Time Management

Suggested Schedule

FALL

• Literature Review
• Review literature / background information for your thesis. The literature review is the only part of your thesis with no good procrastination rationale. Do this as soon as possible.
• Write literature review / introduction to thesis, but leave room for explaining results / findings toward the end of your intro.
• Advisor Meetings
• Set up weekly meetings with your advisor.
• Constantly re-evaluate your plan / time window.
• Use them -- they are great resources!
• Experiment Setup If Applicable
• Talk with your advisor about expected time frame for results, and plan accordingly. Be flexible, and above all, reasonable in estimating the time it will take to perform your experiments.
• Implement windows for unseen setbacks.
• Curriculum Vita
• Create a vita that will be included at the end of your thesis.
• Good sources for developing the vita can be found in the Thesis Manual and on the TAMU Career Center's website.
• Thesis Formatting / Documentation Guidelines
• Spend time familiarizing yourself with the thesis guidelines and documentation rules for style and formatting.
• To save yourself a lot of hassle: use the template offered on the Honors Programs website. You can save your precious time for writing rather thank having to worry about the spacing and whether or not you are supposed to number that particular page or use all caps.
• References
• Begin documenting your references. You can save a copy of the formatted thesis template and begin adding the parts of your own thesis to it.
• The TAMU Computer Services Center has a great FREE program that you can download, called EndNotes?, that will assist you in keeping your references straight. They also offer classes that teach you how to use this wonderful resource, both for free and for a charge. Check their website.
• Presentations
• Pace yourself with presentations. You will be able to present your research nearly 3-4 times throughout the year. Try not to go into too much depth the first couple of times.
• Do not procrastinate working on your presentations. You will only stress yourself out.
• Practice, practice, practice your presentation skills. Be concious of time limits, content, Q&A time, etc.
• The person that won first place in our section at the Student Research Week did so because after his first two presentations he completely revamped how he was presenting his research, and it worked beautifully. His research was over two times in history when people in America were rounded up and imprisoned (during World War II and after 9/11). By reworking his presentation to compare each section side by side (WWII & 9/11), it was much more effective. In fact, that change allowed him, he said, to write his thesis more quickly and with much greater clarity. If you are struggling with the actual writing process, step back and ask yourself, "Is there another way of looking at this?"

SPRING

• Writing
• If you have spent the entire Fall semester conducting research, then you should try to devote the majority of your Spring to writing the actual thesis.
• The writing will almost always take longer than you expect. Plan on this!

AGAIN, the writing process WILL take much longer than you expect -- do not wait until after the spring semester to begin writing. Have all your Front Matter (and as much of the Back Matter as possible) completed before the end of the FALL semester -- it will only take you a little while, but it will give you great confidence during the home streach of writing your thesis!

• Draft deadlines
• It is a great idea to set deadlines for drafts and or sections of your writing. If your advisor does not require that you meet deadlines, set them for yourself. You won't regret it.
• If you wait until the last month to develop a timeline or to begin writing your thesis it will suffer and so will you. As you complete one chapter, give it to your advisor to review and offer suggestions.
• Often those suggestions will not only improve your paper but will provide insight into areas you may have overlooked, or that you had not thought of but would want to include in your thesis.
• If you give your advisor your entire thesis one week before it's due you will be doing her/him a major injustice and your thesis will suffer. If you do wait until the last minute, expect to go for DAYS without sleep, if you intend to meet the thesis reporting deadlines and make all the changes your advisor will invariably ask you to make, while completing all the reports, experiements, papers, speeches, and studying necessary for finals for your all classes!
• WARNING! A failure to heed this draft-writing suggestion will be extremely detrimental to your physical, mental and spiritual well-being! Nothing you have done during your undergraduate academic career has prepared you for the extensive amount of writing you will be doing during this semester for this one project!!
• You CAN do this project, and learn a great deal about research, and gain an incredible amount of confidence, and gain a great sense of accomplishment, just don't expect to do what many do for their class assignments -- leave it until the last minute -- it won't work!

• Checkpoints for sections
• It's a good idea to try and guess about how long you think your paper will be. (Ask your adviser or use a journal from your discipline to decide on an acceptible, publishable length.)
• One good plan for the timeline of writing your sections is to divide your thesis into thirds.
• If you are in one of the humanities you might have more sections, such as chapters, and cannot divide your project into thirds. Therefore, once you decide how many chapters you are going to have you can set your timeline accordingly. For example, I originally planned to have eight chapters but found that three of my chapters were going to be substantially shorter than the others, so I combined them with another chapter and it greatly improved the end product.
• Then, set your goal to have the first third (or whatever breakdown you have chosen to use) of your paper done by the end of January, the next third done by the end of February, and the completed first draft done by the end of March. This will give you plenty of time for revisions, and it will also give you some extra time if an emergency comes up that draws you away from your thesis for a while.
• In the humanities, you might divide it by a chapter every week to week and a half. That way you will constantly have something to give your advisor and will also be receiving her/his feedback on a weekly basis.
• Do not neglect to meet with your advisor, even if for ten minutes, on a weekly or bi-weekly basis during this crucial time. They have been through the process and can give you invaluable insight and offer suggestions that can save you time and effort. These meetings also serve to keep your writing on track.