Image of a PhD dissertation courtesy of raffyd at flickr – reproduced under a creative commons licence.

My 2009 began in a very sober mode (if not mood) – today was the deadline for finishing the edit of my PhD thesis recommended by the panel at my final seminar so it can go forward to external examiners after being checked by my supervisor. So, after Boxing Day, I locked myself away from the world, and with my flatmate being away for the week, hardly spoke to a soul while I madly edited and refined and revised. Obviously, I was quite immersed in the totality of the dissertation and all its pathways and byways (which it was my task to smooth out somewhat), but what I think kept resurfacing in my mind was the need to write an acknowledgements page. I hadn’t realised til I checked the guidelines for formatting a thesis at QUT that this was actually required – my first impulse was to make it as minimalist as possible to avoid the temptation to tell the long and very emotional story of the whole journey towards Doctoral graduation (and make no mistake, every PhD student and PhD has one). But in the end, I enjoyed composing it, and unlike the acknowledgements in my honours thesis ten years ago, I resisted the temptation to include multiple Latin tags. I contented myself with one – from Virgil’s Aeneid – Book 1, line 33:

Tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem!

[That translates to something like - "what a long hard labour it is to found the City of Rome!"] Make of that what you will… for me it’s got multiple meanings and resonances.

I remember once reading a review of a book on Freud’s footnotes, which I thought was a grand idea. I wonder that no one has thought of writing a book about the acknowledgements in books (and theses). But perhaps I’m alone in finding them quite fascinating? There’s the obvious sociological interest – how much can be inferred from the once standard “and thanks to my wife for typing the manuscript”? But there’s also something to be learned about the personality of the author – even if they’re lapidary in their expressions of gratitude and obligation.