So I have mentioned before that I work at the school library on an archiving project that allows me to spend my time around four decades’ worth of thesis projects. There are many things about this that I love, but one of them is that I encounter all of the wonderful and interesting thesis titles. Thesis titles, by virtue of being all APA analytical and specific, tend to be wonderfully descriptive and wordy in a charmingly Victorian sort of way. For instance, here are a few real examples:
- Comfortable interpersonal distance as perceived by educationally handicapped children.
- Analysis and design of a phaselocked loop system for tracking a linear frequency modulation signal.
- Leisure patterns of professional clergy within the United Methodist Church in the greater Los Angeles area.
How can you not find these things fun?!
Today however, was a banner letter day because today I found my favorite title so far. It’s a bit of a dark horse, I’ll admit that, because while it is charmingly Victorian it isn’t the most clunky and uselessly unwieldy title I’ve come across. Rather this one wins more for content than style, although the style doesn’t suck either. Are you ready? Okay, here it is:
Erotic coital fantasies of monogamous and nonmonogamous female graduate students: a normative study.
And I feel no shame in admitting that I read the WHOLE THING and it was fascinating and better written than 50 Shades of Grey. Not that it needs to be pointed out, but you ladies are into some weird stuff and I totally understand ALL OF IT now. Seriously, because it was a ‘normative study’ there were multichoice surveys and stuff. Very illuminating.