writing a thesis

Discussion in 'Higher Ed' started by mazzy, Sep 14, 2005.

  1. mazzy

    mazzy Member

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    anybody done this? i'm "in the middle of" writing my thesis now...i actually have like nothing written, introduction and chapter 1 are due friday, which means about 20-25 pages of text and i absolutely hate it! i have been in grad school for two years and have written like 8 20-30 page papers, but it didn't prepare me for this...i'm getting my MFA in art history by the way

    just wondering what every else's experiences were with writing a thesis...i'm terrible at organization and am a horrible procrastinator, but its getting down to the wire now, i hope to graduate in december...

    any advice or tips would be greatly appreciated...

    thanks so much
     
  2. dawn_sky

    dawn_sky Senior Member

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    Off topic, but where in VA are you? I just started at UVA...

    For undergrad, I did an honors thesis, comparable to what they expect in an MA thesis. But I had a LOT of guidance from my advisor, so that I never wound up so close to a deadline without knowing what to do. So is Ch 1 basically background info? I didn't break my thesis into chapters, but the first section was an intro laying out the basic outline of what I was doing, and the second section was basically a literature review, discussing all of the stuff I had read in prep for my research in terms of how it ties in with what I'm trying to answer.

    While it's a bit late to do this for the first chapter, I highly suggest talking to your advisor or finding some other faculty member to work with, if at all possible. Your advisor should have already advised you on how to organize this thing -- well, assuming you ever asked. Which, you can't be afraid to ask questions. If you're dealing with someone who is anywhere near reasonable, s/he will realize that you are still a student for a reason -- you don't already know everything and haven't already written a Masters thesis!

    Good luck!

    Once you get past this deadline, a bit of advice my advisor gave me for writing a dissertation: Write at least 2 pages every day no matter what. They don't have to fit cohesively with what you wrote the day before, because before the next chapter is due you should have a stack of work that you can just reorganize and revise into a cohesive chapter. Of course, if the mood strikes, by all means do more than the min daily page limit... And if you're trying to get this done by Dec. you may need a higher daily minimum! But the point is to just do a little every day, like it or not!
     
  3. hippypaul

    hippypaul Hip Forums Supporter HipForums Supporter

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    Good advice - works for any task - do something every day - you can always put the parts together later. Set down for a given length of time every day and write something - do not judge it then – just get it down. I was always a great believer in the 3 by 5 card - one idea a card - then you could mix and match to put the structure of your paper together.
     
  4. mazzy

    mazzy Member

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    i'm in richmond at VCU, i love charlottesville, i think I'm going there next week for the widespread show...if i get my work done!

    thanks for the advice, i really appreciate it. i have a great advisor, he knows that i'm terrible at organization and that i'm an awful procrastinator, thats why he put me on a weekly schedule to get things done. i sent him an email last night around 4 am with a ton of questions. i think i need to read some other MFA thesis's (?) i have a book my parents gave me called writing a thesis, but the examples are all about some scientific experiment with monkeys, so its hard to relate that to portraits of actresses in the nineteenth century!

    i wrote a thesis proposal last semester, but i don't know if i should just follow the guidelines for that or what?!

    thats a good idea to just write, i used to be able to do that, but lately i analyze every word i put down and debate whether it sounds "scholarly" enough for a thesis...grad school did a number on my vocabulary!

    and the notecards ARE a good idea, for other people, i had to use them once in high school when writing a research paper and let me tell you, i burned those things when i was done, they drive me up the wall for some reason!

    anyway, thanks to the both of you for your help, i really appreciate it...

    oh and the intro is the state of the question, basically outlining what i am doing, lit review and bio information on jenny lind
     

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