Once you have finished your thesis, the temptation will be to put it down and never look at it again. This is a bad idea. Take a break: a weekend, a week, whatever you have time for, then read it through.
Don’t send your supervisor a first draft to read. It’s a waste. Most likely they will make changes to rubbish that you would have changed regardless. You want to send your supervisor something that you would be happy to submit. It may still come back with a fair quantity of red pen, but your finished product will benefit.
The main difference between good and bad pieces of work is the amount of times the author has checked it through.
If you need more evidence of this, here is a quote from a world renowned writer.
“The first draft of anything is sh*t.” – Ernest Hemingway
Get Practical TipsPractical Tips:
- Don’t wait until you have written every section to start checking it through. This will be a huge barrier. Check through one section while you write the next one. Break your thesis up as much as you can.
- Giving your first draft to your supervisor will impress no one, and if they don’t just hand it back they’ll end up changing things you could have done yourself and miss more important things.
- After you have made all your supervisor’s corrections, check it through once, leave it for a while, and then check it again with fresher eyes.
- Likely by the time you have a polished product you know it so well that it is impossible for you to notice mistakes. If you can, give it to someone else to read. They don’t even have to understand it as long as they know what words and sentences should look like. Silly mistakes make your work look more rushed than you might like to believe.
Read Personal PerspectivePersonal Perspective:
During my undergraduate degree it took me forever to realise why my essays were not coming back with the marks I thought they deserved. Finally, I was so annoyed that I sat down to re-read one of them. I could hardly believe it was the same essay. Why? Because I hadn’t checked it through. The moment I started doing this – even if I put less effort into actually writing it – my marks rocketed.
