The 12 stages of an Honours thesis

This is a topic which any budding university student considering Honours should really, really, read. Like most other university students considering Honours, I asked other students who had done it what they thought. Some responded with "Do it, you won't regret it", others said "You never have enough time, always be aware of that" and one girl just refused to relive her dreaded experience. She just shook her head when I asked her about her topic; 2 years later I still have no idea what she did her topic on. Naturally I thought a lot of it was exaggerated, my experience would be different. Whoa buddy I was wrong! This is quite long so get comfortable. 

1. Excitement

Yay! You've studied hard and made it into your Honours year! Buying a bunch of stationary, a filing system and some pretty new folders to ensure you are totally sorted. You've started hunting down who to be your Supervisor for the year and considering what your topic will be. Once you have that all sorted, you have your brand new diary and start listing all the due dates in there to make sure you will be totally fine for the year.

2. Planning

The topic is set. You have your supervisor, and now you plan! This includes writing up a full timetable for due dates, field work (or lab work etc etc). Understanding your topic by starting to read through the literature your supervisor/s have listed for you, also now you are going to set classes that you may have, easy as. What has everyone been complaining about? I have planned this so well and written so many lists, how could anything go wrong? Just have to start learning how to properly search for literature and sort through all the unhelpful stuff

3. So it begins...

I know for lab and field work, you have to submit a risk assessment. This lists everything bad and evil that can happen and how you will prevent that. If your university has a set format, it's pretty easy just tedious more than anything. If it doesn't, well shit. Enjoy the next pointless 4 drafts you will have to do. With field work, this can involve travel. Since I was doing Marine ecology, I had to write up a travel plan, as well as costs involved for food etc etc. This was set to be all at the same time I book the university vechicle which I need to drive along the beach. Be prepared for EVERYONE to set you back. In my circumstance, the risk assessment wasn't accepted until 4 days after I was suppose to leave.. Because the car was just sitting there it was taken by other university staff and making my trip log invalid. I had to redo this process about 5 times before I had a tanty and left without waiting for my trip log to become invalid AGAIN. 

4. Field/lab work

After all the dramas you're finally doing something! Progress at last right? Wrong. Oh. So. Wrong. First time in the field, I didn't check the tide height which made me rock up to the beach in the middle of winter with only about 2 metres of the intertidal zone exposed... which is unlucky for me since my transects were to be 40m long... Another wasted day. Weather was a bitch for me, if you are in the ecology field, ALWAYS assume the worst weather possible. if you don't, you're gonna have a bad time. Best idea I had was to write out for every date, the tide height for that period of time, the sunrise and sunset times. It gave me exact time frames for each sampling period, also I had made sure that I always had the car at least a day before I planned to leave.  

5. Complications

By this stage, you've already had complications, ones that you can deal with and are minor irritations. But you've not had complications like this one. Something monumental will happen. Mine was the sickening realisation that the honours coordinator had given me the first semester dates for the part time students (which have 2 years, not 1). I had 3 days to write out a 6,000 word literature review which I had no idea how to even start doing. And it was worth 20% of the final mark. My supervisor hadn't even picked this up, which was an excellent argument to use for an extension, making my second semester part time. I have now had to go from only having 6 months left, to a year and a half left. 

6. Supervisor problems

This is when shit got real. I had 2 supervisors, one which had done his honours the year before in the same location as mine, but I was extending on it. The other who is at the university and the only marine biologist there. They started contradicting each other. At the beginning it was all good, I got to understand that she wasn't a good spell checker or grammar nazi but he was so that complemented each other. Both are very intelligent and I doubt I could have finished to the high standard in which it ended up being...

...But. Here is a photo to assist me in explaining. She is an epic micro-manager and forgetful. He would rearrange my work without my approval and send it to her. She loves making notes all over everything, but apparently I am the only one who understands it (lucky). I made her colour code everything because it helped me understand it after I had nursed my hurt ego for a while. The orange section was originally together, my other supervisor had moved it around. I am correcting my supervisors FFS. By this stage, my 3rd and most relaxed supervisor was brought in. You now have 4 people trying to write one Thesis. BAD. Now that you know their faults, it will be a constant annoyance for the rest of your thesis. This never goes away

8. Data analysis

Depending on how adept you are with math or computer programs will possibly determine how bad this gets. But I can tell you everyone has the same problem. SO MUCH DATA CAN'T DEAL WITH IT! After you figure out how you are going to process it, finally have a game plan. Forget it. There is a better way to do it. Once you lay it all out. Forget it again. That way doesn't work. Get chatting to the university statistics guru, they are under appreciated angels who are usually more than happy to break shit down for you. Bring a note pad and pen everywhere with you. 

7. More complications and rising Stress levels

Date changing is possibly the worst thing ever. Everything had been pushed back, and moved forward at least 3 times. This step may have come before data analysis, but this is just the final climb before you reach the peak of crazy. At one stage I was stressing out about my data I actually fell asleep on my keyboard. When I was going to bed I started ranting about how I had to check the maturity proportions again. I have some awesome advice for you.. Set your auto-save option in word to 3 seconds. Make sure you have an external hard drive, and for gods sake, make sure you have a computer/laptop that works. Don't rely on the university computers. Ever.

9. Final write up/That crazy person you see, is actually your reflection (common symptoms include Hair loss, addictions and uncontrollable emotions)

All people will become crazy. I can bet you this. Your stress levels will become so high that you will sit in a corner and cry. At one stage I didn't sleep for 40 hours and at 2am decided to put some crumpets on. Our toaster doesn't pop up properly and I forgot about them. 20minutes later smoke alarms are going off and I am throwing a burning toaster on the balcony. The smoke inhalation got to my caffeine riddled brain so when I started to go to sleep at 10am, I had this constant feeling of a bunch of people in the house and commando crawled to the clothes line and slept (barely) while being fully clothed. One of my friends started crying uncontrollably while cradling the keyboard. My best friend brought a mattress into her lab and slept in there for days on end, and started drinking double strength expressos and a few V's a day. This is someone who would NEVER consider getting a coffee. Also at one stage my supervisor (the micro-manager) called me every hour from 5pm until 4am. We got shit done but holy crap was I stressed the shit out.

10. Submission = The stress release

I cried. Seriously. I had a co-supervisor with me at the time because I was assisting him in field work for the 3rd year students. It felt so good but it didn't really sink in until about 3 weeks later. Had a massage (in which I fell asleep in even though he was doing deep tissue massage). I then went out to Three Degrees Cider Bar and got SMASHED. The hangover was worth it, I proceeded to get insanely drunk for the next week (or 4). 

11. Oh but wait, there is always more!

Honours never just ends, oh no. It's a beast which never dies. Final presentations happen, and also your defence of thesis. MY thesis, was handed in at 11am rather than the deadline of 5pm, which was my undoing. I get a text message from one supervisor asking about my submission and didn't even think twice about it. I get another one from her asking specific details of when I handed it in. Interesting but it's probably nothing. Then my supervisor who was with me informs me that they have lost my thesis. Lost. My. Thesis. 

I became the hulk. It's 3ish months after I found this out and I think that drama has been sorted out and now I have my defence tomorrow (which by the way has been rescheduled 4 times in the last 3 hours). Which frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.

12. Is.. Is it really over? 

This feeling will stay with you for an unspecified time. The best way I can describe this is with my Dads words. "After I finished my masters, I woke up in the middle of the night realising that I hadn't finished a section of my discussion that was due in a few days. I got up in a flurry at 3am madly trying to find where it was laid out. It was 10 minutes before I realised that I had handed it in 4 years ago. The nightmares lasted that long."
And he had to use a typewriter because he couldn't afford a computer. Imagine that? *shivers*

Now back to re-reading my thesis in preparations for my Defence tomorrow. Wish me luck.