Hello again! Please don’t clap. At this point, I think we all know who I am, so I will spare everyone another introduction. I’m Nas, I’m working on a thesis about care, labor, intimacy, and all the complicated things that happen when those ideas collide, and somehow I am getting dangerously close to actually finishing this thing.

Right now, I am almost finished with Part I of my thesis, which focuses on close readings and care studies. I have been working through my primary texts while thinking about care as labor, emotional investment, time, sacrifice, and something that can be both deeply intimate and deeply exhausting. I started it during our “rat summer,” and I’m still gong. My goal is to have Part I completed before the end of September. For once, that deadline actually feels realistic, which I am choosing not to question too much.

My independent study with Dr. Giunta is also giving me the space to be intentional about what comes next. Once Part I is finished, I want October to be dedicated primarily to my autoethnographic piece. This is the part I am both excited about and slightly terrified to write because it asks me to move from analyzing other people’s stories of care into examining my own. I know it will require a different kind of vulnerability than the analytical section, but I also think it may ultimately become one of the most meaningful parts of the project.

Then comes November and Part III. My goal is to spend that month developing the final portion of the thesis so that by the last few weeks of the semester, I am no longer trying to produce entirely new sections. Ideally, those final weeks will be reserved for revision, restructuring, making connections across the three parts, and probably staring at sentences I have read 47 times wondering if they are still written in English.

For now, though, I feel good about where I am. There is still a lot to write, rethink, cut, add, and inevitably overthink, but the thesis is beginning to feel less like this giant abstract project I have been talking about forever and more like an actual body of work that is taking shape. September is for finishing Part I. October belongs to autoethnography. November belongs to Part III. And then, hopefully, I revise my way across the finish line.