Rule #1: A thesis

Rule #1: A master’s thesis requires a thesis statement.

I could have guessed when I picked up the “More Comprehensive” edition of Feminist Thought that I wasn’t making life any easier. I should have known that trying to define Ideology would only add fire to the flame. Then there was the time I tried to inculcate the infants of America with proletarian politics. And let us not forget the past six months of #BLACKLIVESMATTER. Really, the moment I hung this banner, I should have known this wasn’t going to be easy.

I could have easily predicted that choosing a thesis topic would be utterly and completely debilitating. So naturally, I put it off.

While others proclaimed their thesis statements to advisors and peers, I hid behind my copy of Marx’s Capital, pretending I hadn’t given up 15 pages into the heaviest book I owned.

I assured my advisor in nods and illusory emails that I was “making progress”, all the while I was rereading The Bell Jar for the fifteenth time and had spent ten hours debating whether or not I could find anything positive to say about education, philosophy or really anything that existed. ever. Somewhere in there I *may* have watched four seasons of The West Wing. Let’s call it political research.

Painstakingly as the immediacy of the situation comes to confront me, I have found potentiality in the intersection of all the things I hate most, the patriarchy, racism and capitalism. Oh what a joyous occasion! I don’t want to spoil anything, but the phrase “ideological state apparatus” comes up, so buckle your seatbelts, it’s gonna be one wild ride.