Senior year at Yale means many things. It’s your last year being able to see that random campus celebrity and text your best friend about their new, questionable haircut. It’s the year when the Yale senior dance, or “Masquerade” takes place, aka the night when you can relive your previous high school prom glory (or for our COVID-19 gap year students, lack thereof). It’s a time when emotions are high, motivation to do academic work is low, and everyone is trying to knock those last minute goals off of their Yale bucket lists (which would merit a whole ‘nother blog post).
But perhaps most defining for many seniors’ final year at Yale, is completion of a thesis. As put by Google AI (just being honest here), a thesis is “a substantial piece of original research or creative work, often a capstone project, submitted to fulfill a degree requirement, typically for a master’s degree, but sometimes for a bachelor’s degree as well.” Yale College falls under that “sometimes” category. For Yale undergraduates, theses often take the form of a senior essay anywhere from 30-80+ pages long, but depending on your major or departmental requirements, one’s thesis might involve a year-long project, a creative component, or research beyond a traditional essay-format. All of the departments have more specific criteria for these theses (try saying “these theses” 10 times fast), and I’m definitely the wrong gal to be asking about those. However, I can speak on theses in the Film and Media Studies (FMS) department. That’s because I’m currently entering my eighth month of working on my own FMS thesis!
My senior thesis is part of a year-long class called Advanced Film Writing and Directing, in which students get to write and direct their own narrative short film.
