Master Thesis

In my graduate program (I'm sure every school does it a little differently), we had a required course the second semester of the first year in which we met in small groups (

The best advice I can give about a thesis is to remember that you don't have to set the world on fire, or change the face of nursing as we know it -- you have the rest of your career to do that. You just have to meet the requirements for graduation. Many of my classmates had very ambitious and grandiose ideas for research projects, and bit off quite a bit more than they ended up actually wanting to chew! Remember that the point of a Master's thesis isn't the final result of the study -- it is for you to go through the process of designing, conducting, and writing up a study.

My other "best advice" for a thesis is to choose a topic which hasn't been researched much and doesn't have a lot of literature. It makes a big difference in how much research and writing you have to do. It was just (happy) coincidence that my topic was one that had v. little literature out there, but my lit review ended up being only 13 pages. Classmates who chose more popular topics that had lots of previous research ended up writing lit reviews the size of a good-sized telephone directory ...

The primary general advice that faculty gave us at the time was this -- writer's block is the big downfall of many people, and your brain finds all kinds of excuses to not focus on working. As soon as you sit down to write, your brain becomes preoccupied with how you really need to mop the kitchen floor, or reorganize your closet, or change the oil in your car. Instead of sitting in front of the computer agonizing about it, just get up and do, first, whatever it is you need to do (mopping, reorganizing, etc.) and get it out of the way in order to be able to sit down and focus on writing. Do whatever you need to do in order to be able to write, even if it seems silly or weird.

I developed terrible writer's block during my last semester and was having an awful time getting done, and what finally worked for me was CHOCOLATE (I'm a terrible chocoholic, anyway) -- I put a big bag of M&Ms next to the computer monitor, and each sentence or two that I actually wrote, I'd "reward" myself with a few M&Ms. I know, it's pathetic and primitive and ridiculous, and embarrassing to recount -- but it worked. I was able to complete my thesis in plenty of time to get it bound and turned in, and for a while there, it wasn't at all clear that that was going to happen ...

Your school will (should ...) have v. specific requirements for theses about format, margins, etc. -- take those v. seriously, and follow them exactly! At our school, theses occasionally got rejected (despite the content being just fine) because the margins or something else about the format of the final, bound copy didn't meet the school's requirements (it didn't mean those students didn't graduate -- but they had a terrible time at the last minute, running around frantically to reformat, reprint and get the new version rebound in time to meet the final deadline. No point in putting yourself through that if you can avoid it in the first place. :) )

Best wishes for your studies.