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Matthieu Santerre

September 10th, 2014

At Journey’s End

2 comments

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Matthieu Santerre

September 10th, 2014

At Journey’s End

2 comments

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

It once appeared difficult to conceive. Now, it is reality. For those of you who are about to embark on your LSE journey,  the end of the road appears far and unclear. So it is for most of your degree. Present necessities and preoccupations sap your energy, while the future, that imperceptible state, appears far away and demands little attention.

As a master’s student I can assert that among the biggest preoccupation is your dissertation. You built it. You destroy it. You change its foundation until somehow, rather like the culmination of a series of accidents, you have 10,000 coherent words.

For a master’s student, the pinnacle is the dissertation.

Yet, it comes as a shock when it is done. A predictable shock, but a shock nonetheless. Why is this? Because, for the previous 8 to 10 months you have been giving your heart and soul to the enterprise. You have defined yourself, in part, as an LSE student. You have become part of the academic machine.

Once your dissertation is over, you feel an overwhelming sense of relief. Your life is yours once more, you are at journey’s end. But you soon realize that for all its faults, for all its stress and sleepless nights, it was worth it. You would not trade in the experience for anything in the world. You enjoyed it. And now, it is gone.

Here we are at journey’s end. Your world, which you have painstakingly built, has dissolved.

All in all, it was wonderful being a student. Your sense of accomplishment soon leads to a feeling of “what’s next?”. However there is an immeasurable strength to this LSE adventure. For those who graduate it may be an end to a journey, but there are many more chapters to be written, many more adventures to be had. In the end all will be better.

After all, you will probably never have to write 10,000 words ever again. And if you do, not only will more than 3 people read them, but you will probably be paid for the effort.

About the author

Matthieu Santerre

I am a graduate student in the MSc History of International Relations programme here at LSE. I did my undergraduate studies in Political Science at McGill University in Montreal. I like drawing, and have done a number of illustrations for Le Délit. More recently I illustrated In Through A Coloured Lens, a brilliant book by Pat Watson.

Posted In: LSE

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