Speaker 1: Hello from my little bunk bedroom in Taipei. If you've been following me since I was 17 and doing my A-levels, then it might come as a surprise to you that I have just submitted my undergraduate thesis. Yes, I just submitted the first big draft of my dissertation. I'm now going to receive feedback from my supervisor so that I can iterate it for the big final deadline in April. Crazy, absolutely crazy. I have learnt so bloody much about the beast that is writing your thesis and I just want to say that if you are struggling with writing it, you are not alone. This is not an easy task. It can feel incredibly overwhelming, especially because it might be the first time you've ever done a big project like this before, but you've got this, we've got this, and I hope my experience can shed some light, which is useful for you. If you don't know who I am, hi, my name is Jade. I go to a relatively new university called Minerva and I study an undergraduate degree in cognitive science. Cognitive science falls under social sciences, but I also have a lot of courses within natural sciences and it's quite an interdisciplinary approach into how the mind works from psychology, neuroscience, computer science, and I absolutely love my degree, but my specific interest is in the science of learning, how humans learn, everything from memory and long-term potentiation to course design. In particular, I'm really interested in bridging the gap between what is known about how we learn and the way that education systems are run and how things like active learning aren't really employed, how there's such a large focus on rote memorisation and basically how we can close this gap between the literature and the systems we employ. So yeah, my thesis is focused on the science of learning and I chose a unique dissertation model in that I have a written deliverable, but I'm also producing a product. My written deliverable is what I'm going to talk about more today because it's what most people do as their undergraduate or master's dissertation, and my product is making a video course on my learnings. Step one, choosing your topic. I swear, this is a whole minefield in itself. It is so hard to choose your dissertation topic. The first criteria I need to give you is choose something you're interested in. It is so tempting to do something which sounds cool, but then you actually don't even want to get yourself to do the research. You are spending so many hours on this project, so definitely try and choose something that is not going to be tiresome. One useful way to get through this criteria is to think about all the lectures you've attended, all the seminars, all the topics you've covered, and think about which one was your favourite. Which one was not a bore to pick yourself up and study? Which one was not hard to get yourself to the lecture hall? If you're someone who listens to podcasts, does further reading, reads books, which topics do you keep coming back to? Especially if you're doing it in your free time, then that is proof that you can probably get through a whole bloody dissertation in this topic and not hate it. The second criteria is to set yourself a goal of what your dissertation means to you. Is this just a project you have to complete in order to graduate? If yes, then you don't really need to worry that much. Just do something you enjoy. Just get it done. Get a good grade. Why not? But if this is an opportunity for you to show your future employer an example of a project that you've done in a relevant field, then choose something relevant to the job that you want. For example, one of my friends wants to work in the area of solving the climate crisis. She's studying economics, so then she decided to do a project about the voluntary carbon markets, because this is something that she can show a startup, a future employer who are working in the carbon markets, and just she can prove that she actually knows something about it. Equally, if you want to go to grad school, maybe you can choose a topic relevant to the master's or PhD that you want to do. And third criteria, know your supervisors. If you know you have a supervisor who is incredibly well versed in this one topic, which you're relatively interested in, but you know it could be a good experience with them, then feel free to choose that. It's always hard when you choose a topic that you don't have a professor with relevant expertise in. I think you get a lot less out of the thesis process, so sometimes tailoring your project to the professors on offer is also a good idea. Number four, you don't have to change the world. It is nice, but don't put pressure on yourself, especially an undergraduate, to absolutely revolutionise the entire space of study. Be narrow, be super, super narrow. Find a body of research that interests you. Read all the lit reviews, all the papers, go through the citations, familiarise yourself with the authors in this space, work out what mini questions they are looking at, and then direct your thesis at one of these mini questions. That's all you've got to do. I really recommend using your summers or your free time to just do this. Get to know the space. Often in the discussion section of scholarly articles, they will pose future areas of study or places that they wish there was more literature on, and that is a great place to create a thesis. Be specific, be narrow, be tractable. Okay, so we've got our topic. Congratulations. That was hard. Planning and organisation. Don't you dare start writing your dissertation without spending a lot of time thinking about how you're going to organise the process. Because let me tell you, when you're first reading a few scholarly articles, you're like, oh yeah, I'm doing my research. If you're not saving the reference, the link, the names of the authors, quotes, wow, you're going to have such a tough time because suddenly you'll be scraping the internet, desperately trying to find the article that you once read a year ago. You're going to be pouring through your notes app or your Notion or your physical journal, like all the places where you're scattered, keeping your thesis documents. Create a system from the start. Where are you going to put it? How are you going to organise it? I personally use Notion. I absolutely love it. Would highly recommend to anyone. I'm going to link a thesis template down below. I was inspired by an alumni of my university. I'll link her templates too. So on my Notion, I structured it so I had all the feedback from my supervisor, from professors, all in one place. I had past dissertations from other students that were relevant or interesting. I had a whole section for literature review so that every book, paper, everything I read, I would put here. And I would also structure it by things like theme, date, names of the authors, all of that good stuff. Interesting quotes I could include in my thesis. This is where I set myself clear goals for every month so that I could keep myself on track of where I needed to be in my process. And it's where I started to structure my outline and introduction statements. Finally, on the planning section, make sure you get Identity or Zotero or one of these scholarly article management systems, I think they're called. It basically allows you to click a button every time you're on a scholarly article and it'll save the reference for you and then you can export it to your lovely, gorgeous reference section whenever you need. I write in APA, which is one of the formatting styles. So I save everything in APA. But know your formatting style. Every university is different. Just refer to your handbook. We love a handbook. So we've got our topic, we've got our planning system. Now we get into research. Once you have selected the general topic or theme, it is time to learn everything you can about this niche area of academia. This means speaking to experts to identify the best papers you should be reading, people you should speak to in the space. This means regularly reading scholarly articles and then pouring through the citations to then read those articles, noticing the common themes of questions in the space. Use as many reputable sources as possible as well. So peer reviewed articles. You can start from a popular article like a newspaper, a magazine, and then sometimes they have references where you can go find the scholarly articles and read those. ChatGPT, Bestie is here. You can even ask it for references. You can say like, hey, what are some of the best five papers written in the last five years that are peer reviewed on this topic? And then all of a sudden you're identifying high quality resources. The thing with research is the sooner you start, the better, because sometimes when you research, you realise that your thesis question needs to evolve or needs to include something you haven't previously considered. So the more you can read without pressure, without time constraints, the better. I started the summer before final year, like deeply researching and reading books. And then this is where I made my notion database. So I'm coming into final year really clear on my question, how I'm going to write it, what I'm going to lean on as resources. Now we come to the writing phase. Bloody hell, so much to write. My thesis is currently 26,000 words, which I know is longer than the average undergraduate thesis, but my university expects a lot. So, unideal. So firstly, when you're coming to write, make sure you use the handbook that your university has provided. So things like APA style for me, they'll ask me for a specific structure. So whether that's, you know, introduction, methodology, results, discussion, conclusion, what do they want? That'll be in there. Constantly use your supervisor. I'm very lucky that I have an amazing supervisor who is an expert in the topic that I'm looking at. I also did my best to develop a relationship with her prior to final year so that when it came to choosing supervisors and supervisors choosing students, I was just there. I was like, hi bestie, like, remember me? But yeah, supervisors make such a difference. I remember when I first started writing, I was so embarrassed to ask for feedback. I would just like hide my work because I'm such a perfectionist and it's so scary when your work is torn apart, especially when you spend a lot of time on it. But my biggest advice is just don't be embarrassed to ask for feedback. I mainly work in a Google doc and I would often at my supervisor with questions like, at prof, what do you think about this section? Or have I misunderstood this article's conclusions? Do you know where else I could look for resources? In terms of planning, I can't recommend enough. Little and often work on this thing, this massive project, little and often. It breaks it down. It makes it feel chill. In my notion page, I broke down every single month with high level goals. Like I will have written the whole methodology section. I will have finished my research by this month. And then I broke that down into every single week, what I had to get done. And that made it feel so chill, the whole process, because as long as I met my weekly goals, I was on track. I didn't need to do more. I was just chilling and it would eventually materialize. Obviously there are so many amazing productivity techniques you can use to help you write. Things like the Pomodoro technique, where you go to a specific place, you put away all your distractions and you set a 25 minute timer and you are only allowed to focus on this one task for these 25 minutes. And then you get a five minute break. And often when you get over the hump of just starting work, you find it's actually a lot easier to continue. One of the best things I did for writing this thesis is choosing an accountability partner at the start of final year. I did this personality test and realized that I am an obliger, which means I do work in order to oblige to others and their perceptions of me. So if I have a deadline, I'm very good at keeping the deadline. But if it's just myself, I might not be as conscientious. Conscientious, is that a word? I think it is. So I was like, I need someone to keep me accountable, someone I respect. So I went through my entire university course list and I found this amazing guy called Moon, who I'm friends with, but also didn't know super well. I, you know, I value his opinion. I think he's hardworking. And we created a recurring co-working session every single week of final year where we go, we meet for like five hours and we just work. And we tell each other every week what we got done and what we still need to get done. And some weeks I wouldn't work on my dissertation apart from in this session. So set yourself up for success, like put these non-negotiable structures in your life to keep you working on this, especially with other people. Also, I know chat GPT can be considered controversial in the realm of academia, but I think it's an amazing tool, not to write your thesis, obviously, but to ask questions, clarifying questions, like what is an opposing argument to the one that I have? Because then you might have all these blind spots that you can't see, but the chat GPT can pick up on and guide your writing process. But honestly, guys, just keep writing, just keep writing because you know what? It is so much easier to go back and edit something you've already written than to write from scratch. It is much easier to look at, you know, a body of text than a blank page. So just keep writing, even if it feels like it's rubbish, it will get better. Just get it out the system, set yourself these goals, keep it going. And I just know you're going to do amazingly. Like the fact that you clicked onto this video means you're really taking the time to question your thesis process and how best you can do it. So I have no doubt that you're like on it, you're going to produce something high quality and great. And yeah, this is so much more than just a dissertation. This is an opportunity to learn how you work, how good you are at keeping to your own self-set deadlines. Like that is self-learning. This process might make you fall out of love with your subject. It might make you reevaluate the type of job that you want to have in the future. It's just a lot of learning, but also such a cool opportunity to add your unique thoughts on a topic into the world. And yeah, I'm super excited for you. If I'm honest, I think for me writing a dissertation has not been nearly as stressful as writing a book. I published a book in second year of university and that was so hard because it was my first time ever doing a big, big project and no one around me was doing one at the time. So I really learnt self-discipline. But I think in final year, everyone is working on their diss. Everyone's a little bit stressed, a little bit behind and there's something really lovely about the togetherness of it all. Like really soak up this time. You're in the bubble of uni. It's a good time to be alive, even if it feels stressful. Yeah, you've got this. My casual magic for today is the fact that there's a blue sky. It has been so gloomy and miserable in Taipei for the last week and I had a cold, it was sick, it was just not, I was not living. And today I really am. So yeah, I'm going to go study with Moon actually, my accountability partner. Let me know if this was helpful. Please share your tips down below and have a great day. Bye.