Guide To Writing A Master's Thesis
Thesis writing can be one of the most overwhelming educational experiences and with no one to guide the way, many students become stressed and may give up all together.
Thesis writing is a big deal. It is the culminating project of a long hard education and if a thesis falls short of the mark, a student falls short of graduation. No pressure, right?
Sometimes advisors fail to properly guide students and show them how to undertake a project of such epic proportions. This is a guide on how to make thesis writing seem like an attainable feat instead of an intimidating idea. A thesis can range from 100 pages to 1000 pages and may fall anywhere in between. This can be quite overwhelming, thinking of the whole project at once isn't a healthy strategy. Such a huge project can be broken down into many smaller projects that do not seem nearly as frightening.
Choosing A Topic
First thing is first, choose a topic for your project. Make sure that the topic at hand is not too broad because that will only result in too much material and no clue where to start. Narrow the topic down to something manageable and then seek the help of a thesis advisor.
A thesis advisor will know right from the start whether or not the scope of a project is too broad or too narrow and this will be instrumental in starting the entire process. Once a topic has been selected, it's only a matter of breaking the large task into many small ones.
A thesis, while obviously a cohesive text, is often broken down into many sections. Once a topic has been selected, it should be easy to break it down into many smaller sections. Make a list of everything that needs to be covered and then think of each item as its own separate project.
If the thesis needs to be 200 pages and can be broken down into 10 different sections, that makes it like writing 10 separate 20 page papers. Already the stress levels are reduced. While 20 page papers can be a pain to write, they aren't out of the question and are much easier to write.
Creating A Process
Each section of the paper can be treated as a regular research paper. As a graduate student, many papers of this sort have already been written, thus a process has already been created.
1.Research The Topic
2.Take Notes
3.Create Opinions
4.Generate A Text Using All Of The Above
This process can be repeated for each section and when all of the sections have been written, it will be much easier to revise the paper so that they all work together as a cohesive unit. Writing a thesis this way gives the author the ability to easily change and re-arrange sections before finalizing the body of the text.
Effectively Managing Time
The deadline for a thesis is given to you ahead of time, sometimes years ahead of time, and this is to ensure that the project is finished on time. Once the period has been specified, create a schedule.
Assign each section a certain amount of time and be sure to complete the section within the period given. If the work is finished according to the schedule, there should be no problem getting the thesis done on time, thus no worry about deadlines!
Make sure to leave break time between each section to rest before starting the next section and make sure to allow for time between projected completion and the actual due date. This way if anything goes wrong there will be time to fix errors or take care of last minute business.
If these tips are taken to heart there should be no problem finishing a thesis on time and with as little stress as possible. The key to not panicking is too look at the big projects as many little projects so as to make it seem less intimidating. If there is no stress, the project will be much easier!