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You probably think this post isn’t for you – unless you’re a student about to start writing a university thesis. But although in this post I indeed want to give some tips to students on their way to writing a Bachelor’s, Master’s, or even Doctoral thesis, there are important things we need to discuss about society and how our academic communities operate.

After all, much of what you experience in your everyday life is one way or another related to the academia. I’m not even referring to “knowledge” being born in the academia (I wish it were that simple). Rather, the people produced – that’s the right word – by the academia are your future employers and colleagues, mayors and decision-makers, and overall people you will have to deal with.

For those not familiar with me, I’ve spent 12 years at the university studying and teaching English literature. I’ve written a Bachelor’s thesis, a Master’s thesis, and a Doctoral thesis. I’ve seen the academia from the inside and let me tell you, the sausage metaphor applies.

Though I’ll structure the post around a way it would be most useful to a student – including what to expect, what to do, and what to avoid while writing a university thesis – I’ll add plenty of anecdotal details along the way that will make the post interesting to anyone.

Writing a University Thesis: What to Expect

Generally speaking, the things that supervisors and the university at large will expect from you depend on a few basic things:

• The degree in question. This is simple to understand: a Bachelor’s thesis certainly has different requirements compared to a Doctoral thesis.
• The field. I’m offering my advice from the perspective of English literature and the humanities. It’s likely that relevant fields (e.g. philosophy or sociology) will be comparable, whereas scientific fields (e.g. chemistry) will differ significantly. Take that into consideration as you read my post.
• The university and the academic environment in general. Each country and even each region and each university has its own culture. Or, to put it more negatively but perhaps realistically: its own little thought bubbles of bias. University A in city B of country C will have certain expectations in terms of what kind of thoughts you can put on paper that will be different from university D in city E of country F.

Even more disturbingly, it might even boil down to specific people. I personally know someone who, while studying at a Finnish university, was told by a supervisor they couldn’t do a thesis on racism, because, quote, there is no racism in Finland…

Other Considerations

With these out of the way, the more general things to expect come down to:

• Length. You will get specific guidelines, but very broadly, a BA thesis is really just an extended essay. My own BA thesis was about 20 pages, if I recall correctly. My MA thesis was 107 pages including citations. As for my Doctoral thesis, it reached 201 pages.
• Scope. As basically a glorified essay, a BA thesis isn’t supposed to delve too deep into the topic. It’s more about structure and basic writing skills. In other words, as long as you can have cohesion and coherence, producing a paper that has an introductory part, a main part, and an epilogue, all while properly paraphrasing, quoting, and citing, you’ll be fine. An MA thesis is expected to display significantly more initiative in terms of critically analyzing the subject, and a Doctoral thesis – on top of everything else – must also show you can create your own theory and critically engage with existing research on the subject.

So, how do these translate into practice? What are the things to do when writing a university thesis? Let’s see, together with some hilarious anecdotes from my academic days of yore.

Writing a University Thesis: What to Do

There is a hard and fast rule about writing a university thesis – of any level – and it is this: Generally, do as you’re told.

The more innocent side of this likely won’t cause much resistance or surprise, as it’s about practical guidelines. If the guidelines for the thesis indicate between, say, 5,000 and 10,000 words, that’s certainly something you must abide by. Ditto for, say, how to format sections of citations.

On the other hand, there is an insidious side, too. More disturbingly, the higher the level, the more likely you are to encounter it. In plain terms, just when you’re supposed to be displaying initiative, critical thinking, and the ability to formulate new theories, that’s when someone will come – say, a supervisor – and will try to clip your wings.

So, what do you do then?

A Personal Example

I can answer with an example drawing on my own experience: If you check p.71 of my Doctoral thesis, you’ll see references to Buddhism, in the context of Mary Shelley’s work. Here’s a quotation:

The idea of harmony in darkness – that is, nothingness – is very strongly reminiscent of Eastern mysticism. Although in Shelley’s time Buddhism was not as widely known as it became later, there is still a well-argued association between Buddhist ontological views and the Romantic Imagination (see Economides 2007; Morton 2007; Rudy 2004). The idea of a holistic, omnipenetrating temporal perspective is offered as a solution to the temporal problem of Shelley’s time, which is none other than the inability to resolve the dialectics of past and future.

You don’t know it, but I had to fight a bit to insert that reference. Someone reviewing my work at the time (from a position of authority) commented that it’s far-fetched, that there’s no connection between Buddhism and England in Shelley’s time. Admittedly, I had not included the research of others on the topic, so it’s partly understandable that the reviewer reacted negatively to this. I had come to the conclusion independently.

Still, I knew I was right – this is important, as you’ll see. I simply researched a bit and found some references that supported my argument (you can see them in the quotation).

Pick Your Battles Carefully

As a result, if you find yourself in a similar situation, first make sure you know what you’re talking about. If you do, then provide the evidence and fight for it (if, of course, you think it’s worth it). If you are unsure whether you’re right, if you can’t find solid evidence, or if the whole thing escalates – it is said that there exists a mythical well where academic researchers who fought with their supervisors float for all eternity – just drop it. It’s not worth the trouble.

Writing a University Thesis: What not to Do

There are some obvious things that you shouldn’t do when writing a university thesis of any level. It’s embarrassing to mention them, but here’s the very brief version:

• Don’t plagiarize or cheat in any way. Not only do you risk it all, but you won’t be able to live with yourself, doubting your abilities even more than you’d usually do.
• Don’t ever be rude with anyone. That includes those who deserve it.
• Don’t break promised arrangements. Don’t ignore deadlines, don’t fail to deliver draft and such work.
• Don’t ignore problems. Shit happens. Don’t simply disappear or pretend a problem doesn’t exist. Talk and arrange things.

But besides these more or less obvious things, there are also some more subtle ones that I discovered the hard way. Perhaps the most intriguing one is this: Don’t yield control to your emotions.

Writing a university thesis is stressful stuff. The higher the level, the more stressful. You will face a lot of setbacks, and that’s simply inside the program – let’s not even begin to talk about life outside the academia; health or personal problems and such.

It’s important to keep your emotions in check.

When my Emotions Got the Best of Me

Despite the somewhat dramatic title, I have to confess: I don’t have an incredibly saucy story to share. Still, it’s a good example.

During the endless ping-pong of drafts with the supervisors and reviewers of my Doctoral thesis, I got an email from one of them that was a bit, shall we say, thoughtless from an emotional IQ perspective. That is, though there was some partial merit in their critique, it was delivered without any finesse and subtlety.

Considering my stress at the time, I’m not surprised I responded with a not-so-smart email, saying that I wouldn’t bother reiterating myself, as I wasn’t sure they would understand it anyway. This time the person responded in a much more factual manner, which defused the situation. They said they would ignore my comment, considering it an emotional outburst caused by stress (which it was). Case closed and we continued to cooperate successfully.

Learn from my mistakes and avoid such risks. You don’t know how the other person – who is in a position of power – will react.

Another Tale from the Academic Crypt: Or, Don’t Get into University Politics

When it comes to writing a university thesis, another important “don’t” is this: For the love of all that is holy, don’t get involved in university politics.

University isn’t this place of excellence and free thought (we’ll talk more about this in a moment). It’s first and foremost a workplace, a place of politics, and – ultimately – an arena for people to exercise their transitory, mostly imaginary power. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that in such an environment there’s backstabbing happening all the time: junior lecturers all vying for the same promotion; senior lecturers vying for professorship; professors competing for funding.

Pair all this with the day-to-day decisions and administration involved in running such complex places, and you have a very volatile mixture.

If you’re writing a Bachelor’s (or even a Master’s) thesis, it’s rather unlikely you’ll be involved in anything of the sort unless you go out looking for it. Things change if you’re writing a Doctoral thesis, as it involves a far greater number of moving parts. It also involves more money – which, like religion, poisons everything it touches.

Bottom line: Focus on doing your job and completely ignore the politics. Person X might warn you about person Y, or offer opportunity C if only you agree to do D on behalf of person Z. There are alliances, cliques, and it’s very easy to become a pawn on someone else’s chessboard. Listen everything, but don’t act on it – certainly not before you’ve had time to form your own opinion and approach the matter critically.

Why Freedom of Thought Matters

As I’ve said before, I’ve lost faith in the academia. In that post I mostly focused on writing and thought patterns: How I’ve never seen more fossilized and dinosaurified thought than I have at the university. I’d now like to focus a bit more on the repercussions.

A comment I like to repeat a lot is one by Cornelius Castoriadis. Referring to Thucydides, Castoriadis explains how we can be either free or peaceful, but we can’t be both; we must choose what we value the most.

If you apply this to the academia and how “free” thinking operates there, you’ll discover some rather disturbing things:

• The people running the show – from the most junior researchers (if not students) to heads of departments – have absolutely zero incentive to change the system. How could they? It’s the system they rely on for being peaceful (I let you reflect on what that involves)
• Universities are highly, highly hierarchical environments. Frankly, only the Church and the Army are comparable in terms of hierarchy. In such an environment, with strictly prescribed roles, how is authority criticized – let alone subverted? Hint: reread the section where I talked about backstabbing)
• There’s a lot of money involved. A lot of money. And just as monetized art can’t be true art, a place where one’s “survival” (sometimes this doesn’t even require quotation marks) relies on securing funding or being in someone’s good books, can’t possibly be a place of free thinking.

If you’re in the academia you can’t be either free or peaceful. You can only try to be peaceful.

The Way Out

An academic who is free is one who doesn’t need the academia – there is no professorship to chase after, no funding to secure. Some extremely intelligent and/or senior academics don’t need the academia while the academia needs them. They’re obviously in an ideal position, as they can strike a very favorable balance in the free-or-peaceful continuum. While being mostly peaceful, they also have the opportunity to be mostly free – though not all of them exercise it.

The only other scenario left is to crawl your way through: Write that university thesis, get your degree, and bail out. Sometimes, leaving a place is the most important decision to make.

That’s where I am.

The academia doesn’t need me, but I don’t need it either.