By: Viviana Flores
@vfjournalism
To my fellow seniors (Excluding AP). Are you stressed about your senior thesis? Well you are not alone, as I assure you many other students are also dealing with stress regarding their senior thesis. Worry no more though, because if you want to be prepared I suggest following these simple tips.
- Be prepared: Come to the process with prior ideas about what you may like to write about, give yourself room to change and improve previous ideas.
- Make sure your argument is actually arguable: This tip is pretty basic. Don’t choose common sense topics that everyone will agree with (ex: murder is bad). A counterclaim also needs to be presented.
- Do research: By this, I mean tons of research. I suggest using Gale.com to have reliable, scholarly sources. (Make sure all evidence pulled from resources are real and true). Make sure that research is done on your side as well as the opposing side.
- Have an outline: This will allow for your ideas to have a basic plan of where and what order they will go in. Keep in mind that this is just a vague idea of what you want to do, this outline is in no way set in stone.
- Begin a draft: Granted 1, 250+ words is enough to make some people feel discouraged, absolutely do not procrastinate this step, having a solid and strong draft will make creating the final draft a breeze.
- Edit: Allow for many people to edit your work. But just remember that most edits are merely suggestions, so don’t lose your own touch.
- Begin the final draft: Most, if not all edits, should be done by this step in the process. Make sure to include a works cited page. Once you’re here you’ve successfully finished all that you need to do!
This thesis can be as simple as you let it! Just by breaking it down and doing it little by little.