IT was already past midnight and his strained eyes are still glued to the screen.
He mumbles random curses when his beat-up laptop breaks down for the eighth time today, a bit less than the number of breakdowns he had throughout the making of his thesis.
Despite the crisis, he is not spared from the hassle of data-gathering and travails of thesis-making.
While he does understand that they are not on a break, the idea of disturbing people’s peace for his thesis seems too much. Everyone has a lot to deal with already: limited budget, deteriorating mental health, or academic obligations. They have no spare time to answer his online questionnaire.
Waiting for his laptop to stop lagging, he takes out his phone. It is against his will to continue pestering people to answer his survey, but he does not have a choice. As long as he garners sufficient respondents, he does not care whether they find him sketchy or think he is shooting his shot.
He forwards the link to random reactors of the UST AB page hoping that they do not misconceive his link as a virus.
He goes through his friend list and messages them one by one with the copied-and-pasted link.
He even opens Bumble and sends the link of the questionnaire to his possibly qualified matches.
It was ridiculous, but so is requiring undergraduates to finish their thesis amid the pandemic.
He can only hope that they are kind enough to respond. F DENISSE P. TABOR
