How do I handle the "home stretch" stress?

The most difficult part of the Fellowship is writing your thesis because of a number of factors, some of which you cannot control. Therefore, the things that you can control from the beginning, which are often small, will give you the greatest reward at the end of the spring semester when you will feel the mounting pressure of completing your thesis, participating in the required Student Research Week and completing all the required work in your other classes, writing other required papers and studying for finals.

Among the factors you cannot control are:

1. When the thesis is due in the Office of Honors Programs.

2. How the front and back matter are designed or what is included.

3. Unexpected out-of-town meetings that advisors go to, resulting in a delay of your own "weekly" meetings to discuss crucial results.

4. Just when you think you've found the perfect book or source to use in your research, it may already be checked out of the library, or the library may have lost it. In a library as big as Evans, things are lost so don't wait until the last minute to find sources.

5. There are only 24 hours in a day. Like it or not, you can't change this. Use good time management.

However, there are things that you are able to control, from the beginning of your research year, that will garner you great rewards in the month of April, when you will be experiencing the most pressure to finish everything, and stress might become almost unbearable.

Some of the things you can control are:

1. As simple as it sounds, get plenty of rest during the fall and early spring semesters.

2. Eat healthy meals and exercise, as much as possible, in the fresh air and sunshine.

3. Use the Thesis template from the Fellows page, it will save you a LOT of time.

4. Complete the front and back matter early (in the fall if possible) in order to save crunch time for the body of your thesis. This includes having your CV read at the Career Center in the Koldus building; they can give you great pointers on what to include -- their questions will help you discover some things you may not have realized would beef up your CV.

5. Don't forget to include your Fellows thesis in your CV!

6. Know how to properly document your research from the beginning.


Feedback from a Fellow:

Don't make the mistake I made and spend seven months using faulty documentation procedures, only to find one week into writing your thesis you have made a major mistake. Unless you are then willing to go without sleep or any human interaction, it might be too late to recover from such an error.
You can never recreate the best parts of your research after five to seven months of poor documentation, and you will be running a frantic race to complete your thesis on time, while trying to make sure your other classes do not suffer.

What do I mean by good documentation? As simple as it sounds, when you are reading a book, case study, magazine or journal article, or reading from a website IMMEDIATELY write the complete citation down, according to your thesis style (preferably you will type it into your computer or zip drive).

IMMEDIATELY write all your thoughts and ideas and questions the reading may have raised. Don't put your thoughts on post-it notes and expect to come back to it later. Believe me, as one who learned the hard way, those thoughts will NEVER waft back into your mind while you are writing your paper, and your paper will be the worse for it.

If you have over 60 sources, when you go back to review your incomplete notes they just may not make sense, or worse, you may not find the book, articles, or magazine again, and will have to take that out of your paper.

If you keep your thesis material on a zip drive, every night before you go to bed re-save it to your hard drive, just in case. You might, in the groggieness of your sleep depravation, leave your zip drive in one of the computer labs' PCs, and if the person who discovers it isn't an Aggie who believes in and adheres to the Aggie Honor Code you can kiss your research good-bye. Thankfully, when I did this the international student who discovered it found my email address on the zip drive and sent me an email where it was.

Referring links:
Student Research Week Homepage