This is a guest blog post written by Jessica Kelly, clerical assistant to the Office of Scholarly Communications.

Charles Lipson’s recent edition of How to Write a BA Thesis: A Practical Guide from Your First Ideas to Your Finished Paper (University of Chicago Press, 2018) is an excellent and practical tome of information for the stereotypical college student. A mostly technical guide, it contains a wealth of useful knowledge drawn from years of the author’s experience as a thesis advisor as well as information gleaned from the author’s peers, feedback from students, and even advice from his therapist wife. It is truly intended to be an everyday compendium; it holds the hand of a student and walks them through each step from start to finish of their undergrad thesis, including helpful checklists and time schedules for task completion at the end of each chapter.

It starts out with a small section on how to read the book in order to get the most out of it, along with a timeline for reading pertinent sections of the book. The author touches on the importance of time management, organization, to-do lists (an academic one and a separate, every day one), and the ever-important task of backing up your work (always save!). He gives tips on finding the best advisor for you, tackling the research – and most significantly! – the thesis subject.

The book addresses situations like defending your thesis and writing a thesis in one semester instead of the typical two semesters. There’s also an excellent chapter on Frequently Asked Questions covering questions like thesis topics to avoid, references, and citations. Section V of the book, entitled “Working Your Best,” contains chapters covering working efficiently, what to do if you get stuck, and overcoming problems like procrastination and writer’s block. The appendices cover the vital aspects of footnotes and citation and good sources for additional assistance. (And though not pertinent to an undergrad student, there is even an appendix for faculty who are new to advising students).

Most importantly, the author does an excellent job of breaking things down for the student – helping the student ‘eat the elephant’ bite by bite. He disassembles what seems like a gargantuan task into smaller, manageable pieces based on the knowledge and skills a student has undoubtedly learned throughout their undergraduate career. He drives home the reality that writing a thesis is much like a marathon, not a sprint, and that pacing oneself is vital for success.

In fact, this book is so good at setting a student up for success for writing their thesis that I have developed a sort of cheat sheet / resource guide from the material in order to help and encourage both students who have a thesis requirement as well as those students who do not have.

There is a caveat to the praise of this otherwise quite valuable resource. Please note the qualifier in my initial sentence: ‘stereotypical.’ The author makes many assumptions about the skills, ability, and experiences of a thesis-writing college student. It is understandable that such a book – the first edition having been published in 2005 – is aimed at the baseline because how could someone write one text that addresses every perspective, every angle? The scope necessarily had to be narrow.

This isn’t to say that the author does not try to take into account some issues – he does offer some generalized tips here and there with regards to situations that might arise for students. He refers to utilizing services offered by campuses for matters like learning disorders such as dyslexia and ADHD, and counseling services for concerns like addiction, depression, and personal problems or crises.

The effort to be as generalized as possible is understandable, but a dilemma remains: an increasingly significant portion of higher education students no longer fall under the definition of “traditional” student. The dynamics and face of higher education has changed dramatically not only from mostly white and middle-to-upper class but also from ‘traditional’ to ‘non-traditional.’ The unique needs and styles of these students must be considered and intersectionality must be recognized. Economics and culture, physical and mental conditions, familial support or the lack thereof (whether economic or emotional), environmental factors – these effects all come into play and can significantly impact the work and success of writing a thesis. To every task we bring with us our background and learned experiences; so much of what we do and who we are is built upon previously laid building blocks. Failure to acknowledge this critical piece of information ensures failure elsewhere.

Marginalized people face a multitude of issues in general, making the college experience even tougher. Upon looking for information that can address these concerns and help these students, the results – or lack thereof – were highly disappointing and rather depressing. The silence on this important subject is both deafening and disheartening. What isout there is rather generic and underwhelming. There appears to be a lot of research done into the subject matter but little in terms of results or solutions. In light of this revelation, now is an excellent time for people in academia to begin stepping up and addressing such concerns. Viewing students’ situations from the lens of race, culture, and economics is vital in this effort.

In addition to my concerns with not addressing what are arguably substantial matters, I was particularly distressed with the small paragraph towards the bottom on page 280 in chapter 17 titled Overcoming Problems. The six brief sentences of this paragraph is all there is that addresses sexual harassment, and only in regards to advisors.

“Tell the person, if you can, that it must stop, and say it firmly. You may also wish” (emphasis mine) “to report it to the college official who handles harassment complaints.”

Feeble takes such as this perpetuate the idea that such situations are rare, not that serious, possibly a case of mistaken attraction, and a myriad of other repudiations. With the prevalence of sexual assault and harassment on academic campuses, I found this section to be woefully simplistic in nature and tepid at best, almost flippant. While Lipson may have been trying to be sensitive to what a student may feel and want, emphatic wording should definitely have been utilized. When 23.1% of female and 5.4% of male undergraduates[1]experience some sort of sexual assault during their college career, the subject should be unequivocally addressed in a firm, resolute manner.

While this book is still an invaluable tool to assist students wishing to write an undergraduate thesis, students and advisors must be mindful of the fact that it does not acknowledge circumstances that already exist or may come up for many students. Those sorts of topics should be recognized and discussed in detail because the success of writing a thesis – indeed, in having a successful academic career – is dependent upon approaching these multi-faceted issues forthrightly with knowledge, understanding, and an armful of resources (of which this book can, and should, be one).

https://www.rainn.org/statistics/campus-sexual-violence