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Senior Thesis


Era Might

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Did anyone write a senior thesis as an undergraduate? I'm going to be writing one over the next year. It's a 40 page paper, and I have never written anything so long (especially something I am doing research for). I'm excited about the research though. How was your experience writing your thesis?

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I did mine on the evolution of Satan throughout Old Testament New Testament and current day. You pick the right topic and the paper kind of writes itself. Dr David Penchansky was my advisor and while a good guy I had some issues with him as an advisor.

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BTW Era I remember when we had threads dedicated to getting your butt back in school. Congratulations on the light at the end of the tunnel.

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Thy Geekdom Come

I had a double thesis of 35 pages (which is posted somewhere in Transmundane Lane). From experience, I can say know your topic very well, get all sorts of research, take down very specific details on where you got each point or citation you will use, be ready to defend your choice of sources and the conclusions you draw. Try to find a new appreciation for your topic somewhere along the line and let your thesis try to lead your reader to that same appreciation.

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IcePrincessKRS

Yup. I had a 40 page minimum. I broke my topic into chapters, 5 pages each for intro and conclusion, and then treated each chapter as a 10 page paper. It was literature so each one was linked to the next section, but it helped to break it down a bit instead of having 40 pages looming up on me all at once. I also wrote it over the course of an entire semester. I had a great thesis advisor who was pretty excited about my topic; every couple of weeks I turned in what I'd composed so far and he'd go over it with some corrections and I'd revise. Over all it was pretty simple. Nothing to stress over unless you leave it till the last minute (don't do that, I know a gal who did and she didn't finish in time so she only got her AA instead of BA).

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Thy Geekdom Come

Wow...40 page minimums? It makes me laugh thinking most single-major students at FUS would be going crazy over 25 pages...

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IcePrincessKRS

[quote name='Raphael' post='1838844' date='Apr 17 2009, 06:10 PM']Wow...40 page minimums? It makes me laugh thinking most single-major students at FUS would be going crazy over 25 pages...[/quote]

Yup, it's an across the board minimum at Christendom, except (I think) for Philosophy majors, who I believe only have to write 20. I could be wrong but a girl I went to school with majored in Phil. and that's what she said, "because it's harder to write a philosophy paper." I think most people went over that, though. We had classes that had required 20 page research papers, too. I kept my thesis close to the minimum, though. I think I hit 46 pages plus my bibliography (and this was written in Times New Roman size 12... we were told that we had to do it in that font, the next semester the professor who told us that said it wasn't true and we could have used Courier but I'd already written mine... I always wanted to convert it to Courier and see how long it could get).

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eagle_eye222001

[quote name='IcePrincessKRS' post='1838856' date='Apr 17 2009, 05:26 PM']Yup, it's an across the board minimum at Christendom, except (I think) for Philosophy majors, who I believe only have to write 20. I could be wrong but a girl I went to school with majored in Phil. and that's what she said, "because it's harder to write a philosophy paper." I think most people went over that, though. We had classes that had required 20 page research papers, too. I kept my thesis close to the minimum, though. I think I hit 46 pages plus my bibliography (and this was written in Times New Roman size 12... we were told that we had to do it in that font, the next semester the professor who told us that said it wasn't true and we could have used Courier but I'd already written mine... I always wanted to convert it to Courier and see how long it could get).[/quote]

If you need a space waster.....wingdings 2 is the way to go :D

----------------
Now playing: [url="http://www.foxytunes.com/artist/hans+zimmer+%26+james+newton+howard/track/why+so+serious%3f+(album+version)"]Hans Zimmer & James Newton Howard - Why So Serious? (Album Version)[/url]
via [url="http://www.foxytunes.com/signatunes/"]FoxyTunes[/url]

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IcePrincessKRS

[quote name='eagle_eye222001' post='1838859' date='Apr 17 2009, 06:27 PM']If you need a space waster.....wingdings 2 is the way to go :D

----------------
Now playing: [url="http://www.foxytunes.com/artist/hans+zimmer+%26+james+newton+howard/track/why+so+serious%3f+(album+version)"]Hans Zimmer & James Newton Howard - Why So Serious? (Album Version)[/url]
via [url="http://www.foxytunes.com/signatunes/"]FoxyTunes[/url][/quote]

If only that would have been accepted... The department head even measured my margins with a ruler to make sure I had it right. :topsy:

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Brother Adam

I thought the thesis was fairly easy at FUS. Now I find restrictions difficult to deal with. The more room you give me to write the better. The most difficult papers to write are 1 page papers. 20-30 pages is preferable.

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dauntingknight

I had to write a 1 page report on insulin and......


oh wait a minute maybe I should put this in a different thread.

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My senior thesis for my first bachelors was on a management plan for a walnut plantation. It ran about 100 pages, but a lot of that was charts and tables. My second bachelors thesis was on early church heresies. My doctoral thesis was on the tax implications of restructuring large agricultural loans under the 1980 amendment to the Farm Credit Act of 1971. My masters thesis is far enough away that I'm not thinking about it yet.

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[quote name='hot stuff' post='1838827' date='Apr 17 2009, 04:59 PM']BTW Era I remember when we had threads dedicated to getting your butt back in school. Congratulations on the light at the end of the tunnel.[/quote]
Haha. Thanks man. Hard to believe I have to start preparing to apply for graduate school.

[quote name='IcePrincessKRS' post='1838834' date='Apr 17 2009, 05:03 PM']It was literature[/quote]
Same here. What was your topic? I'm writing my paper on Evelyn Waugh.

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IcePrincessKRS

[quote name='Era Might' post='1839096' date='Apr 17 2009, 09:57 PM']Same here. What was your topic? I'm writing my paper on Evelyn Waugh.[/quote]

Edgar Allan Poe. Life, death, and the afterlife as seen in his short stories. :)

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