12/9/2023
Hi everyone! I hope you are well! In this week’s blog, I’m going to write a little about my process writing a French thesis at Amherst College. I foresee this being a little bit of a series – today, I’ll write about how I was accepted to write a thesis and the work I did to prepare to start writing, and in other blogs, I’ll write about my week-to-week expectations, what my meetings with my advisor look like, and the support for thesis writers on campus. If you have any questions, please email me at sgoldsmith24@amherst.edu !
Wanting to write a thesis
I had always imagined that I would write a thesis as a senior in college, but I was under the impression that I HAD to write a biology thesis. While I was studying abroad in Paris, and on the phone with a family friend, she told me that there’s no reason I have to write a biology thesis if I don’t want to. I already knew I didn’t like biology research, and was set on going to medical school instead of earing a PhD in biology. I just hadn’t made the connection that I didn’t have to do a biology thesis. This realization was freeing, and I immediately started to think about various topics I could write a French thesis about.
Expressing thesis interest
I think I first expressed interest about writing a French thesis to my French major advisor at the end of my semester in Paris, or at the beginning of my spring semester back in Amherst. There was an email sent out to all junior French majors sometime during the spring semester inviting us to a presentation of information about writing a thesis in the French department, and of course I attended. I applied for a scholarship to do research on campus the summer before my senior year to prepare to write a thesis.
Summer before senior year
I spent this past summer on campus, conducting research to prepare me for when I would start to write in the fall. The fellowship I was granted is called the Gregory S. Call Student Research program, and it is very common for rising seniors who are hoping to write a thesis to use the funding from this program to stay on campus, do research, and generally prepare for the thesis-writing ahead of them. I spent the summer doing a LOT of reading, and orienting myself within my topic so I could jump write in come September. Of course, reading wasn’t the only thing I did – I got to spend time with friends who were also on campus, I started training for the marathon I ran in November, and I started studying for the MCAT.
I wrote a thesis prospectus in early September and submitted it to the French department, and was accepted to write a thesis. My thesis advisor is my French major advisor (which is not always the case), and she is doing so much to help me along the writing process. I’ll write another blog at some point to talk about writing a thesis during the semester, and how much I am enjoying it. Have a great weekend.