Congratulations on making it to the final step in the CARI process! You’re probably pretty anxious about the prospect of writing your thesis- and that’s completely understandable. I’ve got a few pieces of advice for those interested in taking it from my writing process and time in the course, even though most of it is somewhat common sense.
- Relax
Thesis writing is a very stressful process, but ultimately it’s an entirely manageable project. While 30 or so pages might seem like a mountain when you’re staring it in the face at the start of the course, remember that you have essentially an entire semester to write this thing. There are 16 weeks in the semester, which puts you at less than 2 pages of writing a week. Now, the writing process doesn’t break down evenly like this, but it’s a good thing to keep in mind if you’re panicking. The more time that you spend freaking out about writing the thesis is less time that you spend writing it. I know that in my first few weeks in the course, I spent more time worrying about how much time the writing process was going to take than I did actually writing. Once I realized how I was spending my time and started changing that worry-time into actually writing-time, the pages just piled up. Planning what you’re going to be working on is good and all, but when you find yourself thinking and fretting about everything you have left to do you need to just shake your head and start writing.
- Editing is where the real writing happens
Before this class, I was very unused to the editing process. For most of my other classes, even on big assignments, the most editing that an essay would get was a run through on Grammarly and reading it out loud to see if it sounded right. That doesn’t cut it for your thesis. Your first draft is just that. A draft. It is nowhere near what the final product will look like, and will be significantly clunkier and worse-sounding than your final thesis. The most important thing while writing the first draft is just to get words down on the page. As long as your thoughts are at least marginally coherent on the first run through, your second and third drafts will be there to pick up the slack. Don’t worry about perfectly crafting your thoughts into elegant phrases on your first draft- They’ll just be more confusing and liable to being deleted in the next draft.
- Talk with your advisor
This might be hit-or-miss depending on who your advisor is and how well you know them, but they are your number one asset on this thesis writing journey. In the first few weeks of the class I had at least four meetings with my advisor, and those were integral for me figuring out just what I was even saying with my hypothesis and research question. It was only through having this ongoing dialogue with my advisor that I was able to bring my idea from a wide-sweeping, unmanageable behemoth to an answerable question. Asking my advisor questions about my field and prior bodies of research methods were incredibly helpful- I would have never thought to look in the places and disparate fields that he managed to dredge books and authors up from.
Overall, this thesis class isn’t really that different from most of your other classes, including the workload. It requires a little more independence and a lot more personal discipline in maintaining a schedule, but it’s entirely manageable. Don’t freak out, it’ll be fine.
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