Usually, the whole year is devoted to writing the main, final work – the bachelor thesis. Of course, students do not sit in front of a computer every day, typing text. Writing a thesis is a complex, multidimensional process, and most of the time, it is spent just on preparation and not on putting words in the correct order. Not even hathway twitter or any other social media accounts can help you at times. In this article, we give advice on all stages of work.
To make sure writing a thesis is not a burden, but on the contrary, brings pleasure, try to use at least some of the following strategies.
The choice of the supervisor
The choice of a supervisor may depend on both your personal preferences and the topic of your thesis (if it is predetermined, at least its direction). It is best if personal and scientific preferences coincide with one person.
A bachelor thesis is usually not written from scratch. Most often, it is one of your coursework assignments, which is to be “expanded and deepened.” Therefore, it is easier to work not only with the coursework text but also with the teacher who reads this text. In this case, the question of choosing a supervisor is easily answered.
If, for some reason, you start writing a bachelor thesis from scratch and are looking for a supervisor, then keep in mind two points:
- The sphere of his/her and your scientific interests should be close. Otherwise, you will have to choose a topic that is not interesting to you.
- Teachers have different attitudes towards the responsibility of being a supervisor. There are those (slightly exaggerated for clarity) who read students’ theses literally on the eve of the defense. Try to find out which of the teachers leads their bachelor students, motivates, and advises them. Choosing this type of supervisor will be easier for you.
Topic selection
The choice of the topic determines all further work and is the most important point. The theme, of course, can always be changed, but in this case, you will have to start all over again. Here are some tips for choosing a topic:
- It’s best if the topic is already familiar to you. It is much easier to write on a familiar topic – the biggest part of the work has already been done. It remains only to arrange this work on paper (or rather, first on a computer). That is why most theses are “improved” term papers.
- Choose a topic that interests you personally. Do this for one simple reason: if the topic does not interest you, then it will not be easy to motivate yourself to sit at the computer. Most of the energy is spent not on the thesis itself but on making yourself work. Therefore, a complex but interesting topic is better than a simple but uninteresting one.
Selection of literature
Naturally, literature is not selected all at once; part of it appears in the course of writing a thesis. Nevertheless, some preliminary selection is necessary. Take advice from your teacher – he or she will tell you the main books even without preparation.
There are online library websites with these. The theses themselves are not available free of charge; such sites publish abstracts, introductions, and bibliographic lists of studies. If you come across a thesis or a topic is similar to yours, then finding literature from its bibliographic list will not be difficult.
However, is it necessary to give any advice at all on the selection of literature in the age of the Internet? After all, now any freshman in a couple of hours can make a list no worse than a professor (in fact, this is a great exaggeration)! However, some advice is pertinent:
- Learn not to “drown” in literature. There is so much of it that you can study bibliographies even for a whole semester.
- You cannot select books at random from the available lists. Any scientific topic already has a certain scientific elaboration. As a rule, there are fundamental works on each topic, which cannot be ignored.
- Learn to classify literature. And for this, you need to read more, consult with your teacher, and study the context of your topic.
And here is a small note about sources. Not in all sciences is this issue acute, but in the humanities, it certainly exists. Learn to distinguish between sources and research (that is, what is called “literature”)!
If you follow our advice, you shouldn’t have any problems. Now you know how to make everything go smoothly and properly. Good luck!
