For someone who generally finishes things on time, my thesis has been a completely different experience. I have somehow managed to stretch what should have been a one year process into a three year process. Now that I’m on the verge of finally finishing it, I can look back and laugh at what I’ve been through. So here it is (a list that may or may not be based on personal experiences) — the top 10 ways to put off your thesis.
10. Avoid starting it in the first place
Laugh all you want, but sometimes getting started is the hardest part. In fact, I have friends who are still struggling to make it past this step.
9. Hang out with friends
…that aren’t working on a thesis. See how much fun they’re having. Keep hanging out with them because they’re more fun than your thesis.
8. Sleep
Maybe your thesis topic is so boring that it literally puts you to sleep, or maybe you would rather sleep instead of think about your thesis. Either way, you’re not getting anything done on your thesis except in your dreams (or nightmares).
7. Work out
Let’s just say that I trained for and ran a half marathon at some point in the past three years, and I was probably in the best shape of my life so far.
6. Watch TV
“Must See TV” really becomes must see TV when it means you get to take a break from your thesis.
5. Convince yourself that you have ADD
…and it may even come true. At some point, I think it might have worked. I would open up my thesis on the computer and not even touch it for hours, because I’d get distracted doing other things.
4. Misplace/destroy it
Have you ever tried feeding your laptop to your dog? Hmm…the dog excuse doesn’t work very well anymore.
3. Get an internship
There’s nothing more tempting than getting paid to take a break from working on your thesis.
2. Get a job
I lied. There is something more tempting — getting paid to take a permanent break from working on your thesis.
1. Start a personal finance blog
Perhaps you could even write about all the loans you have to pay back after finishing your thesis.
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We indulged in “collective procrastination”. It is kinda similar to your step 9, but with a twist. Instead of hanging out with friends who don’t have thesis to write, hang out with those that do. And justify not doing any work on your thesis by pointing out that none of the others got anything done either. As long as everyone follows the same rules, this can be very effective in collectively putting off all thesis work
I am guilty of 10, 4, and 2. Though I blame the school for number 4. I delayed starting my thesis, especially when funding was cut. Ok, so the funding was cut in part for lack of progress, but that was because I was last on the list for Beowulf time and kept getting bumped down with every new request (moral here: build your own clusters and don’t rely on school clusters that are monopolized by the students and profs who originally workwed on or funded the project).
After my funding was cut, I focused on getting a job or other means of maintianing housing while working on my projects… that and no funding meant my scholarships were gone too (they depended on having a fully funded research project). I have had two full time jobs since and for the first job speant as much time on campus working on my project as I did at work… and work suffered for it. After losing that job I got a better job that required enough of my time that I disappeared from the campus for a month and when I returned my workstation was given to another student who used the stored passwords on it to reformat my server space to double his, effectively destroying just about everything I had done (another moral: server backups are only as good as the intent of the users, so if you do computer modelling keep your own copies of everything in an off-line location as well as every school sponsored back-up).
As is I am looking at getting back into (another) grad school on my jobs bill, though going back to the same school and working for another advisor is also possible since we have just signed a research agreement with them…. ughh, too many decisions and not enough time and resources to evaluate them.
@ispf - “Collective procrastination” is a great term. I definitely participated in my fair share of that activity as well, and it was very, very effective.
@Adam - Best of luck finding the time and motivation to get everything sorted out. I definitely struggled with it for awhile before I was finally able to make that final push and dedicate myself to finishing my thesis.
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