Hi all, apologies for being a little M.I.A.! We’ve gotten to the point of the semester where I’m truly deep in the thesis trenches. Spring break starts in exactly one week, which always means professors are squeezing in midterms and assignments, plus most thesis writers have some form of a draft due. For this post, I thought I’d give a little breakdown of the thesis process, from submitting a proposal up until the due date. This looks different for all majors, so I can really only speak for environmental studies. But, most departments follow a similar general structure.
At Amherst, you are only required to write a thesis if you have created your own interdisciplinary major. For everyone else, a thesis is something you opt into if you want an academic challenge during your final year, and if you want to be eligible to win latin honors (summa cum laude, magna cum laude, or cum laude). Most majors have some sort of capstone class, project, or exam, so even if you don’t do a thesis, you will have some form of a last academic hurrah. I think that about half of seniors tend to write a thesis (which feels relatively high to me!). People definitely sign themselves up to do difficult things here.
Before taking on the thesis, I hadn’t written a paper longer than 15 pages. For reference, a typical environmental studies thesis (based in qualitative methods) is in the realm of 100+ pages. I don’t plan on immediately pursuing grad school, and I’m not sure academic research is part of my future, but I mostly wanted to do this to see if I could do it, and what I would learn about myself throughout the process. It’s a heavily independent process, and my project has come to feel like a summation of all the big and little things I’ve learned at Amherst, both in class and outside of it.
The first step is to submit a proposal to the department. Mine was due last April, which was kind of annoying since I had to work on it while studying abroad. I was trying to pull away from the US and felt like I was being pulled right back. It took about 3 weeks of reading and research to narrow down my topic and write a 2-page proposal. My project has changed slightly since the beginning, but since I had been thinking about it since the fall of my junior year, my ideas were somewhat developed already by the time I submitted the proposal.
Some people do research over the summer—which can be fully funded, with free room and board (pretty sweet deal). I was on campus, but thought the lack of structure from researching 40 hours per week would kill me, so I took a summer internship and read for my thesis at night and on the weekends. This ended up working really well for me. I’ll note here that all thesis writers at Amherst get an advisor. Most people I know meet with their advisors one-on-one every week, which is a great way to build a relationship and get close guidance throughout your project.
In the fall of senior year, I took only three courses, and the fourth was an empty thesis credit. I also was enrolled in the environmental studies senior seminar, which is structured around writing a 15-20 page capstone paper, and for thesis writers, that can be one of your chapters. So, basically half of my schedule was oriented around my thesis in the fall—it was very helpful to have that much time when I was just starting out and defining my project. I did a lot of archival research and writing, plus some interviewing, all fall and then submitted my first two chapters in December.
I came back to campus early in January to finish up researching, do a couple last interviews, and write up my third chapter. Campus was dead quiet, and I participated in the writing center’s thesis retreat to keep me disciplined. I really enjoyed this time and found it very productive.
Now, I’m facing a rough draft due date next week, and am hurriedly writing up my fourth chapter, based on interviews and observations. I’m also working with someone from the writing center to edit my previous chapters, so it’s a lot at once. I have the latest deadline of all my friends (April 18) so am hoping that all the crunching now means I can have a relatively relaxed April focused on fine tuning (+making some of my own maps using my new GIS skills).
That’s all for now! Please, if you have any questions at all about writing a thesis at Amherst, feel free to shoot me an email: swolff25@amherst.edu. Wishing you all a lovely weekend.