Review/Notes: How to Write a BA Thesis, Chapters 1-4

This "Practical Guide from Your First Ideas to Your Finished Paper" by Charles Lipson is on my list of required reading before the start of fall semester. Because it is intended to guide me along my journey to Honors Graduation, I feel like there's no time like the present to commit some notes and comments to the memories of the internet.

Part One: Getting Started

This first part of the book sets you up with a general overview of how the book is written as well as how it should be read. Lipson seems keen to make this book a truly practical guide in that he recommends leaving certain chapters at certain stages of the thesis process. (In fact, every chapter is helpfully labeled with "When this Chapter should be Read" depending on whether your project is meant to be conducted over one or two semesters. This seems really helpful, but alas, these benefits will be lost of me as the whole 400 page experience is due by September 7th. To be fair, I can probably reread it on the prescribed schedule but that spoils the surprise.

Moving on! Chapter two, entitled "Useful Nuts and Bolts", walks you through everything one ought to do in preparation for the thesis research/writing process. In addition to suggesting that you take classes relating to your major (seems like a no-brainer to me), Lipson recommends choosing courses that require lengthier writing assignments in order to adequately prepare oneself/impress a potential future adviser. Now, I don't know what college students Charles Lipson has hung out with, but that just doesn't seem like advice that everyone is going to embrace.

No matter, he does offer some compelling, if a little obvious, advice on what makes a good adviser. Of course, you ought to be comfortable with said professor (I call mine Keanu behind his back) and set up regular meetings with clear expectations and yadda yadda yadda. I've got that covered, so I mostly skimmed that part. But the chapter did come through with the promised "useful nuts and bolts", including some much appreciated pointers on how to assemble a functional reading list.

Part two: Framing your topic.

Chapter three gets right into it: don't fucking plagiarize, kids. Because plagiarism does not an excellent thesis make. Lipson does offer a lot of really excellent tips for notetaking to avoid accidental plagiarism, however. These insights include: framing direct quotes with the letter "Q" and citation information, find a method to distinguish your own thoughts on the readings (he recommends brackets/your initials) and keeping a running bibliography with all your notes and stuff.

On page 37, Lipson says that notes should:

• Capture the main points of each article
• Focus on parts of the work most closely related to your topic
• Use clear markings to distinguish your comments from the author's language, preventing any accidental plagiarism
• Record the bibliographic information you need for citation
• Develop your own insights, as prompted by the readings, so you can draw on them later

Pretty straightforward, right? Absolutely!

Moving on to chapter four, which deals with two major points: narrowing your topic and writing a decent research proposal. Now, I wrote a 25 page research proposal for the junior "pre-honors" seminar I had to take last year for what will be referred to here as the "Pre-Keanu topic." It was a pretty impressive paper, but the topic was shit and not very well defined. Also, the paper was probably shit...but it made up for it by being impressive shit, indeed.

Charles Lipson (can I call him Charlie?) recommends that I write a new one...a new one that is, blissfully, only 1-2 pages and answers the questions "What is my topic?", "Why is it important?" and "How do I go about answering it?"

Guess what, Charlie? I intend to do just that before my next meeting with Adviser Keanu.

Stay tuned for part three!