Introduction: A Native Beginning

As the past President of Sigma Tau Delta English Honors Society at WashU, I was one of the liaisons between the English Department faculty and staff and the undergraduate English majors and minors. This meant that I was the one who received the influx of questions from prospective Honors students about whether I would encourage them to participate in the program. I obtained so many inquiries that it inspired me to write a blog post! In my opinion, the decision to write an Honors Thesis is not a decision that one should take lightly. To be honest, it was a decision I made a little naively. I do not think I really understood what I was signing up for when I accepted my spot in the cohort at the beginning of my senior year. I did not know anyone who wrote an English Honors Thesis. I sought out a little advice online, but I was disappointed by what I found on blogs or advice columns. So, this is my best advice and things that I wish I knew going into writing an undergraduate English Honors Thesis. I hope that you all find this helpful as you contemplating whether this venture is one you want to set out on!

The Essentials: Passion & Discipline

The essentials that you need for writing an undergraduate thesis are passion and discipline. They are a necessary pair that work together; I do not think that you can write a thesis with just one. Passion is what helped me at the beginning. It got me fired up to research sources late into the night and start the writing process during the second semester. However, at least in my case, passion did not help me with the nitty-gritty aspects of the editing process, like line-by-line edits or choosing between synonyms like “strike” and “hit”. As someone who wrote a lot about violence, I quickly learned that this topic (even if I was passionate about it) could drain me and weighed heavy at times. That is why I have paired passion with discipline. If passion is the fire that lights you up inside, discipline is the fuel that keeps the fire burning late into the night. Discipline is what will get you through the hard times when you struggle to put pen to paper during midterm season or have to rewrite the same paragraph for the third or fourth time. It would be beneficial to reflect on your own virtues and decide if you have enough passion and discipline to sustain you through the Honors program. Do not be afraid to take some time to reflect on your strengths, weaknesses, and motivations for writing a thesis. A thesis should be more than just a simple passion project or a test of endurance. It should be a deeply rewarding project that teaches you something about your field and yourself. You can only achieve that when passion and dedication working together.

Selecting Your Virgil: Choosing the Right Thesis Advisor

Now, by saying that your thesis advisor acts as Virgil from Dante’s Inferno, I do not mean to imply that the Honors program is hell. I do mean that you will need someone who can guide you through the Honors timeline from research to drafting to editing, and someone who can act as your cheerleader and critic at the same time. Personally, my thesis advisor was obvious because Dr. Sommers was (1) the person who fostered my passion for Shakespeare, (2) always pushed me to become a better writer, and (3) was extremely knowledgeable about the time period and topic I wrote about. Dr. Sommers was the perfect thesis advisor because she met three key qualities of a great thesis advisor: personal connection, being great at giving feedback, and having a strong knowledge of the thesis topic. The personal connection is important because you should meet with your thesis advisor every week, and you should be excited to meet with them. They are also your champion in your thesis defense, and it does help to have someone in your corner! Feedback is also vital because you should be consistently and constantly pushed to write better. A strong understanding of your topic is helpful when it comes to research, and your thesis advisor can help you fine-tune your idea to become something novel and new in the field. My advice is to begin to foster those relationships as early in your academic career as you possibly can. It can be a little scary to ask a professor to be your thesis advisor. However, I would encourage you to ask them as soon as possible so that they can help you during the application process. It never hurts to ask and even if they turn you down, they can usually connect you to someone else! 

Beyond the Page: The Necessity of a Support System

It can be extremely easy to let your Honor Thesis become the end-all, be-all of your senior year experience. You can become completely sucked into the process and lose sight of everything else happening around during your final year. I think I was able to avoid this fate because of my fantastic support system. I truly credit my friends and family with my ability to succeed and thrive in the Honors program at WashU. My friends were the people there to force me to focus when I really (really!) did not want to, but also to remind me to enjoy my senior year at WashU and have fun outside of the Honors program. Sarah was always there for me when I needed to rant at 1:00 AM after not understanding the flow of my third chapter. Meris and Melissa were the ones who forced me to stop talking about Shakespeare and (literally) touch grass by walking in Forest Park. Hope was just a text away if I needed to bounce an idea off of her over a plate of bulgogi deopbap and mango tea. My parents answered the phone on the first ring when I called them to say that I passed my defense. Your life should not be only what is found on the page. There are times when you need to move beyond the page and actively love the people around you. I actually found that taking time away from my laptop and immersing myself in my friends and family helped me to become a better writer. I could refocus on research and reevaluate my writing better after a break. Also, your senior year should be fun and there is only so much fun you can have writing your Honors Thesis! Do not miss out on irreplaceable memories and lean on your support system to pick me up when you are down as well as celebrate your wins.  

Conclusion: Not Regretting the Ending

An Honors Thesis is an invaluable piece of work. It is a capstone project for your senior year that showcases your current strengths and passion. It is a program that teaches you so much about your field and your place in that field. It is the thing that helped me the most when it came to applying, interviewing, and preparing for graduate school in September. However, when you say yes to the Honors program, you are also saying no to other things, even if it is not an “official” no. There were times that I had to stay in on a Friday or Saturday night in order to research domestic violence court cases from the Elizabethan era. There were times that I had to submit essays that I knew were not my best work in order to spend more time revising a chapter before turning it in to my thesis advisor. There were times that I had to edit part of my thesis while I mourned my uncle. At the same time, even knowing all this, there was no point in the process that I regretted my decision to say yes to the Honors program. Regret is a hard thing to live with. I did not want to regret never writing an Honors Thesis. That is my final piece of advice to you. You have to decide if not writing an Honors Thesis will be something you will regret. I hope that this blog post has helped you figure out if writing an Honors Thesis is a journey you wish to undertake your senior year!