Appendix 6

ALTERNATE ROUTES

THE THESIS

TO

Whether you write your thesis in the traditional format or with publishable journal manuscripts, your ultimate goals are probably a degree, a publication, and a job or additional education. The thesis itself is only a part of the work that you must incorporate into your plans for the graduate program. Any one of a variety of plans can lead to your success with the thesis, and the road map in Fig. A6-1 simply represents two examples. For simplicity, the routes in that figure are assuming a master's thesis that would take approximately 2 to 2.5 years to complete and would result in the publication of one journal manuscript. A more complex doctoral dissertation or additional publications would extend the time and add to the work load but follow similar paths. Certainly the order of events may be rearranged, especially toward the last when the thesis, the defense, the job, and the publication may all close in on you at once. Be care- ful about entering a new degree program or taking a job before your thesis is complete.

You may feel that you are jumping through a series of hurdles as you move along your road to the thesis. For convenience in discussing the steps along the way, I'm dividing the process arbitrarily into seven hurdles, represented by the seven numbered steps in Fig. A6-1. Activities on each section of the route will overlap with each other and with those in the previous or next section. For example, you may be searching the literature, writing the proposal, and begin- ning the research all during the same period, but it is helpful to have some of the literature search and methods of the proposal done before you begin the research.

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Alternate Routes to the Thesis 281

H U R D LE 1

For your satisfaction and success, the first steps along the road must produce an inviting but practical plan. You should choose a topic for research and an advisor that you can believe in and work with intensively for at least 2 years. Before you begin this trek, you will probably investigate the graduate school you want to attend, study which areas of research are prominent in the department where you wish to enroll, and find out as much as you can about major professors working in your area. Read some of the publications by prospective advisors, and then communicate with them, go through the admissions process, and select or accept a specific major advisor.

By conducting library searches, you should explore topics that are related to the work of the professor you will work with, and when you meet with him or her, have some details in mind about the research project you want to pursue. With your advisor's help, you will consider possible hypotheses and select spe- cific objectives for your research. At this point, having read some literature on the subject will be a real help. On the basis of what your subject involves and with the help of your advisor, choose graduate committee members and visit with each of them about your plans. Now you are ready to go to work.

H U R D LE 2

With your research objectives in mind, continue to search the literature and write a draft of your literature review. This review will be updated toward the end of your program and will probably be used as a chapter of your thesis. With that rough draft behind you, write a draft of your proposal, review it, revise it, give it to your major professor for review, and revise again. Your advisor may ask that you do some preliminary experimentation before your proposal is ready for committee. When he or she approves, submit the proposal to your graduate committee and meet with them to discuss your program. Six months or more may have passed by now. (It will be a year or more if you don't move quickly, but meticulously, over these first two hurdles.)

H U R D LE 3

Except for classes, research will take most of your waking hours for the next year. But don't make your last year harder or extend the time for your program by failing to write along the way. As you begin the research, you should choose which thesis path you will take. See Chapter 6 for further informa- tion on thesis formats. The traditional route means your thesis will ultimately

282 Appendix 6

consist of an introduction and chapters on literature review, methods, results, and discussion. You may have other addenda such as appendices and an abstract. This traditional thesis, as written, is seldom ready to publish when it is com- pleted, but representative ideas and data can be extracted for publication later. The journal manuscript format means you write with publication in mind from the first, and a literature review chapter and other addenda will hold everything except the representative publishable material. To jump this third hurdle then, you need to write an introduction and a methods chapter for the traditional thesis or an introduction and methods section for a journal manuscript.

H U R D LE 4

The research and the analysis of data continue, and as they near completion, you write a draft of the results. You are probably a year or two into your program. With results written, you are ready to go to a professional meeting and make a poster or slide presentation. It's time to think about prospective employers and to start making your reputation public. Continue to review and revise the various sections of the thesis. If you are writing a publishable journal manuscript as a part of your thesis, it may by now be reviewed in-house and ready to submit to the journal.

H U R D LE 5

Now get serious about reviewing, revising, and finishing the thesis. For either format, supply the appendices, the abstract, and any other addenda you need. Update the literature review that your wrote more than a year ago. Review and revise each section repeatedly, without and with advice from your major professor. Review and revise again. It is not unusual to review and revise your thesis six or more times.

H U R D LE 6

Overlapping of activities from step to step continue, but at some point the paths for the two thesis plans part again. You are over hurdle 6 when you are ready to defend your thesis. If you are on the journal manuscript route, your manuscript should be at least in in-house or journal review or perhaps back to you and ready for subsequent revisions and publication. For this track, be sure that complementary chapters or appendices of your thesis include all the data from your project that are not appropriate for your publication. If you have written

Alternate Routes to the Thesis 283

a traditional thesis, you should by now extract representative data, write a journal manuscript, and ask for in-house reviews. Getting a draft of the manuscript ready at this point will make life less miserable as you are seeking employment and beginning a new job. Although the road behind you may have been smoother or simpler than that for your colleague who was writing the journal manuscript all along, once you submit the final draft of the thesis to committee, hurdle 7 may be somewhat harder to scale with the publication still to be submitted, reviewed, and revised.

H U R D L E 7

Reviewing, revising, publishing, defending the thesis, taking exams, presenting a departmental seminar, and applying and interviewing for a jobmall may con- front you at once. But over this final hurdle lie your three ultimate goals: your degree, a publication, and a job or a new degree program. The order in which the tasks are accomplished can depend on your priorities and on which route you took to this point. The publication may be behind you if you took the journal manuscript route. As you approach graduation, establish priorities carefully. The job you want may become available before you finish the thesis. Don't sacrifice the degree prematurely for new short-term goals. The completed degree and a publication can be important stepping stones to your long-range plans. Remember that it is difficult to finish the thesis and produce a publication while you are becoming oriented to a new job. If you are going on for another degree, you may find that completing the thesis and a publication can interfere with scaling hurdle 1 again. Plan your strategy carefully and make a smooth jump over hurdle 7 so that reaching your final goals is a satisfying benchmark in your career.