One of the most intimidating parts of your senior year of college is your senior thesis. It’s most likely the largest project you’ve ever worked on and the longest academic paper you’ve ever written. Plus, you have to defend it in front of a committee of professors. That’s a lot to worry about, not to mention you’re taking other classes while you write it. How do you even start?
First, take a deep breath.
It feels overwhelming when you start, but getting started is usually the hardest part of any paper/project. After you’re calm, pick a topic that you’re really really really interested in because you don’t want to bore yourself to sleep reading research about it.
Start researching early.
The earlier you start researching, the less stressful it is. If you start way ahead of schedule, you can find and annotate one article a week, which will slowly build your evidence and background information and could save you time and stress later.
Write ideas as they come.
Don’t be afraid to jump around in your writing and brainstorming. Some of the best ideas interrupt other thoughts. You can always clean up the transitions later.
Create a plan.
The easiest way to keep your thesis from overwhelming you is to break it into chunks. Work backwards to make a timeline of large scale goals and each day make smaller goals. Schedule time into your day to work on your thesis and dedicate that time to working on it. If you can meet or almost meet your goals, your thesis should be a lot more manageable.
Don’t be afraid to follow your train of thought.
Sometimes a random thought or idea can lead to a much stronger conclusion than before. Don’t keep yourself on such a tight outline plan that you ignore really interesting and important ideas.
Stay focused.
When you’re working on your thesis fully dedicate that time to it. Don’t scroll social media. Don’t reply to that unimportant text message. Don’t let yourself get distracted. Obviously it’s good to take breaks when you need to, but don’t use breaks as an excuse to procrastinate.
Give yourself time off.
Pick a day or two when you won’t work on your thesis. If you work on it every single day for extensive amounts of time, you’re going to start hating your topic and find excuses to procrastinate.
It’s okay to be overwhelmed.
A thesis is a huge project. It’s okay to be overwhelmed by it. When you start feeling this way, acknowledge it and be kind to yourself. Writing the thesis is hard enough, don’t beat yourself up when you have to step away.
Ask for help.
Your advisor is there to help you. If you have questions or if you feel overwhelmed, reach out. Talk to someone who has already written and defended theirs. Talk through your problems with friends. Sometimes just having someone there to listen can help you de-stress and work out the issues. You don’t have to struggle alone.
Celebrate milestones along the way.
Finishing a thesis is a major accomplishment, but you don’t have to wait until it’s totally completed to feel proud. When you finish a major section or you work out a part that has been causing problems, let yourself celebrate. Each of those littler chunks is helping you to complete the entire thing, so finishing them is just as important as turning in the final draft.