Before anything else, I just want to say I am proud of you! If you are here reading this, you must be contemplating doing your honours thesis (HT) or in the midst of it and either way, give yourself a pat on the back for even considering the exhausting HT or having survived so far in your HT journey! Instead of the usual module review, I’ll be throwing in some tips (and also kinda like a guide) on what worked for me on my HT journey and hopefully they will be help you in deciding if it’s really for you OR to prepare you for your own HT journey ahead!
First things first, what is NM4401? NM4401 is the module code for CNM’s honours thesis and this is what will be reflected on your transcript and edurec after you have officially signed up for it! Completing your HT awards you with 15MCs, equivalent to x3 level 4K modules. Typically, HT is a submission of a 12000-word research paper. For this post, I will be focusing on the research-based approach as that was the one I completed. However, CNM has recently introduced a second way to fulfil your HT requirements, calling it a practice-based approach. Since it is still relatively new, do look towards resources provided by CNM to decide which would be a better fit for you. Do also note that one of the pre-requisites for taking HT is to complete NM4102, you can also complete the module concurrently while you are doing your HT, though I will advise against this unless you really have no choice.
Yes, I want to write a paper instead of doing 3x 4K modules, what’s next? What’s next is materialising your research interest! What I like about CNM’s HT is that we are free to choose our topics and then find a Prof who is aligned in their research interest. What’s even better is that you don’t have to scramble to find Profs, CNM lets you do a ranking and this helps ensure that you will be guaranteed a supervising Prof! Of course, if you have crossed paths with certain Profs and want them to supervise you, you can also reach out to them prior to the application process as well to ask and let them know that you would like them to supervise you. If you already have a research interest, great! Work towards it and formulate the area of research you want to focus on. If you’re unsure, have a look at your previous work or the things around you that have piqued your interests! When I was thinking about my research topic, I was constantly looking at the things around me e.g. the use of self-deprecating humour, the widespread COVID-19 communications, the use of emojis and what it means to different people, etc. I finally settled on a topic close to heart when a celebrity I really liked passed away, prompting me to look more into parasocial relationships and our relations with the dead on social media.
From there, I read up more into the topic itself and that’s when I formulated a preliminary research topic and “question” that I wanted to answer. Accompanying this was also filling out all the paperwork, re-reading past lecture notes to figure out how to actually properly formulate the initial stages of research, and giving a thorough read through the list of professors. Around week 5 was when I got approval and was assigned my supevising prof and I reached out (or she reached out) via email to set up an appointment! The first meeting was more for sharing of ideas and feel free to voice out any concerns you might have with your prof or any expectations moving forward and what works. It is pretty much a highly self-disciplined pace of work where you set your own deadlines, for me it was up to me to decide when it was time for me to meet my Prof again to share with us updates or new directions in my research. I mostly did once every two weeks or until I had enough progress to the next stage before arranging a meeting with her. For every meeting, it helped me greatly to prepare work in progress decks just to better illustrate my thoughts and also give my Prof a clear indication on the things I was explaining.
On my end, I planned a timeline for myself (see below) or the rough dates I wanted to get portions done, this way I ensured that I was always working on my HT amidst all the other things that were going on like other modules I was enrolled in. Of course, I wasn’t super on scedule but having a rough timeline helped!
The next thing to lay out after getting the research topic and methods of the way is to get into intensive literature review, sieving out the information that you might need that will further help you in crafting any reseach methods you have or inform it. This part was honestly confusing for me because you’re going through so much text every day. One thing I found really useful was to use OneNote (see below) to organise my thoughts along with all other things related like To-Dos for HT and guiding points for myself for portions of the research paper.
Extremely crucial is to do citations as you go! Just prepare for this as you do your lit review so it doesn’t come back to haunt you. I numbered the texts I read starting from 1 to 56 and would make references to where I got the notes from by numbering the text with the corresponding text (I know this sounds confusing but see below for what I mean!)
While doing all the lit review, it’s also time to start pondering on your research methods and it’s best to get it settled early because it will require time to get approvals with DERC and IRB dependent on what kind of research methods you’re doing. Again, lots of paperwork for this and forms to fill out. If unclear of anything, the CNM help email is always available to you (lord knows I bugged them way too many times haha). Remember to factor in the time it takes to get all these approvals, you will be unable to start on your research until you get the green light to proceed which can hinder your timeline and progress.
In the end, I went with qualitative research method (because no SPSS lol) and because it suit my research questions better. That’s when I started to collect the data and then (very painfully) analysed them. Of course, I had troubles and was even anxious going through heaps of information, resorting to a strict regime for myself. I literally recall myself doing work in 2-hour or 4-hour blocks through the day starting from 8am and ending at 12am. This was also when I revisited a focus app I was introduced to back in JC — Forest App — which I then used to clock my hours on the things I was doing. Very gruelling but very helpful and hopeful to look at the hours I clocked in for myself.
With all that, further analysis and organisation of points, I was ready to get started on writing! I already laid the ground doing my introduction, lit review and methodology while waiting for DERC/IRB approvals so that was almost out of the way. What was next was fleshing out my research findings and analysis. Honestly, the writing part is always the fun part for me because you kind of already have everything, you just have to string it into words! On the word count part, I don’t have much advice on this because I usually don’t have issues with going over the limit but how I manage this would be to assign how many paragraphs I want each portion to have beforehand and to have that in mind while I write.
The last step was to get the final draft up, I sent a copy to my Prof for any comments before I final edits to the paper and sealing it all in. That moment was truly a glorious one! Fixing that in, I then worked on making sure my graphs were right, appendices were in order and that citations were all in. What a ride it was right? When it was all done and dusted, I couldn’t believe all the work I had put in either. But it was all really fulfilling knowing I had been able to research into an area of interest for myself and to have somehow placed the fruits of my learning over the past 4 years to work.
If you’ve read this far and are feeling inspired, go get them! The journey is a long and tough one but I promise it will be worth it. I know I said there will be tips but it kinda just happened that they are all strewn in together to be picked up as you read, as I recounted on my own HT journey as well. Nonetheless, wishing you a lovely HT journey!
Pie’s Note: This entry took me way too long to finish. Just been sitting in my draft for almost a year and am happy I’ve completed it (bc I got a break from work). It was nostalgic to look back but also I hope the information I shared is still relevant and not too dated! Wishing everyone luck as you traverse down this road~
shenaniganswpie 