Graduate student finishes her thesis with proud mama photos: 'Longest labor ever'

Elise Solé
Georgia grad student Sarah Whelan Curtis "birthed" her epigenetics thesis and is sharing photos of her "newborn." (Photo: Twitter/Sarah W. Curtis)
Georgia grad student Sarah Whelan Curtis "birthed" her epigenetics thesis and is sharing photos of her "newborn." (Photo: Twitter/Sarah W. Curtis)

A grad school student delivered her genetics thesis, a "labor" of love, with proud photos styled like a newborn shoot.

Sarah Whelan Curtis, 26, a graduate student at Emory University in Atlanta Georgia, just submitted her four-year-long thesis on epigenetics, the study of how gene regulation changes, independent of the DNA sequence. Before her June 14th defense, Curtis previewed her accomplishment on Twitter.

“Yes, I did a photo shoot with my thesis. Longest labor ever,” Curtis tweeted Monday with three photos of herself wrapping the 183-page masterpiece around her stomach, gazing down at the document wrapped in a pink-and-blue blanket, and a portrait of her swaddled “baby.”

Curtis tells Yahoo Lifestyle that her biological clock is a light-hearted family concern. “I have a lot of nieces and nephews, and my mom told me, ‘Either get a PhD. or give me a grandchild,” she says. “I got my doctorate.”

Curtis’s grad school peers tweeted, “Congratulations! I am into the 66th month of labor and expecting soon,” and “Is the baby and mom healthy and safe? I am about to undergo a labor in a few months from now.” A few students posted exhausted-looking photos of themselves clutching their “babies.”

The photos are choreographed as “all the maternity shoots on my social media feed,” says Curtis, and a spur-of-the-moment decision when filing her thesis on Friday. Curtis told her husband of our years about the idea, then dug out a baby blanket she had crocheted for her niece (due in September) for realism.

Next week, Curtis defends her work in an open-to-the-public forum. “It’s my cold sweat moment,” she tells Yahoo Lifestyle.

Having written her thesis in only four years (students in her program typically finish within five-and-a-half years), Curtis is applying for post-doctorate positions in Georgia.

“I’ll be studying the genetics of both epilepsy and cranial facial defects,” she says. “Babies are not on my mind right now.”

Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.