Image

The Honors Thesis is a graduation requirement for Commonwealth Honors College (CHC) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. It's essentially an in-depth exploration of a topic you’re interested in. This exploration can take the shape of a research paper or other large project (for example, this theater major created a performance piece). In the course of your honors thesis work you can either take a course relative to a certain umbrella topic (the Thesis Seminar) or work one-on-one with a faculty member (the Individually Contracted Honors Thesis). Students can earn six credits if they pass their honors thesis.

First Semester

Image

I chose the Thesis Seminar option, and my seminar class was titled Honors 499DN- Women Organize for a Better World. In the first semester, we studied the societal implementations of the patriarchal agenda; including how it was created, and why it continues to be upheld. In class, we read various scholarly texts and journal articles from famous feminist theorists. We chose authors we thought would make most sense to our own ideas, and created multiple annotated bibliographies to show why these authors would be of use to our theses. During the second semester each of us in the class would utilize ideas from our annotated bibliographies in writing the actual paper. 

My seminar class consisted of five women from very different academic backgrounds. My professor wanted our theses to be relative to our fields of study, so she guided me to pick a topic pertaining to the media (which is fitting as I am a communication and journalism major). A friend in the course who is a public health sciences major wrote about reproductive health.

I titled my thesis “Women in Power, as Decoded by the Media”, and it examines how women political candidates in the United States are portrayed in the news. I tie this into how women-led countries dealt with COVID-19, arguing that although women are depicted in the media in a more negative light than their male counterparts, it says nothing about their capabilities as leaders. In the beginning of the pandemic, women-led countries (I reference Germany, New Zealand, and Taiwan) did an exceptionally better job of listening to health experts and instituting safety protocols than some men-led countries (i.e., the United States).

Second Semester

Image

In the spring, my seminar professor had us meet with her one-on-one instead of as a group. She went over individual edits she had for us, and we could ask her questions specific to our own papers. I’m really grateful to have had this formatting of the class — because after the first semester, when it came to actually executing our research, us five students each went in totally different directions. I don’t think there could have been a better format for my professor to choose than individualized meetings due to the niche and specific nature of our individual topics. 

There was one week in the middle of my semester that I had no work due for my other classes, so I designated this week as my “thesis week.” I sat down every day for a week and wrote between five and seven pages per day, and I did not let myself skip a day. In terms of time management, this method helped me because I didn’t feel external pressure from my other classes — I just had time to focus on my thesis. However, I have a short attention span and I found myself a little sick of writing after day three. In this sense, I’m sure spacing out the writing process would’ve boded well for me. I’m grateful to have written the paper earlier in the semester though, because I’ve had a lot of time to edit. 

As it stands, my thesis is 53 pages. The actual writing process took me about a week, and I spent the remainder of the semester editing it. Preparing for the writing process and aggregating sources/references took both semesters. I found that once I had all of my sources from my bibliographies available, the writing process wasn’t that hard. I struggled more with finding the willpower to proofread 50+ pages. Looking out for typos and grammatical errors has been my biggest challenge, so I’ve made sure to have my friends and family proofread for me as well.

Reflecting on the Process

Image

Throughout the process of writing a thesis, I’ve learned a lot in this process about foundational underpinnings of sexism. Especially coming out of 2020, where the country faced extreme political upheaval, learning more about disenfranchised groups and reasons for their marginalization opened my eyes to issues in society that I had not once considered. I was raised by a single mom who worked extra hard to provide for me — so learning about gender disparities hit especially close to home. Writing such a long paper has also enhanced my writing skills. I like to write, and this experience has really allowed me to explore that.

One aspect of this process that has tested my abilities has been managing my time. For a solid month I would either be glued to my computer screen or not looking at the paper at all. Neither of these are effective ways to write a thesis. While I think I had a good idea of how to execute the writing process during my “thesis week,” part of me wishes I spaced out when I wrote a bit more. I only designated that week to the thesis out of convenience with my other classes, but I think I would have benefitted from being able to think about what I wanted to write more than just one week. I always considered myself receptive to criticism, and I am learning that this is something I need to work on. I’ve met with a lot of writing coaches offered through CHC, and while their feedback may sometimes be very direct, it has made for a better paper in the long run. Lastly, I struggled with finding time to take breaks and relieve my stress. While writing a thesis is impressive, I found myself very quickly anxious over the paper in the beginning. With the guidance of my faculty sponsor, I have learned to not grow so emotionally attached to the paper by taking more breaks and stepping away from it for a few days at a time — but this was challenging to me at first.

As I reflect on writing the thesis, it has been a pivotal part of my semester in terms of the stress I allowed it to cause (I’ll admit that I was overly critical of my own work at times). However, it stood as a true testament to my time management skills, which I believe have been positively impacted. In general, I am grateful for the experience to have written a thesis and attribute my success in doing so to my faculty sponsor and the other women in my seminar — each of them facilitated a welcoming and interesting course environment that I believe helped to spark my interest in the material we learned (and therefore what I wrote about). 

I am proud to say that my thesis has been submitted and approved by CHC. Eventually, it will be added to UMass Amherst’s University Archives, where other students will have access to my work and could utilize my findings to help their own fields of study/interest.