Tips for Senior Thesis Writers

Go for Depth, Not Breadth

You don't need a sprawling topic in order to produce 60-80 pages! Entire books have been written that were originally conceived only as single chapters in a larger project. Think of your thesis as a single chapter in your larger intellectual (and life) agenda.

Digging is Honest Labor

Depth requires engagement with primary materials, and there is really no way of getting primary materials except to do it yourself. A lot of the material you gather won't turn out to be useful, but you can have no idea until you have dug it out. Digging is not a waste of time even if a lot of what you discover has already been discovered by others.

A Problem Worthy of Attack Proves its Worth by Hitting Back

Materials do not speak for themselves. Your must have questions and hypotheses to organize your inquiry. The material will then fight back, forcing you to change your question, refocus your inquiry, abandon one theory and pick up another. This is how people actually do science, though often it is hard to see the rough process underneath the slick final product.

Writing is Thinking

Write first for yourself (and your adviser), little memos, drafts, reactions to what you are reading, letters (unsent!) to the authors you are reading, mini book reports. It's all work product, and it's all good, even though it is not part of the final product. Your first job is to figure out what you think.

Knowledge is for Sharing

Sharing with others is different from figuring out what you think yourself. Your reader is not naturally interested, so it is up to you to make her interested. Sometimes it is helpful to have a particular ideal reader in mind. Better yet, think of two different readers, one friendly and one skeptical, both of whom you need to convince.

Research is a Life Skill

All of the above directives are just as useful for living as they are for writing a thesis. Someday you are going to want to buy a house. When you do, you had better begin by educating yourself, and not just passively accepting what the broker tells you. Once you know what you want to do, you are going to have to persuade your spouse, your parents, your banker. The same goes for other life decisions, like getting married, or choosing a career.

Work More, Fret Less

Writing a thesis is an emotional as well as an intellectual challenge. Frustration, anxiety, and stress are part of it, but so are excitement, engagement and concentrated focus.  Learning to deal with these is part of what you will get out of the process. People are different, but the most successful are those who find a way to channel their emotions into their work, to use their emotional energy to help them work rather than letting it get in their way. Commit, engage, and let yourself get swept up in the process, and you'll be okay. Better than okay, you'll wind up producing something better that you ever imagined possible.