Speaker 1: Welcome to this video on how to prepare yourself for a thesis. So you want to write a thesis? What do you need to know? This video will give you a general overview of expectations for graduate-level writing and it offers tips to begin thinking about and planning your thesis. Most students complete a thesis, whether it's a master's or PhD, because they want to develop expertise in an area. That's what you're really doing, is you're developing expertise and you might want to teach in that area of expertise. Perhaps you'd like to pursue a career at a university or a college, or to publish in the area of your expertise, or to help advance your career in some way. A thesis is a long project and that's one of the things that you really have to manage, is how to get through this long project nature of the document. It requires independent study, but I don't mean isolation. I mean that you need to set your own goals and you need to motivate yourself over a long period of time. And there's little continuous assessments, so you're not being graded and you don't have a grade to tell you how you're progressing as you go through the thesis. It requires plenty of reading, extremely, I can't emphasise this enough, large amounts of reading and also lots of writing, so be prepared to write multiple drafts. Don't expect to finish it in the first draft. And also it requires planning and logistics and strategies to keep yourself motivated, to keep going, you know, when life happens and all the other things that you've got going on in your life take over. So it requires quite a bit of planning and thinking quite carefully about the logistics of how to fit this all into your life. So the questions to ask yourself, I mean these are just a few of them, is can I work independently? Do I enjoy reading and writing? Am I passionate about my field or topic? Because the more passionate you are, the more motivated you're going to be over this long period of time. The other question I would suggest is do I have enough time to do this? Because you do have to make time in your life to do this project. What examiners are looking for is new knowledge. They want to see a topic explored in an original way. They want to see evidence of substantial reading, both depth of reading and breadth of reading. They want to see that you are engaging with higher order thinking skills, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. And they want to see that you understand your audience, your particular discipline and that you've met your reader's needs in that specialised field. They want to see a professional format and presentation and a thesis is generally written in formal language, depending on the thesis, the type of thesis you're doing of course. So where do you even start? How do you begin? I think the first thing to do is talk to others who have either completed a Master's or a PhD or talk to academics in the faculty in your department. Sometimes you can connect with a supervisor who has funding and they could possibly suggest ideas on their particular project for your thesis. In other disciplines you would choose a topic and then find a supervisor who's an expert in that field. You might also find a supervisor and then between the two of you find a research topic together. So there are lots of different formulations of how you can go about this, but the first thing is to talk to others in your department or field and other students who've completed this degree or who are in the process of doing it. The place to begin is thinking about a thesis topic. And again, it's really important to talk to others in the field about research trends. You might read the literature in your broad area of interest and look at research studies. What research has been conducted? What hasn't? What are the gaps? What are the areas of disagreement? Perhaps research has been conducted in other contexts that you can then bring into your own context and that would give you something new to say about this particular area. So think about the broad area of interest, a broad question and then slowly begin to narrow it down. Thank you. It's really important in a long-term project like this that you find something you're really interested in. You would need to be motivated throughout the process and if the topic doesn't excite you, in fact, if you don't want to work on this, it will be difficult to get through those times that are challenging. So find a topic that answers the so what question for you. Why does this topic matter? Why is it important? The more important it is to you, the more likely you are to finish it. And then find someone you can connect with, faculty, other graduate students, to discuss whether it's doable. Is this a doable project? Is it feasible to do this particular project? And then my suggestion would be to brainstorm lots of ideas on a mind map or a concept map. Write down everything you can think of that interests you about this field. Once you've exhausted that, go through all the ideas and decide which are more important to you and delete those that aren't. And end up with perhaps a couple of, you know, two or three topics or broad ideas that you can develop into problem-purpose statement and questions. And I'm not going to go through that here, but I do have a lot of videos on the problem-purpose statement and questions. And this would be the very first video And this would be the very first place I would direct anyone to start is to write up this PPS and Q. Just remember that writing a thesis is a journey of ups and downs. We always begin by being madly in love with our topic and, you know, whatever we're doing, the thesis. And then somewhere along the line, we feel, well, why did we do this? Why did we think we could do this? You know, it was a bad idea. And then, of course, later on, we begin to enjoy it again. So once you know that there are these ups and downs, you can navigate them. There's research that's been conducted on Master's students found that, you know, amongst a number of different Master's students, several narratives emerged. So these are stories that Master's students tell themselves about their process, about their journeys through the Master's program. And I'm introducing them here to you here because I see this all the time. All right, I'll tell you afterwards why it's important. The heroic story, this is the story of the student who wants to write the best thesis ever produced. So they aim to contribute to knowledge in a big way, they're keen and enthusiastic, but they are perfectionists and they want to write the perfect thesis, which can be a stumbling block. The tragic story is the imposter story. So this is where students see the thesis as something that will expose them as imposters, their worst fears will come true and they'll be exposed as a fraud. So the first obstacle the student experiences in the process becomes proof that it was never meant to be. And often this type of student won't find help. They won't ask for help. And they begin avoiding the project, procrastinating because failure seems inevitable to them, which it isn't. There's also the business-like story. For these students, they see the dissertation as something that just has to be done quickly. You know, they don't want to engage in the whole academic process, they're not interested in thinking about it, they just want to get it done. They set goals, work hard and get it done. The penal story, these students are usually externally motivated and feel like they have to do this thesis for whatever reason. And they view the whole process negatively. The research, the supervisor and the university falls under this negative gaze. If anything goes wrong, this type of student will blame whoever else is in the relationship and never themselves. Now these stories are important because they indicate your attitude and your perceptions of doing the thesis. And you can change that once you recognize the story that you're telling. You can story and change the focus. Now all of these stories, we all say at one point or another in our journey and you might go through all four stories in your journey. But realizing the story that you're telling might help you move through that particular phase. One thing that's absolutely certain is that you can't do this thesis on your own. You will need to have writing supports and networks. You'll need to have the support of your family but you also need to have the support of your supervisor. That person is going to be really important in your process so you want to be able to ask that person questions. If you have a committee, then make connections with those committee members. If not, talk to other academics in your field. You can make connections with librarians. Librarians are wonderful people who really are able to help researchers. They can help you find sources, manage your sources. You can learn how to cite from them. If you have a writing centre at your university, go and visit them. They are so helpful and they often run workshops and training sessions that get on their mailing list. Become familiar with your university's guidelines and regulations for the thesis and with the unit that deals with thesis work in our university. It's the School of Graduate Studies and they have a webpage that is full of resources for students, full of all sorts of things that students can learn from. If you're going to do research on people, look up the university policies on ethics and ethics applications. Find friends, colleagues and peers to form thesis writing groups or reading groups or research groups. They don't have to be in your field. You just need people to work with through this process and research has shown that students who work together are more likely to finish their programmes quickly and more successfully. So don't work alone. So in this video we've discussed tips to help you to begin thinking about and planning your thesis. A thesis is a long-term project whether you're doing a Masters or a PhD and it requires self-motivation, planning and strategies, goal setting and project planning. Find a topic that excites you because that will help with the self-motivation. Set up support networks and try to enjoy the process. You're able to read and think about things deeply so try to take the attitude that it is a process of ups and downs but in the end you will prevail, you'll negotiate and navigate your way to the end and I wish you all the best with your thesis writing process.