Thesis?

[ravenmoonbeam]

So here's my problem. I'm only in my second semester of my history M.A. program, and I know that I need to start thinking about my thesis. I would like to start at least preliminary stuff, even though I won't be actually be taking the thesis seminar class until next semester

Comments

[miraje]

My adviser had me write up a "thesis overview" document, which listed pretty much everything I needed to know (planning wise) in about three pages. It had the thesis title, a short paragraph outlining the objectives of my research and why it was important, an outline of all the chapters and sections of my thesis, a schedule of what I would get done and when, and a page listing all the degree requirements (required coursework and such) and my progress with them. He called it a "living document" meaning that I fill in what I can and keep it continuously updated. I can send you mine if you like.

That thing was a lifesaver. Even if you don't know how long it takes to do different tasks (like the lit review, etc.), set deadlines anyway and try to stick to them. You can then follow the schedule and focus on one piece of your thesis at a time until it's done. Tackling it in smaller pieces over time is a lot less daunting than trying to write it all at once.

[historychick49]

Once you start researching, keep your notes organized! If you take paper notes (like I do), type them up after each book (article, essay, whatever) and color-code them by which chapter or theme you think they'll fit. As you use a quote or summary in a chapter, keep it in your notes but strike through the quote/summary in question - that way you'll know at a glance that you already used it. I didn't do this (and my notes were rather disorganized), and as a consequence suffered the embarrassment of finding several notes I should've used in a chapter AFTER I sent said chapter on to my advisor!

[noelle_k]

The above-posters have already provided some very good advice. My advisor wrote her PhD dissertation in 7 months, so an MA can definitely be done in four semesters! You may find the resources on www.phinished.org helpful. I also really like the book Destination Dissertation - it has, among a lot of other good stuff, really useful information on how to code and use your research to write up your project.

[saralinds]

5 semesters is the norm for that program?? Were the students mostly part-time? Generally MA theses can actually get done within 3 semesters, especially for history.. well, depends on the pages needed. But that's assuming you don't need to write more than 100 pages

[kahlan_amnell]

I'm assuming that people saying 3 or 5 semesters are talking about writing a thesis while taking classes as well? I'm in the process of writing my MA thesis in one semester, but that is my only task for the semester. It needs to be be 50-80 pages. I'm also in history.

[ravenmoonbeam]

The M.A. itself takes 5 semesters.

[ladra_di_vento]

My former advisor recommended using notecards. Putting each quote with a citation on a card and keeping them in the magic shoebox. It's actually worked quite well for thus far, because I can shuffle them around and group them together.

I would also recommend using refworks if you're getting online articles, just to keep everything together (proquest lets you export newspaper citations which can be a great time saver). Also, I like to start by just reading the footnotes/bibliographies of articles and books, put together a list of what you could use, and then subject searching through the library catalog for similar books/topics. To keep track of books, I usually do an excell spreadsheet of title/author/publisher/year and the call number. It makes finding them easier than printing out the whole catalog record and you keep a list of everything you've looked for.