Photo Credit: Kristian Woerner.
It recently occurred to me that I have an entire chapter of my thesis due next week, and yet I have only done a little over half of the reading and research that I will eventually complete for my entire thesis. Rather than finishing all of my research and then sitting down to write my paper, I will essentially be doing both at the same time.
Assignments for most humanities courses tend to be on short enough timelines that the work is done in a linear fashion. Take, for example, a research paper I have to write for one of my seminar courses in history. We have to pick a topic, submit an outline and a preliminary list of references, read a few secondary sources, write a short historiography essay, do the primary source research, and write the paper. Each step is very clearly laid out, one after the other. Once I complete one step, I don’t return to it. After I complete the historiography portion, for example, I likely won’t go back and make significant revisions to it.
Similar to a shorter research paper, there are deadlines for different parts of my thesis: a proposal, a first chapter, a full draft, and the final draft. These deadlines have been incredibly helpful so far in making sure that I keep pace with my work
While the deadlines for both shorter research papers and longer research papers are similar, there is one big difference in the processes: where shorter research papers tend to be linear, the thesis process is circular. Unlike a shorter research paper, where I likely won’t revisit a section once it’s deadline has passed, I will continually revisit all parts of my thesis until the final version is submitted.
The advantage of a circular process is that I can continually revisit and add nuance to my ideas. Often, an idea that I may have pulled from a paper I read months ago will gain new life with research I am just now doing. As a result, I am able to follow many paths and see where they intersect. And, I personally like the circular process a lot, as I tend to write and think in a manner that looks more like a brainstorm web and less like a straight line.
The challenge of a circular process, at least for me, is organization. With so many new ideas coming in from all directions over the course of more than a year, it can be challenging to keep all of my thoughts, notes and writing organized. Unlike a shorter research paper where everything I read is fresh in my mind when I write, a lot of what I’m writing about in my thesis is material that I researched and read through weeks or months ago. I have found it incredibly helpful to take detailed notes and to keep up with my citations (including links to any online sources I have used). Everyone is going to be different in terms of what organizational strategies work for them. The key is to find a method that works for you early on and to stick to it. The easier it is to locate all parts of your work, the easier it will be when you actually sit down to write a section of your paper or when you return to add to it or edit it.
But, after a year of engaging in this circular process, my end result will be linear. After all, in any standard thesis essay one word comes after the next in a rigidly prescribed linear fashion. I try not to let the constraints of my end goal impede the full potential of my process, but that’s not always easy. I try to embrace the many different ways my ideas connect to one another and see this as an opportunity to play with the structure of my paper and even use that structure to draw out nuances in my argument. Everyone thinks, works and writes differently. No one way is right or wrong, but understanding how I engage with processes of research has been useful in getting the most out of my experience.