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never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of
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- John Constable |
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Awards
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| We
are proud of the fact that we were presented the Kyle
Mann Award last month in Geneva. Before that, we received
the Common Wealth Award and the Best Thesis Site Award
in 2000 because of our quality work. |
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About
Thesis
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Your
thesis is a research report. The report concerns a problem or
series of problems in an area and it should describe what was
known about it previously, what you did towards solving it,
what you think your results mean, and where or how further progress
in the field can be made.
Do not carry over your ideas from undergraduate assessment:
a thesis is not an answer to an assignment question. One important
difference is this: the reader of an assignment is usually the
one who has set it. She/he already knows the answer (or one
of the answers), not to mention the background, the literature,
the assumptions and theories and the strengths and weaknesses
of them. The readers of a thesis do not know what the 'answer'
is. If the thesis is for a PhD, the university requires that
it make an original contribution to human knowledge: your research
must discover something hitherto unknown.
Obviously your examiners will read the thesis. For a UNSW thesis
they are not anonymous: the university requires your adviser
to discuss the panel with you. They will be experts in the general
field of your thesis but, on the exact topic of your thesis,
you are the world expert. Keep this in mind: you should write
to make the topic clear to a reader who has not spent most of
the last three years thinking about it.
Your thesis will also be used as a scientific report and consulted
by future workers in your laboratory who will want to know,
in detail, what you did. It is often helpful to have someone
other than your adviser(s) read some sections of the thesis,
particularly the introduction and conclusion chapters. It may
also be appropriate to ask other members of staff to read some
sections of the thesis which they may find relevant or of interest,
as they may be able to make valuable contributions. In either
case, only give them revised versions, so that they do not waste
time correcting your grammar, spelling, poor construction or
presentation.
When you are about to begin, writing a thesis seems a long,
difficult task. That is because it is a long, difficult task.
Fortunately, it will seem less daunting once you have a couple
of chapters done. Towards the end, you will even find yourself
enjoying it - an enjoyment based on satisfaction in the achievement,
pleasure in the improvement in your scientific writing, and
of course the approaching end. Like many tasks, thesis writing
usually seems worse before you begin, so let us look at how
you should make a start.
The best way to get started on your thesis is to prepare an
extended outline. You begin by making up the Table of Contents,
listing each section and subsection that you propose to include.
For each section and subsection, write a brief point-form description
of the contents of that section. The entire outline might be
2 to 5 pages long. Now you and your thesis supervisor should
carefully review this outline: is there unnecessary material
(i.e. not directly related to the problem statement)? Then remove.
Is there missing material? Then add. It is much less painful
and more time-efficient to make such decisions early, during
the outline phase, rather than after you had already done a
lot of writing which has to be thrown away.
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