With their deadlines rapidly approaching, it's crunch time for seniors writing theses. But even as thesis season reaches its climax, with History and Literature theses due last Monday and most departments' due dates before spring break, seniors are adding color to their lives--with highlighters and color-coded page tabs.
"When we [seniors] see each other we talk about two things: what we're doing next year or our thesis," says Jobe G. Danganan '99, a social studies concentrator writing a thesis on Christianity, racism and racial reconciliation of the African-American experience from the 1960s to the 1990s. "We call it the T-word or the T-bird."
As their journeys come to a close, many thesis-writing seniors sagely offer advice to their classmates who are considering taking on the thesis challenge, and also to those seniors who face several weeks until their concentration's thesis deadline.
While the thesis process occupies a large portion of senior year, students considering writing theses should start planning far in advance of their senior fall, according to many veterans of the process. One way to prepare for writing a thesis is getting a head start on applications for grants from the Student Employment Office's Harvard College Research Program.
Danganan says he wishes he took core classes earlier and saved less work-intensive classes for this semester. With core workloads, Rhodes scholarship interviews (he was a finalist), LSATs, GREs and recruiting in the fall, Danganan says finding time to work on his thesis was especially difficult, and he would have benefited from advance planning of LSAT dates and classes.
"I don't see the light at the end of the tunnel now, but I'm sure I'll get there," he says.
Rebecca A. Berman '99, an Afro-American studies concentrator writing her thesis about a New York minority education program called Prep for Prep, stresses the importance of a good advisor. "I feel like people's theses are made or broken by their thesis experience," she says.
During the process of researching and writing a thesis, social anthropology concentrator Stanley C. Wei '99 prescribes a regular schedule of waking, sleeping and exercising.
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