thesis musings
When thinking about what I should write my thesis on, I'm trying to optimize for several variables:
-how much I get out of it
--written and oral communication skills, research skills, implicit social skills, "critical thinking", taking initiative, social networking skills
-doing original research (not just a literature review)
-personal interest/passion about the subject and method of research
-post-graduation benefits (i.e., having a published paper, having it on my resume)
--thus, it might be beneficial if my paper were not controversial
I've pretty much narrowed down potential thesis topics to polyamory or organizations/bureaucracies, especially in relation to rationalization of cognitive dissonance. (Though I'd also be happy to do a thesis related to the implications of and "solutions" to cognitive dissonance, something to do with theories/application of theories of morality or justice, something to do with social psych (i.e. obedience, conformity, groupthink, cognitive dissonance), something to do with ideologies/mindsets, globalization/interconnectedness, isolation, intersection between technology and society, ideologies and mindsets, rhetoric, and many other topics I won't go into.)
In the past, when I've written research papers, I'll usually start out being passionate about the topic and reading interesting research papers, but when it comes to actually writing the paper, I'm a lot less thrilled. Maybe it's just because I haven't come up with any particularly good or novel paper ideas, but writing my papers has pretty much involved synthesizing what other people have said and laboriously looking for citations of said synthesis.
The only way I could get around doing the above is:
-if the field in question is not well-researched, so I actually have a chance of contributing new ideas. I'd like to think I'm bright enough and smart enough to contribute new ideas in even well-researched fields, but realistically, it's unlikely: I'm a somewhat ignorant undergrad and I only have a 2-3 semesters to come up with ideas for and write my thesis.
-if I can apply theories to the research topic in question that were previously not applied.
-some combination of the above
Doing the first is probably optimal, with some amount of drawing at the second. Though, of course, the second requires the laborious synthesizing and citation-hunting I'm not a huge fan of, but it's still valuable to do.
I originally thought that doing a research topic on something like organizations and bureaucracies, which is a well-researched field, wouldn't let me contribute any new ideas, but I guess that is not completely true. I.e., I can create new ideas about specific instances of organizations which do not fit current models, or compare and contrast certain organizations, or whatever. I think it is likely that I would be doing a lot of using other people's theories and models instead of coming up with my own. Which might be interesting until I get to paraphrasing their ideas and laboriously citing them. So I'd probably be happier if I were able to theorize about polyamory, which isn't very well-researched.
I kind of want to do a paper where I'm not necessarily stuck doing a lot of isolated research at the library. This is not only because I think I'd find it somewhat tedious, but also because I'd find it more interesting and gain more social skills from talking to people a lot about my thesis, such as through chatting with others about it or some sort of fieldwork. I would definitely get to do this if I wrote polyamory, but I could possibly do it with another topic as well.
I could write more, but this has been on my computer for a week and I figure I should post it before it becomes irrelevant rather than add more or edit it.
-how much I get out of it
--written and oral communication skills, research skills, implicit social skills, "critical thinking", taking initiative, social networking skills
-doing original research (not just a literature review)
-personal interest/passion about the subject and method of research
-post-graduation benefits (i.e., having a published paper, having it on my resume)
--thus, it might be beneficial if my paper were not controversial
I've pretty much narrowed down potential thesis topics to polyamory or organizations/bureaucracies, especially in relation to rationalization of cognitive dissonance. (Though I'd also be happy to do a thesis related to the implications of and "solutions" to cognitive dissonance, something to do with theories/application of theories of morality or justice, something to do with social psych (i.e. obedience, conformity, groupthink, cognitive dissonance), something to do with ideologies/mindsets, globalization/interconnectedness, isolation, intersection between technology and society, ideologies and mindsets, rhetoric, and many other topics I won't go into.)
In the past, when I've written research papers, I'll usually start out being passionate about the topic and reading interesting research papers, but when it comes to actually writing the paper, I'm a lot less thrilled. Maybe it's just because I haven't come up with any particularly good or novel paper ideas, but writing my papers has pretty much involved synthesizing what other people have said and laboriously looking for citations of said synthesis.
The only way I could get around doing the above is:
-if the field in question is not well-researched, so I actually have a chance of contributing new ideas. I'd like to think I'm bright enough and smart enough to contribute new ideas in even well-researched fields, but realistically, it's unlikely: I'm a somewhat ignorant undergrad and I only have a 2-3 semesters to come up with ideas for and write my thesis.
-if I can apply theories to the research topic in question that were previously not applied.
-some combination of the above
Doing the first is probably optimal, with some amount of drawing at the second. Though, of course, the second requires the laborious synthesizing and citation-hunting I'm not a huge fan of, but it's still valuable to do.
I originally thought that doing a research topic on something like organizations and bureaucracies, which is a well-researched field, wouldn't let me contribute any new ideas, but I guess that is not completely true. I.e., I can create new ideas about specific instances of organizations which do not fit current models, or compare and contrast certain organizations, or whatever. I think it is likely that I would be doing a lot of using other people's theories and models instead of coming up with my own. Which might be interesting until I get to paraphrasing their ideas and laboriously citing them. So I'd probably be happier if I were able to theorize about polyamory, which isn't very well-researched.
I kind of want to do a paper where I'm not necessarily stuck doing a lot of isolated research at the library. This is not only because I think I'd find it somewhat tedious, but also because I'd find it more interesting and gain more social skills from talking to people a lot about my thesis, such as through chatting with others about it or some sort of fieldwork. I would definitely get to do this if I wrote polyamory, but I could possibly do it with another topic as well.
I could write more, but this has been on my computer for a week and I figure I should post it before it becomes irrelevant rather than add more or edit it.