Thesis, as a patchwork quilt

Thesis, as a patchwork quilt

Chetan S V

What if the thesis is a quilt that the researcher weaves?

What if writing it is a patchwork, not merely because it employs a patchwork ethnography methodology?

When my body and mind work in patches, telling me to rest and take breaks,

I write in patches--at home, in the office, in a park, at a café, by the lake,

While also doodling, illustrating, and sometimes sipping tea,

With self-doubts and frozen ideas, thoughts of quitting,

Sometimes just sitting still, staring at the data,

And paying attention to exhaustion.

What does it mean to jump from one patch to another, not following a linear writing pattern?

Always carrying the ‘field’ in my body and mind

Of different people, different encounters, different contexts,

And weaving these patches together slowly and carefully to craft a story.

What comes to your mind when you imagine a quilt?

 

A shiny silken quilt with perfect patches stitched together?

If so, is silk a metaphor for the quality of work or the subtle indication of a certain privilege?

Or an adornment of sorts to make it look grand?

What if my patches are a mixture of silk, cotton, wool, and jute?

What if my patches are not symmetrical and not of the same size?

Does that appeal to your visual aesthetic or an epistemic thirst, or both, or none?

Do the patches in the quilt speak about the oppression, harm, and ethics in putting it together?

Do these patches account for my crip time, my meltdowns, and dys/regulation?

What if my quilt has unfinished ends? What if more patches can be added later? Or what if the quilt can be cut into smaller pieces that then take the shape of a scarf?

Maybe I wasn’t the only one who wove this quilt altogether.

What if some of my interlocutors didn’t hold some pieces together?

What if my supervisor hadn’t helped me navigate the exhaustion in the process?

What if my family and friends didn’t believe in me?

Perhaps there wouldn’t have been a quilt

But, who is this quilt for?

Is it for me to wrap around proudly as a shroud?

Is it for the examiner who certifies its quality?

Is it for someone else who relates to the patches and feels warmer with them?

Is it for another researcher to make a different variety of quilt?

Is it for educational institutions to decorate their walls, or to look at the patches more closely and realize that one size doesn’t fit all?

Is it for mental health professionals to understand diversity as an experience that does not always need to be pathologized and fixed?

Is it for the policymaker to shift from telling ‘what’ to do and focus on telling ‘how’ to do things?

Is it a piece of advocacy that resists and challenges a dominant frame of reference?

You can bracket my quilt as a science, a social science, an art, a craft, or whatever labels you find fitting based on its appearance.

But to me, it's an experience, a curation, a joy, a reflection, and an immersion with making it, staying with it, deeply understanding the sources, assembling an epistemic piece that transcends a fixed label.

I don’t mind if my quilt is plain cotton, jute, wool, or a mixture of all of them.

As long as the threads are strong, the quilt keeps someone warm and lasts for some time.

Image Description: Handwritten drawing using a pencil, of a patchwork quilt with loose ends, flowing down from the top. In the middle of the quilt is written, "What if the thesis is a quilt that the researcher weaves?"