After quite a long remorse binge, I mustered up to find a new topic and supervisor. This time I picked someone I was personally friends with, who gave me a topic that was relevant for this work, namely mobile push messaging. So he tasked me to analyse googles and apples systems, which I did quickly, documenting how these message brokering systems are setup from the perspective of the consumer and service operators and implemented a tool to intercept the communication between device and broker cloud for Android, after testing an already existing tool for iOS.
So the technical part of this was actually done in time, on the documentation side of things it was pretty bleak though. The outline for the thesis was not just documenting the process but also putting their design decisions into the context of privacy concerns, like that facebook leak(ed - might have changed by now) the Message from X to your push provider.

I also need to add a side-note about the Bologna reform, which changed all courses in Europe to bachelor/master. The courses became much more school-like. The focus is on getting you ready for a paid job, not academia. Writing scientific papers was an optional subject and the exams are just solving (numerical) problems which are easy to grade and correct. The size of the courses also left little room for presentations.

So I ran into the knife of having to write my first scientific work as my final exam. This together with the sociological aspects of the topic really pushed me back into the dark corner of being unable to work at it, feeling unable to ever finish it and maybe some kind of imposter syndrome as well. Time went on and on and the more time passed the more I felt like none of this was new or contributing anything, even though that is not the aim for a bachelor thesis.
Additionally, the choice of picking someone I could trust that would understand my personal problems involved in the process bit me again but now into the other direction. Since we were close friends he was unable to play the disciplinary role with me and so I dwindled on my own again. I took nearly another year before the despair grew to a level where I couldn't take treading water any more. This time I kept the topic though and switched to a supervisor that knew me and the previous supervisor well enough and was comfortable with playing the harsher cards and working with me to construct a framing for the project where I wouldn't go into deep-dive mode and pick up other stuff when it became tough and yea..

In winter of 2016 I was in the lucky position to get to know @katze, @luroc and I convinced them to build a first prototype of #talenet based on SSB for thereisnogame at 33c3. The whole thing was really omega-project-like and the prototype halted and caught fire but we later applied for a grant to work on it with a serious time/energy investment. See the https://t4l3.net/concept/ for more if you haven't heard about it. Of course this was another distraction because I was uncomfortable with how my thesis was going. On the other hand I needed money and even it felt startup-like with regards to how it drained us it gave me more flexibility that a job at a bar or supermarket.

The time frame for the grant was half a year and afterwards I finally began to work on writing my thesis and it actually finally worked. My supervisor also encouraged me right from the beginning to seek counselling to work on my anxiety attacks and disassociative tendencies. I was kicking and screaming at first but now I just wonder why I didn't do it sooner. It helped me a lot to understand myself better and even though it's still a long journey which involves old griefs and digging up some buried bones, I'm actually looking forward to the valley beyond. Now I'm having my final exam in about three weeks for my last two ECTS points which are missing to get the degree and than I'm reallt done with it, which sounds unbelivable after all that time... I don't think I will apply for a master course anytime soon. I just don't see myself as a student anymore at this point. Too much bad experiences to get back into that mode right away. If at all, at another univeristy AND after some time passed to work through it.

I'm still in despair about all the time it took me even though I learned a lot, personal and technical. Life went on and didn't wait for me. My parents are in quite a bit of financial trouble and I'm working with my Dad on a new project to dig them out again. This has been going on for nearly a year now and side-lined my work on tale:net and the thesis, which didn't make any of the three easier... A wish for my future would be better time organization and being able to work on just one thing at a time, not having the constant feeling of not living up to my own expectations.