I call it an indie thesis

So I have a new project. I’m tempted to be secretive about it (shy!) but it will be more fun if I get this out as soon as possible. Cue the fanfare (I have yet to choose my entrance music, like pro wrestlers have, so maybe you could go with just a big Open Sesame gong noise): I’m writing a Masters thesis. There are a couple of peculiarities:

  • I’m not enrolled at a school;
  • and actually I don’t have an undergrad degree;
  • and my topic idea so far is to figure out what I’d like my own death to be like (the obvious joke being that I’m preparing for my final project in the School of Life).

I’m declaring today my first day of school. For the next two years or so, I’m going to research dying and ideas about mortality (and, if my understanding of mid-life crises is accurate, basically have one of those in an educational fashion), and then make a big, coherent document out of the results.

I’ll be posting here about the research and my ideas about the topic, and also about the process of inventing an education and publishing it on the internet.

I’m excited! I’m mostly self-educated anyway (as are a lot of web designers… and vagina geeks too, actually) and I research things all the time, but I don’t often have obvious milestones in my perpetual education. Maybe at the end of this, I’ll order one of those spam degrees to make it official.

Right now, I’ve got a couple of meetings set up to get input from various folks, I’ve started a list of things to investigate, and I’m working on putting together a well-balanced advisory committee. More on this situation as it develops.