the practical benefit of the ritual \u2014 it informs first-year students about the importance of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ academic life \u2014 it might also reveal what ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students value about their community. In this case, it’s the “beautiful cycle,” a term coined by Tommy Holmberg ’13 in his Senior Address at Commencement two years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Among ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students, Holmberg explained, the \u201cbeautiful cycle\u201d means that ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ seniors have a pay-it-forward mindset, taking steps to ensure that \u201cthe goodness of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is passed on\u201d to younger students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goodness is passed on \u201cout of admiration and gratitude\u201d for what the seniors have experienced, Holmberg said, and out of \u201cexcitement and pride for what\u201d younger ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students will do and become.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her honors thesis, Snellings, of Lexington, Mass., looked at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students\u2019 perceptions and awareness of whiteness and its impact on their college experience. For her thesis ritual, she made a choice that highlights the family aspect of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. Snellings chose her sister, Frances, to help bind the book \u2014 the sisters are one of 34 sets of siblings currently at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grace Pezzella ’15 of Newburyport, Mass., wrote her honors thesis on the transformation of the Appalachian Mountain Club’s hut system in the White Mountains from a very masculine environment to “an ideal feminist model, wherein there is complete equality between the sexes.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For her binding ritual, Pezzella, the vice president of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Outing Club, chose the BOC Equipment Room, and invited first-year Beanie O’Shea of Somers, Conn., to join her around the fabled BOC stump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pezzella chose the BOC E-room to honor the club’s long history of gender equality, and chose O’Shea “because I think Beanie is going to go far in the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Outing Club,” Pezzella says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A sweet ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ ritual helps seniors commemorate a pivotal moment \u2014 the completion of a thesis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":93492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"bates_author_byline_override":"","_estimated-read-time":"","_post-template":"","_header-color":"#000000","_photo-credit":"","_header-effect":"parallax","override_related_with_tag":"","_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[1467,7842,10834],"class_list":["post-93507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-batesnews","tag-bates-outing-club","tag-senior-thesis","tag-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93507"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":167321,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93507\/revisions\/167321"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}