Are you trying to start your O’Neill Honors Thesis? If so, I have some advice for you. That is, if you decide to take it. First off, thinking ahead and planning is crucial! I don’t know about you, but I procrastinate until I literally can’t procrastinate anymore. I constantly find myself waiting until 10:00 p.m. the night before something is due to start it. During the process of writing my thesis, I’ve learned that I need hard deadlines in order to get anything done. At the beginning of the semester, one of our assignments was to plan out when we were going to set aside time to write and deadlines for getting different sections completed. Honestly, I have not stuck to that schedule at all. My advice to you is to set those hard deadlines and find ways to stick to them (such as sending your advisor completed sections along the way). If had stuck to the deadlines I initially created, I think my thesis would have been better developed and my stress levels would have decreased throughout the whole process of writing my thesis.
Not only is it important to set deadlines to help plan ahead, it is also important to think about everything else in your life and how that will affect your time and ability to work on your thesis. Since you’re in the O’Neill Honors Program, I’m going to assume (even though it’s bad to assume…) you are the type of student that takes numerous, difficult classes, and tries to be involved on campus like the rest of us in the program. My second piece of advice is to plan your schedule wisely. I don’t want to discourage you from taking challenging or interesting courses by any means, but definitely consider how much time each class will take. Personally, I had to complete all my undergraduate requirements (i.e., minor requirements and O’Neill Honors requirements) my junior year in order to do the Accelerated Masters Program. I took 21 credit hours this spring semester, which has been a lot to try to balance with writing my thesis. If I could go back in time, I probably wouldn’t have taken as many classes this semester since I also had to devote a large amount of time to writing my thesis. Again, I don’t want to discourage you from taking rigorous courses. I just want to encourage you to honestly think about your time commitments.
My last piece of advice might seem obvious, but make sure to talk to your fellow honors students. As an environmental science student, I feel like I haven’t made a lot of friends in my classes since a lot of them have had big class sizes. The opposite is true about V491 and V499. You quickly get to know your classmates when the class is only about 15 people. Not only do you get to know each other well, but they also know exactly what you’re going through, which I find reassuring. There’s also no better feeling than to rant about your thesis in a frustrating moment to your classmates, which I’m sure you’ll get some experience with. Writing your thesis may be rough at times, but don’t forget to cherish each moment and the people around you. You’ll look back one day and smile. 🙂
Regan Margerum is a junior in the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs majoring in Environmental Science with minors in Water Resource Science, Policy, and Management and also in Outdoor Recreation, Parks, and Human Ecology.
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