Well, today is the day my final theses class starts. I have already looked at the syllabus and am very curious how this is going to go. I have exactly 16 weeks to submit a proposal, get approval, write a draft, make revisions, and submit a final thesis for defense.
I have been looking forward to this for at least 4 years and working towards it for the past 3. I guess I am both nervous and excited. Nervous because I am not quite sure if my proposal will be accepted without some major reworking and excited because I am getting ever closer to being done with college. At least until I decide to make the plunge and go for a PhD, which I don’t see happening right now.
There are several other students doing a thesis in History in the same class as me so there are other people I can bounce ideas off of. That is actually a good thing. The hardest part about distance learning is the lack of good back and forth among students. I have actually taken classes in which I was the only student, talk about knuckle biters when you turn in major assignments.
Well, the die is cast, as the famous expression goes and I will see what happens over the next 4 months. If it goes well I will be the proud holder of an MA in European History come 15 May 2011. If it goes poorly, I will try one more time before I give it up. I am fairly certain I will get it the first time though, Lord knows I don’t want to have to write a second one. I think paying for the privilege of suffering for four months is plenty the first time around.
17 December 2010 at 19:37
It is generally just back and forth through email and there is a discussion forum in the online classroom open to all the students in the class plus the professor of course. The professor also has established office hours where you can talk to him directly on the phone if you want. So far I have not called him although I imagine that at some point I will; there is bound to be something come up where I cannot get my point across or get an adequate answer from asynchronous communication like email and forum software.
17 December 2010 at 18:57
I would be interested to know how the advisor system works when writing a thesis via an online educational system. Do you have tele-conferences? Is it just back and forth via email?