❤ Love Letter to Your Thesis 2025 winners! ❤

Today we are sharing our next two Love Letter to Your Thesis winners winning Love Letters:

💕 Most Romantic – Zein Almaha Wahdan Oweis

🤩 Most Inspiring – Haley Sneed

Love Letter to Your Thesis 2025 Winners

Zein Al-Maha Oweis (Zee) is a Jordanian thesis-pending PhD researcher in Media and Cultural Policy at the Centre for Cultural Policy Research (CCPR) at the University of Glasgow. Her research focuses on disability representation in Jordanian media. Zein has prior degrees in Media Communications and Broadcast Journalism. When not working at her desk, Zein is traveling around Scotland with her trusty Guide Dog Mitch in search of hidden gems

Date: February 14th, 2025

Dear PhD Thesis,

On a day where we are supposed to feel love and mushy inside … I have conflicting feelings towards you. I am not saying that this is a bad thing, just being honest towards you. I know how much you value honesty and transparency. The best way to share how I feel is through the use of colours. Heaven only knows how much you could benefit from the use of colours.

When I am asked how I feel about you my dear, lovable, insufferable thesis, the first colour that comes to mind is yellow. You make me feel warm, like the rays of the sun dancing pleasantly across my arms and shoulders. Sometimes, you feel so hot on my skin that you cause me to burn, leaving red blotches everywhere. That enrages me at times. You know how painful that feels? That pain becomes the colour of black. The feeling of grief and loss. I have not felt that feeling in thirteen years. Since my father passed away when I was sixteen.

However, at times I do feel you genially love me and look out for me by leaving words and breadcrumbs underneath the surface for me to find. You challenge me in the most intriguing ways. You know how I love to be challenged and how fond I am of putting puzzle pieces together. At such times you make feel the colour red. Red, the soft feeling of velvet on my skin like the cloak I wore as Red Riding Hood on Halloween. During these moments it makes me feel as if I am smothered by love.

Then you blitz attack me with your sharp teeth as if you were the Big Bad Wolf about to eat me alive. You have no middle ground. Either it is smothering me with love and affection or attack me at times when I am most vulnerable like when you did not allow my words to flow on the page so academically and took advantage of my feelings towards my data samples. That was a very low blow. At such times you make me feel of the colour blue. The sound of waves crashing violently against the shores of the Troon beach. Screaming at me for not listening to the data, for being stubborn and not letting my research guide me.

Then there are these long periods of calm where we are both in unison. No love, no hate. Just trust, respect and honesty with one another. This is when I feel the colour purple. Not the dark version, but light. You make me feel safe. Like the feeling of lying in a field surrounded by lavender under a light blue sky looking up at white fluffy clouds. So tranquil, so relaxed that I feel free to make my own judgements with my words on the page.

Why can’t you always do this?

Why can’t it always be the feeling of light purple between us?

So, my lovely thesis, there is one more feeling I feel towards you … pride.

When I feel proud of what we have accomplished together I feel this overwhelming sense of joy, with sparkles in my eyes. I am taken back to the feeling of being in the Wadi Rum desert in Jordan to the moment I spotted my first star in the midnight sky. It was sparkling so bright. I could see how regal it looked surrounded by all that darkness.

You are that light that shines the way for me, guiding me in the dark.

So, even though we have gone through some ups and downs on this journey where I feel as if I am hanging upside down from a rollercoaster about to drop a 90-degree angle plummeting to the ground, we still have moments where I have butterflies in my stomach just like on the day we first met in October almost five years ago.

We have come a long way and I for one would hate it if we broke such a lasting bond.

As my mother always says, we are two souls on the same train moving to our fated destination. There are times where one of us will leave the carriage while the other will stay. Throughout this time we will both come across different people. Some are friends, while others will just be acquaintances. Yet, no matter what happens, we never abandon one another. That is the beauty of our relationship.

Lots of love,

Your faithful PhD researcher

Haley Sneed, PhD (pending), MEd, MSc is a researcher, educator, and community practitioner specialising in participatory research, youth wellbeing, and community development. Based at the University of Glasgow, her doctoral research explores how youth work and community-led initiatives can support wellbeing and drive social change in post-COVID Scotland. With over a decade of experience in youth work, education, and policy engagement, she bridges research and practice, focusing on co-production, inequalities, and participatory decision-making. Haley has taught across qualitative research, social justice, and public policy, working with students and practitioners to develop critical and applied research skills. She has presented at national and international conferences and contributed to research on youth policy, public services, and social inequalities. Alongside her academic work, she remains committed to grassroots activism and youth advocacy, serving as a lead youth worker, community organiser, and board chair for organisations supporting young people and marginalised communities.