Let's start at the very beginning... a very good place to start....
Doe, a deer....
Wait, sorry, this isn't The Sound of Music!
If I could give anyone about to write their thesis any advice, it would be not to start at the beginning.
Sitting in front of a blank screen trying to come up with the perfect thesis statement and introduction is horrible! Instead, I ended up starting writing one of the subject areas that I knew I could write about and then the introduction started to write itself (more or less). I still don't have "the perfect thesis statement", but I feel a lot more confident about the main content of my writing.
I realize that I'm going to have a lot more than the 20-40 pages that our guidelines suggest, but that's okay. I'll get through it one page at a time.
Now that the writing process has started I feel a little more relaxed than I did before I started, when it was looming over my head. And now that I worked out the issues I had with getting logged back in to this blog, I may finally be able to get some sleep tonight.
Next step is to finally get the thesis advisory board meeting to actually happen..... but that's another story for another blog post.
Hi Jen, I'm glad that the writing is coming along. I think your approach of going to your strength and moving around a bit in the writing process is just fine - in fact, it probably will get you through some of the tougher spots by having a bit of content already in place. I look forward to the next update - and I am sure your meeting will go swimmingly!
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