There is a danger in wishing to have understood everything during the process of writing a dissertation. I have spent the last year working on a 90 page Masters by Research dissertation about how Heidegger can alter the way we view graffiti and street art within the context of the city. I submitted it three days ago. Already I am worried. I am scared out of my mind that I have missed loads of really important and crucial points. The issue is however that these worries have only really come about because I have been reading Pierre Bourdieu’s The Political Ontology of Martin Heidegger in preparation for writing my PhD proposal. In it new and interesting thoughts have been brought to my attention, thoughts which I could have added to the introduction to contextualise Heidegger’s thought.

There are quotes from Heidegger’s work I could have added and things I missed. Just last week I bought three books written by Heidegger which I didn’t even know existed. Even just flicking through the contents page I was hit by a flood of embarrassment. Why hadn’t I found these? I haven’t looked hard enough. I barely scratched the surface of Heidegger’s ideas let alone the secondary work that surrounds his thought branching off in all directions. Then it hit me….

It is important that you know when you are done. Or more importantly when you have to be done.

My concerns and worries have arisen not because my work is bad but because I feel like it wasn’t complete. The thing is, it never could be. I worked on it for a year. If I had done so for three years it would be far more extensive and complex than the time I was allowed. If I spent a lifetime on the same project, it would again be completely different. Even then there would be things that I would not and could not have thought to consider. More than anything I am writing this as a reassuring message to myself. I don’t think it will help until I completely move on to my next project which at the end, I will despair that I once again know nothing.

I had a word limit and a time limit. There is only so much you can say in 30,000 words. I want the work I do at every stage to stand up to scrutiny and to be interesting, engaging as well as intelligent. But this is not my magnum opus, it is a thesis submitted in line with the regulations of a Masters by Research degree. I’d like to think I have gone above the expectations set out for me, but the expectations at this level do not require everything to be covered.

For now I shall try to forget about anything that I could have changed. I will go and pick up my hard copy from the printers and prepare for the next few years of extensive and rigorous research while trying to understand that even after that time I will find a book in a second-hand bookshop that would have been the solution to all of my problems.