i. sometimes you do that thing you aren't supposed to do
after several weeks of overthinking and some help from my really great boss, I was finally able to pinpoint what was wrong- or what I was having problems with- about my thesis. most of the fault was in the general structure of the story and the fact that it didn't really have an arc to it. and even though we really aren't supposed to backtrack on an entire semester's worth of work in the summer, that's kinda what i had to do.
ii. so i'm fixing it