Tips for Writing a Masters Thesis

While primarily intended for students completing a masters thesis, this post might also interest those writing seminar papers or other projects, such as scholarly articles or essays. These seven tips, thoughts, and provocations derive from my own successes and failures, good intentions and bad habits as a writer. Add your voice in the comments! In case you stop reading here, know that however hellish the process, there is nothing quite so pleasurable as producing a polished piece of writing. Also, remember that your health and wellbeing are more important than your thesis. If you feel more depressed, anxious, tired, overwhelmed, or stressed than is manageable for you, I hope you will reach out to a friend, family member, classmate, or advisor. Please prioritize your health (completing your thesis can wait).

1. Write about what you care about. In my opinion, this is the most important aspect of any piece of writing. No matter how experienced or talented a writer you are, if you are not passionate about your topic, your writing will suffer. That said, writing about topics that are important to you can trigger emotional responses that might make writing more difficult. That’s one of the reasons why I like tip number two.

On Teaching Resistance

While drafting my English 2 proposal and planning my course last October, I had no idea how painfully relevant the overall theme would be, come spring semester.

My English 2 focuses on the rhetoric of resistance:

“Our section of English 2 will focus on the implications of language and writing in the context of various forms of resistance: self-definition and identity formation, visual rhetoric, and body rhetoric. Students will learn how these forms of resistance operate rhetorically to expose and challenge oppressive power structures with the goal to generate social change. To this end, we will study and research the rhetorical strategies of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, music, and public art. We as a class will learn to reconsider the role of language in many, if not all, aspects of our lives and to navigate the broader community as socially conscious citizen-writers.”

From the beginning, I made it clear that I wasn’t seeking to push a particular agenda, but rather providing a space where we interrogate ideas and different manifestations of resistance. Along with Envision, I’ve required Rhetoric for Radicals: A Handbook for 21st Century Activists. One quote from the foundational readings for the second day sums up the ethos of the class: “If we’re going to change the world, then we need to change people’s rhetorical constructions of the world.”