Congrats on deciding to write your thesis! That gold fourragère will look lovely at commencement (I’m staying optimistic for us May 2021 folks!).
Writing a thesis is difficult work for everyone; don’t be your own worst enemy. Let’s learn from my mistakes!
Mistake 1: Staying Distracted
Put your phone down. Do not check Twitter while you are writing—that is how a one hour session or single writing task turns into 3:00 AM tears of frustration. Put your phone on Do Not Disturb, chuck it across the room (or as my siblings might say—Yeet it!), and focus on your task. (Mistake 1.5: Not regularly setting clear and specific tasks for work sessions. Professor Baggetta will discuss the importance of being intentional with your writing time—listen to him. I promise this will make your life much easier.)
Mistake 2: Putting Off Data Collection and Analysis
If V499 still has not started for you, you are in a great position! Confirm with a faculty mentor and start gathering data over the summer or winter break periods. You will make your life a lot easier if you start earlier. However, not all hope is lost! I ignored the steps of finding an advisor and collecting data from April through most of August (I choose to blame being stuck at home during Spring/Summer 2020 for this intense level of procrastination), and I still managed to complete my thesis this Fall!
If you are viewing this while already enrolled in V499, start working on your data collection as soon as you possibly can. If you are in Professor Baggetta’s section of the course, you will hear that data collection always takes longer than expected. I learned that this is true—not a scare tactic. You will also run into countless issues that may need the help of an expert eye.
If you are writing a quantitative paper, I recommend that you work on collection and analysis as soon as you can so that you can correct issues with the help of your advisor—rather than frantically searching Google for Stata codes at 4:00 AM. This will not ruin your life, but it certainly is not fun.
Mistake 3: Trying to Do It All by Yourself
You do not have to do this alone. You will stress yourself out so much trying to figure out everything independently. Lean on your community—your faculty mentor, course instructor, peers, outside reviewer, etc.—for help! People want to see you succeed. Reach out! Your peers are probably facing the same struggles—and your professors surely faced them in getting to where they are. It cannot hurt to ask!
And yet—even if you make every single one of these mistakes—you will be okay. I made it through the process while making all of these mistakes (and more—repeatedly!). I believe in you.
At the end of this, you will have done something very few people do as undergrads (and you may be reading this while we are still doing everything remotely—which makes the process infinitely more difficult—kudos to you!). Avoiding these mistakes won’t make (or break) your project—and you will still be stressed out. Do what you can to eliminate unnecessary stress and make your life a little bit easier. Be kind to yourself: at the end of the day, you are worth more than this paper!
Samantha Bailey is a senior preparing to graduate in May 2021 with a Bachelor of Science in Public Affairs majoring in Law and Public Policy with an educational studies minor. She is pursuing a concurrent Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics from the College of Arts and Sciences. Her (infrequently updated) LinkedIn can be found here.
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