The arrival of spring means seniors who have been working allyear on honors theses either take a well-deserved break afterhanding them in, or spend hours trying to finish before theirdepartment’s deadline.

Weinberg senior Tyler Barnett said he prepared for the thesis hehanded in last Friday — a mandatory part of the selective AmericanStudies program — since his sophomore year.

And now that it’s done, he said he has experienced feelings ofjoy and “post-partum depression.”

“You have a different mindset after you finish something thatlarge,” he said. “It’s a very weird feeling.”

To celebrate he said he went to a party at another AmericanStudies student’s house.

Barnett said the American Studies program’s structure, whichrequires all majors to take small seminars together, gives thethesis a different meaning.

“It’s really more of a culmination than at other departments,”he said. “It was kind of momentous to turn it in.”

Barnett said his thesis, which focused on blues singers BessieSmith and Ma Rainey helped him decide some of his plans for aftergraduation.

“This kind of convinced me that I should give graduate school ashot at some point,” he said.

But Barnett hasn’t stopped working. He said interest in hisother classwork keeps him motivated, and he dedicates more time tohobbies like a project with Communication senior Andy Brommel. Thetwo are creating an hour-long album to accompany an adaptation of astory by Brommel being performed later this month. The story,”Firefly,” will be performed at the Mussetter-Struble Theatre atthe Theatre and Interpretation Center as part of the Spare RibFestival. The festival presents works created, directed andperformed by undergraduates in performance studies.

“It’s like another baby that I have incubating,” he said.

But it’s not time to relax yet for seniors like Emily Wetter,who still have a few more days to prepare their theses. Wetter, aWeinberg senior and psychology major said she still is revising herpaper on the ability of parents to determine their child’semotions.

“There’s a lot of last minute revisions and drafts,” shesaid.

Wetter said she doesn’t think it will be difficult toconcentrate on her other classes after she is done with her thesis,but said she will definitely take more time to socialize, “spendingtime with friends instead of typing my paper.”

Philosophy lecturer Mark Sheldon, an adviser for seniors in hisdepartment and acting assistant dean for Weinberg College of Artsand Sciences, said many seniors enjoy studying an issue in depthafter briefly studying a variety of topics.

“After being students and taking a variety of courses…(students are) probably getting interested and enthusiastic aboutvarious ideas,” Sheldon said, “particularly here at Northwesternwhere we have a quarter system.”

“Going in depth in a systematic way in an issue or question orproblem” is great experience for graduate school, whether for theapplication or for research for a dissertation, Sheldon said.

John Etmekjian, a Weinberg junior graduating a year early, saidthe best part of being finished with his thesis was to have morefree time and to enjoy the nice weather, he said.

“I definitely want to play more tennis,” said Etmekjian,president of Men’s Club Tennis.

His thesis, a requirement of his mathematical methods in thesocial sciences major, focused on how the relative importance ofdifferent golf skills has changed over the past 25 years on theProfessional Golf Association tour.

Etmekjian said he was inspired by his father, who wrote hiscollege thesis on baseball.

“The biggest piece of advice they gave us was to pick a topicthat you’ll want to stick with the whole year,” said Etmekjian, whoalso is a golfer.

“It would have been nice to get some funding from the school tocheck my theories,” he said.