Thesis Writing Advice (Before I Forget…)

I recently finished writing a somewhat long Master’s thesis (~200 pages) in a fairly decent amount of time (about 13 months passed in between the day my advisor shared the two main articles it was to be based on -which appear cited as [Büh10] and [NP19]- with me and the day it was officially registered after being approved by a jury of 5 -without including my advisor), and learned a ton while doing so. Since many of my friends are currently in the process of writing a Master’s or undergraduate thesis, I wanted to write down some advice that can hopefully be of use to them and to others (including future me!), starting with advice given to me by others and then moving on to my own learnings.

1. Do not wait until you “understand everyting” to start writing things down. (Because you never will!)

   This was told to me by Homological Algebraist Valente Santiago Vargas. It is natural to want to do our best in understanding the subject matter of the thesis and in transmitting said understanding; however, figuring everything out in your head before just “jotting it down” is unrealistic -it just doesn’t work that way. It is highly probable that you will:

   • make some mistakes and omissions,
   • suffer from temporary biases or lapses of judgement, and
   • get a premature and false sense of understanding of some topics,

   among other things. It’s ok to write about things you don’t fully understand yet (ask yourself: is there even such a thing?); just keep in mind that learning is a non-linear process, so you will do many revisions of your writing, in order to reflect how your understanding keeps getting ‘updated’.

   Valente also suggested I “Start writing. Now.” (This was a couple of weeks after my advisor had sent me the articles I was to base my thesis on), and so I did! Many thanks to him for getting me kick-started full steam.

2. Work on your thesis everyday. (At least a little bit.)

   I received this advice from Number Theorist Adrián Zenteno Gutiérrez and I must confess that I did not follow it thoroughly. In some way, however, I did follow it, since while writing my thesis I’d keep a mental tally of the days I’d gone without working on it whenever that happened, and I’d make sure to make up for it the next time I picked it back up. I believe Adrián also said something along the lines of “Write a page everyday”, but it’s important to be flexible in this regard since some days it might be easy to blurt out many pages while on others it might seem impossible to write a mere paragraph.

3. You don’t write your thesis for yourself, but for your advisor. (That is to say: your thesis is done when your advisor says it’s done.)

   This piece of advice came to me from Algebraic Geometer Fuensanta Aroca Bisquert when I had actually already finished writing my thesis, but I’ll include it here because it makes a lot of sense. It’s very easy to get lost when getting deep into a topic, and even moreso if it’s the first time you’ve ever dived this deep into any topic whatsoever (which is not a rare occurence with thesis work). You will naturally want to keep going deeper and deeper -and then wider, as you start understanding how your topic relates to others. However, you’re trying to write a thesis and not an encyclopedia, so you need to stop at some point. Advisors have usually read and revised dozens of theses, and even written a couple of their own, so they have a much better reference point than you do in telling you when to stop. It’s then up to you to listen to them.

4. Try to always have some short or simple tasks in a ‘to-do’ list so you can have something to knock out and ‘feel productive’ with when you’re down on energy.

   As previous pieces of advice may have suggested, when writing a thesis it’s important to keep things rolling until completion. This little trick can really help with that.

5. Whenever you are feeling really energized, consider avoiding ‘undesirable tasks’ that may drain too much of that good energy…

6. …but don’t postpone too many ‘undesirable tasks’ until the end!

   This one’s a double-header. I felt like a genius for coming up with number 5 organically: whenever I felt really pumped to do thesis work, I focused on important tasks that would keep me feeling that way and avoided running into ‘roadblock’ tasks that would make me stop feeling that way. Pretty simple, right? Well, it’s this kind of simple reasoning that lead me to my biggest error… which then lead me to 6. By the end of the writing process, I had only about 13 tasks left, which felt great! However… they were the same 13 tasks that I had kept avoiding for months, either because they seemed dull to do or because I thought they’d be ultimately detrimental to take on when I was feeling the most excited about working on the project. Imagine that: you’re so close to finishing and the only things keeping you from the finish line are precisely those that you never felt like doing at any moment in the past. Since I would never recommend this situation to anyone, I now advocate for forcing yourself to gradually weather some of the ‘undesirable tasks’, in order to not end up like I did.

7. Last but not least: Remember to live! (It’s not too hard to forget these days…)

   A thesis might mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but I’m willing to bet you’d agree that life should mean something to us all. Working on a project of this scale might at times drive us away from family, friends, hobbies or other activities we find enjoyable, so if that is to be the case, it’s important to be aware of these instances and make sure to make them temporary -and preferably rather short.

Have a blast!