Thesis Tricks of the Trade - Part 1
Partly because as a story of a journey, it's good to have the "Rough Guide" to thesis writing. Partly because in the "journey fair" at RRU in 2005, there were a lot of tips, tricks and pitfalls described, but not collected in one useful place for those of us about to embark on our journey. So this is my gift of lessons learned (some the hard way) to future MEEC students. And some credit should go to my current favourite blogger, www.tradetricks.org!
Believe them when they say get everything into Refworks. Even if you may never use it, you may actually use it, and if it’s in there it’s WAY easier than realizing a reference isn’t, then going to find it and enter it in later when you need time for everything else. The Ebsco “Direct-Export-to-Refworks” tool has been a lifesaver, as has the “My Folder” tool in Ebsco.
Remember back when Rick mentioned his method for keeping track of all the articles, books, quotes, etc.? Well if you don’t, I think he said to write a word document on each of them and pull out not only the bibliographic information but then any quotes, including page number, you might ever use. This is particularly relevant and helpful when you are using library books that may be recalled or due at any time- so do an article summary ASAP then it doesn’t matter if you still have the hard copy. You’ll be glad you did. When it comes to actually writing your thesis, print out all the article summaries you’ve done but also because you have them electronically, it’s easy to copy and drop them into your text. Make sure you title the documents usefully, like “Kool 2005 – article summaries” so they trigger your mind as to what they might be about! I would read printed articles on the bus, highlighting them, then type in the “gist” and the quotes when I got home.
I think one of my challenges was not keeping good track of the articles I had copies of, which ones I had summaries of, and which ones I maybe hadn’t read – let alone which ones were and were not in Refworks by the critical time (that would be now).
At the end of an online course, collect all the articles you used and cull out the ones you might be able to use for your thesis. Keep them somewhere separate from all the notes for easy reference. I'm using at least 3 articles from over the past 2 years I might not have found otherwise - the profs know what they're doing when they select those readings!
If you’re not at all sure what you’re doing when it comes right down to the research, get a bunch of methodology books from a university library and read up on your chosen methodology. It’s a hard route to take, teaching it to yourself, but you’ll be less frustrated if you have all the authoritative texts on hand [again, article-type summaries can be useful]. The Cohen et al (2000) text has lots of the right references sprinkled liberally throughout their chapters; those authors are a good place to start.
Oh – have a USB memory stick or TWO, and keep burning off your work onto CDs every now and then. You DON’T WANT to lose anything in this electronic age! Use a server if you've got one.
At your office or school, make friends with the IT/Helpdesk people. They can be saviours when it comes to software, hardware, formatting, rescuing, etc. I'm currently bribing mine with muffins to allow me advance access to the software updates I know will make editing easier (hello, Office 2003!). Of course this doesn't apply to the clever Mac owners :)
If you’re working fulltime as you attempt this adventure – try to have an understanding boss and a flexible workplace. I’ve managed to shift my hours for the next few weeks to allow me to work on my thesis at my prime time, an unfortunate 10pm-2am window. I can do other stuff at other times, but that time seems to be particularly productive. So now I sleep “in”, then get to work later, work the day until later, then come home and repeat! I also saved up some overtime and days-in-lieu to use now, although I may have to sacrifice some actual vacation time for the cause. It'll all be worth it, right?
Believe them when they say get everything into Refworks. Even if you may never use it, you may actually use it, and if it’s in there it’s WAY easier than realizing a reference isn’t, then going to find it and enter it in later when you need time for everything else. The Ebsco “Direct-Export-to-Refworks” tool has been a lifesaver, as has the “My Folder” tool in Ebsco.
Remember back when Rick mentioned his method for keeping track of all the articles, books, quotes, etc.? Well if you don’t, I think he said to write a word document on each of them and pull out not only the bibliographic information but then any quotes, including page number, you might ever use. This is particularly relevant and helpful when you are using library books that may be recalled or due at any time- so do an article summary ASAP then it doesn’t matter if you still have the hard copy. You’ll be glad you did. When it comes to actually writing your thesis, print out all the article summaries you’ve done but also because you have them electronically, it’s easy to copy and drop them into your text. Make sure you title the documents usefully, like “Kool 2005 – article summaries” so they trigger your mind as to what they might be about! I would read printed articles on the bus, highlighting them, then type in the “gist” and the quotes when I got home.
I think one of my challenges was not keeping good track of the articles I had copies of, which ones I had summaries of, and which ones I maybe hadn’t read – let alone which ones were and were not in Refworks by the critical time (that would be now).
At the end of an online course, collect all the articles you used and cull out the ones you might be able to use for your thesis. Keep them somewhere separate from all the notes for easy reference. I'm using at least 3 articles from over the past 2 years I might not have found otherwise - the profs know what they're doing when they select those readings!
If you’re not at all sure what you’re doing when it comes right down to the research, get a bunch of methodology books from a university library and read up on your chosen methodology. It’s a hard route to take, teaching it to yourself, but you’ll be less frustrated if you have all the authoritative texts on hand [again, article-type summaries can be useful]. The Cohen et al (2000) text has lots of the right references sprinkled liberally throughout their chapters; those authors are a good place to start.
Oh – have a USB memory stick or TWO, and keep burning off your work onto CDs every now and then. You DON’T WANT to lose anything in this electronic age! Use a server if you've got one.
At your office or school, make friends with the IT/Helpdesk people. They can be saviours when it comes to software, hardware, formatting, rescuing, etc. I'm currently bribing mine with muffins to allow me advance access to the software updates I know will make editing easier (hello, Office 2003!). Of course this doesn't apply to the clever Mac owners :)
If you’re working fulltime as you attempt this adventure – try to have an understanding boss and a flexible workplace. I’ve managed to shift my hours for the next few weeks to allow me to work on my thesis at my prime time, an unfortunate 10pm-2am window. I can do other stuff at other times, but that time seems to be particularly productive. So now I sleep “in”, then get to work later, work the day until later, then come home and repeat! I also saved up some overtime and days-in-lieu to use now, although I may have to sacrifice some actual vacation time for the cause. It'll all be worth it, right?
posted by MightyBrownOwl at 2:06 a.m.
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