Thesis Thursday (how to graduate on time)

Thesis Thursday helped me graduate on time.

You need a thesis. You can try to write it in a month or two, be sad, miss your deadline, and graduate late.

Instead, do Thesis Thursday.

It’s easy. Every Thursday, you do the most immediate task your thesis needs. Not necessarily the hardest, most painful, or whatever. The most immediate.

Example Thesis Thursday Day 1:

  1. Open a text editor and create thesis.tex
  2. Spend two hours figuring out your department’s template
  3. Skip writing your title, and instead make chapter headings
  4. Call Chapter 2 Related Work and write a sentence about the most recent paper you read

Example Thesis Thursday Day 2:

  1. Read a paper and put two sentences about it in your related work
  2. Read a second paper and put two sentences about it in your related work
  3. That’s probably it for the day.

 

If you’re closer to graduation, you might have a day that looks like this:

  1. Be sad that you only have 2 of 3 committee members scheduled.
  2. Be sad that Dr. Third Committee Member is ignoring your emails
  3. Look up Dr. Third’s class schedule
  4. Go to the class as it is letting out
  5. Follow Dr. Third to his/her office until they give in and look at their calendar for you
  6. That took the whole day, but was a huge success of a day! Committee meeting scheduled!

 

Sticking with it

It’s tough to stay accountable with Thesis Thursday. People want meetings and your research will seem more important than writing. Don’t give in!

I’m here to help: I will personally email you every Thursday and ask how much progress you made. Sign up here:

05/27/19