Writing an undergraduate honors thesis is a daunting task. It’s a task that I took too lightly – I primarily did so because it seemed like a less painful alternative to SPEA-V 370, Research Methods and Statistical Modeling. (It definitely isn’t.) However, choosing to write a thesis is not a decision I regret making. In the end, I gained a wealth of useful knowledge about academic writing, conducting research, and the inner workings of academia. Here are a few tips for prospective thesis writers that I picked up along the way.
Write a lot! – Your honors thesis instructors will likely tell you to “write early, and write often.” That’s excellent advice, but I think it’s important to emphasize the sheer quantity of words that you need to produce. Your final thesis needs to be 7,000 to 10,000 words. As such, you have lots and lots of room to work with. If there’s something you think may be of relevance to your thesis, write about it! It’s even better to do so in great detail. It’s very unlikely that any of your writing will go to waste. Even if something you write doesn’t end up in your final paper, your time wasn’t wasted. In that case, you practiced your writing skills, organized your thoughts, and now have more knowledge about the topic of your research.
Your writing shouldn’t just take the form of prose that could fit into your final thesis – you should take extensive notes. Plan on documenting the excruciating minutiae of every single step you take in the research process. One way to think of this piece of advice is that you should be able to justify every decision you made along the way. Why did you choose to distribute your survey in the way that you did? What gave rise to your research question? Why did you choose the database with which you conducted your analysis? How did you select a sample for your survey? etc. Like my previous piece of advice, writing too much will not be an issue.
Build your network! – My thesis wouldn’t have been possible without help from several people. Don’t be afraid to reach out for help! You don’t have to figure this out on your own. In a Zoom meeting with a former professor of mine, I chose my research topic. I couldn’t have distributed my survey without the help of connections I made in a summer internship. My advisor was another former professor of mine, and he put me in contact with the professor emeritus who created the entire field of research for my project. Finally, the Honors Program put me in contact with a PhD student who helped me finalize my research question and taught me how to complete statistical analysis, from scratch. (I skipped V370. see above.) If I didn’t connect with these people and ask them for help, I couldn’t have completed my thesis.
After writing this, I realize that I may have made the task look even more daunting to prospective thesis writers than it already does. Sorry about that. However, I’d like to reiterate not just that this process is worth it, but also that it is feasible. I did it, somehow. You can do it too, and you won’t regret it.
Gram Johnson is a senior studying Law & Public Policy at the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs. After graduation, he will pursue a J.D. at the Maurer School of Law, joining the class of 2027.
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