Unfortunately for my readers, I still don't feel prepared to write about my 3rd degree contacts and inter-galactic journeys. Instead, I decided to write (once again) about what has filled my mind for the past few months: my master thesis. This odd combination therefore lead to The Student's Guide for Writing a Thesis.
First of all, it is important to state what is expected of the reader after careful study of this guide, so that he/she can track his/her progress and ability. The uneducated might expect that, after reading such a guide, one would be prepared to write a thesis. This is obviously plain wrong; more, it defies the very foundations of logic. There is no such thing as being prepared for writing a thesis. Instead, this document intends to nudge the reader away from all the mistakes committed by the author and/or of his knowledge, so as to leave room for other more interesting and novel mistakes. I repeat for the sake of emphasis: interesting and novel. This is what people expect from your thesis.
- Do no expect to change the world. High expectations are a bitch, and they will kill all of your motivation (trust me, you will need it) if you let them. Truth is, most likely you are too dumb to do anything of real value. Even if you have that potential, chances are you will be too lazy to fullfil it. In the unlikely event of you actually being able to do something valuable and interesting, you won't have the creative writing skill necessary to write it down while complying with the dreaded theses templates. Finally, if with some divine assistance you do manage to accomplish all that, your thesis still will remain unread and left to rot in some god forgotten library. Your grandma might read it though, so you can aim to change her life instead.
- Coldplay, Antony and the Johnsons and Katie Melua all have awesome songs, but they are not what you need in this time of your life. Stick with Dragonforce, Emerald Sword, Rise Against and the like.
- In the acknowledgements section, do not thank your dog. Even though I am sure it is a remarkably clever animal, your narrow minded examiners will see it as a weak inspiration source. Similarly, do not thank God. Many before you have already done that, and you might be indicted with plagium.
- Do not misspell your supervisor or examiner's name. Chances are they won't like it.
- Do not start writing your thesis away head of the deadline. My athletics instructor used to say something like "when you cross the finishing line, you'll be feeling like crap anyway, so you might as well start running fast from the beginning and get it over with quickly". The reverse applies here. Your thesis will only be ready about thirty minutes before the delivery date, and it will be crap anyway. Might as well save yourseld some trouble and start writing it the week before.
- When working in your thesis, if you have friends nearby, you are screwed. Half of them are in the same situation as you are, and will steal your precious energies with their constant whining about their dull theses. The other half will keep inviting you to all sorts of events (they're on vacations and/or unemployed and thus absolutely bored). A thorough study of which type of friends is more harmful has not yet been conducted (future work section!) but it has been proven beyond doubt that having them around will endanger your finishing your thesis.
- When working in your thesis, if you don't have friend nearby, you are screwed. You will spend all your "working" time thinking about them and how great it would be to have them around.
- When working in your thesis, you are srewed.
- Sleeping is overrated. Statistics say that about 50% of any work with a fixed deadline is performed from its start until the day before, while the other half is accomplished in that last sleepless night. In the case of a master thesis, this means that one single sleepless night equals to months of proper sleep time. You do the math.
- The "advisor" field in your thesis' template is wrong; it should read "sponsor" instead. Therefore, do not expect to get any actual advice. Instead, you should expect (and demand!) constant praise of your work to others, even if he has no clue whatsoever what the hell you are doing. Do you, for that matter?
- Do not feel sad if, during your thesis' defense, no one even knows the title of your work. Recall that, until a couple of hours before, you didn't either. Moreover, half those people have more interesting lives than you, and so cannot waste their precious time with such garbage. The other half do not have a life at all, and so cannot risk getting one by mistake by reading potentially something interesting.
- Words are better than numbers. Numbers can be proven wrong, while with words at most someone might disagree with them.
- Do not reference any work which is actually better than yours. The worse a paper is, the more you should try to include it somehow. Writing something like "[3], while not at all related to this work, absolutely sucks" is perfectly acceptable and will help building an adequate frame for your wonderful thesis.
- After reading 12 (you are reading this carefully, right?) you should know that the "State Of The Art" section is not what it seems. First of all, what you are doing is sure as hell not an art. Still, even ignoring that important fact, you really do not want to speak about the actual state of the art. There are billions of people in the world, so chances are one of them already tackled your problem in a much more successful way. Instead, what you should seek are those dumb as a lamb (this should definately be an idiomatic expression) researchers who tried to do something similar. Start by taking a look at your one-year-ahead colleagues' work. You can also cite the Mayans or the Romans and cleverly forget to include the reference date. Cite ancient Greeks at your own account. Some of those bastards actually did know what they were doing.
- In the "Motivation" section, what people expect to read is why in god's name would somehow think of doing all the silly things you tried to do. It is not concerned with your actual motivation, so you should avoid truthful statements like "I need the diploma in order to get a job" or "My girlfriend says she's tired of dating a simple graduate". Tricky one.
- Your results do not suck. It might seem so, for the unkeen eye, but elaborate statistic will actually show that under the right circumstances they are actually quite brilliant. If you still cannot see that, changes are you suck at statistics as well. Get an engineer to help you. If you are a girl, that shouldn't hard to accomplish. Otherwise, perhaps you should consider being an engineer yourself.
- Balmer's peak has yet to be proven empirically, and should not be trusted. Being plain drunk is fine though.
- Although not formally proven, legend has it that reading blogs will not help you in your quest.
Filipe Baptista de Morais
