ThesisCrazy 2025 pt.1: Galaxies and Joy

This is a part of our ThesisCrazy Series. You can sign up here for a short 10 min interview!

Interviews by Zoomy

Sofia Rinaldi ‘25 (she/her), Astronomy and Physics Major, Thesis in Astronomy, no carrel 

Working Title: "This Gal is on Fire: Understanding the Kinematic and Morphological Evolution of Early Galaxies Using Simulations."

“The capitalization is important. This Gal is on Fire, because gal for galaxy and then fire is the name of the simulations I use.”

On her topic: “The James Webb Space telescope observes galaxies that are super distant in the very early universe that have these really weird shapes. And because they're so distant, it's hard for us to get data about what's really what's going on with the physics of those galaxies. So my project uses galaxy simulations of early universe galaxies to kind of study the evolution of the galaxy's physics and shape and see if and how those things correlate. We know that they correlate in the local universe, so it's to see, you know, to better contextualize and explain what's going on with those weird observations by James Webb.” 

On how she thought of her topic: “I started working on the project two years ago with my advisor. I was interested in working with her and it was originally just one of the couple of projects that she mentioned to me that I could pursue. It was like the most physics-based analysis.”

On her progress: “I'd say I’m like 90% of the way there...I need to write my conclusion, but my conclusion is gonna be like two or three pages. But I need to make a bunch of images, because I use this like specific code to make images of the galaxy in different components of the galaxies at different times, and I need to do all of that.”

On her current mental state: “If I finish my edits by the end of the day, then it will be fine. I'm fully planning on staying up most of the night on Wednesday to finish.”

On her most upsetting thesis experience: “I took a class last semester that was the most work I’d ever had in college, so I could not make almost any progress on my thesis last semester. Now, it was fine because I had done two years worth of research, like writing all the code, making the initial observations, and the initial calculations. But it meant that I couldn't get into the bulk of my writing until this semester. So I didn't really start writing-writing until like spring break… it's been a real crunch.”

On her favorite form of procrastination:

“Searching for apartments and applying for jobs. Honestly, it's exciting though, because I want to move to New York."

On her plans for after she hands her thesis in: “Oh my god. I'm probably gonna take a nap during the day, and my goal is to turn it in in the morning. So I’ll go to class, and take a nap, do the champagne pop, and then my friends and I who wrote theses are going to go out to dinner for a celebration, then I have a cappella, and then bar night it up."

On her favorite part of her thesis: “I haven't made them yet, but probably my pretty pictures. If I were to spend a long time explaining this to you, this would be like the easiest thing to grasp, so it's what makes my project most accessible to most people.” 

If her thesis was a song/movie/TV show: “Friends, because that's a show that I've rewatched a bunch of times, and it's very much been in my life for a long time, but it also gets boring because I've seen it so many times. And like the fact of the matter is as much as I love this, it's like I've worked on it for so long, now, it's like it's an oldie but goodie, but sometimes I need a change.”

On her most used word/phrase: “Maybe galaxies. If I were to say a science word, it would be kinematics and morphology, because that's what the topic is. But because I'm a terrible writer, it's probably ‘thus’. I use the word I thus way too much." 

Any questions she’d wished we’d asked: “I think the only other thing I'd say is that the entire time I've been working on it and/or not working on it last semester I kind of had this anticipation of “it's just gonna get written…I’m at like 10 or 15 pages and I'm just gonna blink and it's gonna get written.” And that kind of did happen, like I kind of mostly got written within the last month or two. And now we're at about 70 pages, it'll be up to maybe 80 if we’re lucky. So that grind, it just kicks in, and just and we made it where we did and we made it work.”

Theses feces: “Regular. No anxious poops... I will say I've had anxious nausea. I've just been, like, in bed, absolutely nauseated and stressed. So that's fun.”

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Isadora Goldman Leviton ‘25 (she/her), Education and American Studies Major, no carrell (but a desk in the Education Studies house) 

Working Title: “'Hope Happens All the Time!' Educator Joy as a Means of Sustainment in Hartford and West Hartford." 

On her topic: "I did 11 long-form narrative interviews with eighth grade teachers in Hartford and West Hartford. I wanted to understand how they define just and sustainable futures for themselves and for their students. I was sort of using statistical data around educational apartheid to understand those things. So I looked at what sustainability means for a teacher's career, but also what it means for a student's future and what it means amidst environmental disaster and things like that, especially because environmental racism is significantly more prevalent in Hartford. So there's a lot of intersecting things." 

On how she thought of this topic: "I knew that I wanted to do something in education and I have a background in environmental sustainability work, so I think it was the intersection of those things. I wanted to work with teacher because don't know the next time I'll get to like sit down and learn from other educators like that. So it was kind of a selfish choice. I chose Hartford and West Hartford because Wesleyan has a tendency to have very complex relationships with the communities that we are a part of, and it felt like I wanted to do due diligence to those teachers and people."

On her progress: "It's done, bitch." 

On her current mental state: "I don't think I feel relieved yet. I’m hoping I get to that point. I think until tomorrow when everyone feels like they are collectively taking a sigh of relief, maybe it'll feel more real. I'm bad at sitting still, so we'll see how this goes."

On her most upsetting thesis experience: "To be honest I think the work that I'm doing is really devastating, and I often would sit there and read stories for hundreds and hundreds of hours about the most disturbing and deeply saddening findings about literacy rates and about how teachers were moving through this world and what neoliberalism has done to teachers and the teacher workforce. There were stories of 17 teachers in one school being on food stamps. It was a very humbling experience to sit in that all the time and to be with that kind of data."

On her favorite form of procrastination: "My ASHA work."

On her plans for April 17th: "I'm just I'm gonna dance night away in sparkles. That's the truth. I have my sparkly shirt upstairs already."

On her advice for future thesis writers: "The way to move through this is to be so in love with your work that there isn't a second question that you're doing the right thing. I live and breathe, think, sleep, and pee this work. I don't think about anything else the way that I think about this, and if I had one bad day where I was not obsessed with this work, I would have just quit. Find something that you love that much or it's not worth it."

On her favorite part of your thesis: "I worked really hard to make it accessible. I wanted people to be able to read it and relate to it and hear it. It's not gonna be silo and that I worked really hard for that to be the case."

If her thesis was a song or movie or a TV show: "The thing that got me through it was a playlist that I have. It's called “You and me and the universe that's holding us.” The two songs most important to me are “Making it Through” by Angie McMahon or “Light of a Clear Blue Morning” by Waxahachi."

On her most word/phrase: "Um, well, like “it" or “this”, but I would say some version of the word sustained, so sustainment, sustainability, or to be sustained. I'd say that's probably in every other sentence in the entire thesis."

Theses Feces: "I'm gonna answer this politically. I've been very stressed, okay?"