Working on MS thesis while having a homebrew

I'm hoping the homebrew provides some sort of divine inspiration. Thoughts?

Even some liquid courage would be beneficial at this point. :cross:

I was totally trashed when writing big chunks of my thesis and once I defended it whooo boy did we get loaded.

Whatever gets you writing, go for it. Writing my Masters thesis, it was more the mental paralysis of the size of the thing than the material itself that made things difficult for me. Getting started with writing was the hardest part (I'd researched a ton). Nothing feels better than walking out of a successful defense, though. Good luck!

elkdog said:

Whatever gets you writing, go for it. Writing my Masters thesis, it was more the mental paralysis of the size of the thing than the material itself that made things difficult for me.

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Yeah, I think that's exactly what it is. Thanks! I need all the help I can get. This is a bastard of a challenge for me

Yeah, I wrote pretty much all of mine in the library, so no drinking for me.

After the defense, however...

My Sr. project was a software project I wrote and had to show off to the faculty and more or less "defend" it.

My secret to getting large blocks of the coding done was having a bottle of whisky and lots of beer (sadly, before homebrewing.)

It helped break the mental blocks I faced when less inebriated. After I had this, I ended up polishing and tying together the code sober.

So, your initial draft, if the research and the knowledge is all in your head but you can't seem to put it on paper, get blitzed and get writing. Just make sure you are ready for a few "wtf...why did I write that?" moments as you correct it. I know the error message that said "Why do insist on doing things wrong?" would not have won over any professors.

Had to down mad homebrew to get through my thesis writting process. Something about having not been an undergrad for a while and having to actually sit down and write a paper. The beer just barely made the process go by.

There are only two kinds of MS theses: Finished or Unfinished. Which kind do you want?

Break it up into small pieces so it doesn't seem so overwhelming. Start with an outline. Then a more detailed outline. Then a fully annotated outline. Then draft the key sections. Then draft the supporting sections. Then rewrite ... etc.

Make sure you have 100% buy-in from your advisor. Get him/her to review every draft you write. You do not want to invest 1000 hours into this only to find that your advisor wants you to redo large portions of it. That didn't happen to me, but I saw it happen to others and it ain't pretty.

Good luck.

Beerthoven said:

Make sure you have 100% buy-in from your advisor. Get him/her to review every draft you write. You do not want to invest 1000 hours into this only to find that your advisor wants you to redo large portions of it. That didn't happen to me, but I saw it happen to others and it ain't pretty.

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+1 on this advice. I ended up wasting a lot of time on my first Masters by writing something that my advisor wasn't a fan of. The rewrite wasn't difficult, but took a lot of time that I could have saved myself by just doing it right the first time around.

Of course, I over corrected for my second thesis and drove my advisor crazy by asking her to check everything constantly.