Writing of thesis is a very unique experience and it is very difficult to draw out a general rule on what is the best way to write a master’s thesis. There two basic structures that can be followed by masters students. Sophie as a masters students figured out a strategy to complete her thesis in merely 75 days and that also to the expectations of her supervisor’s quality standards. We tried to assess the structure she followed and her pedagogy, understanding what made her achieve such a herculean target in such a short span of time.
What came out as a conclusion of understanding Sophie’s approach can be briefed in these few points:
Improvised writing skills: Before starting to write her thesis, Sophie worked on improving her academic writing skills. She took up a crash course in academic writing and also worked around writing short assignments related to her subject, which she consistently showed to her supervisor for corrections and approval. In addition to that, she read as much as possible before she actually started to express her ideas on paper. This made the writing task effortless because of the vast expanse of knowledge that she possessed.
She compiled her bibliography in advance: Sophie discovered an efficient way to organise her bibliography, as and when she was reading her content. It helped her to organise the large pile of data that she wanted to use at a later stage when she wanted to write. She adopted a very useful approach to create a database, where she summarised each article in bullet points which helped her at the writing stage to quickly incorporate them into her thesis without having to refer a lengthy document all over again.
She investigated how not to plagiarise: Plagiarism is a serious offence and it can cost you your degree, in an attempt to write quickly, Sophie knew that she could not compromise on the quality of her work. Before she progressed with writing, she investigated the tricks to avoid plagiarism and how to paraphrase the content in the first stage itself, to avoid the task doing it all over again.
She acquainted herself with the guidelines of formatting in advance: Sophie read her university guidelines before actually starting to write so she did not waste time changing the format further down the line. This helped her to finish the thesis quickly, because she took care of a few things priorly only, so she didn’t have to work on repeated attempts.