When we talk to students about their thesis projects, one of the first questions we ask has nothing to do with their project. Instead, we often inquire, “What do you want to do after college?”
This is, we know, the most annoying question in the world, in the same way that “where are you going to college” annoys high school seniors and “when are you going to finish that dissertation” annoys Ph.D. students. But we’re not asking it to be irritating. It’s directly related to what a thesis should be. Because a thesis should be for something, and that means the student should have some ideas about how the thesis can work for them.
How does a thesis connect to your future? Well, potentially one of several ways. Let’s lay out some scenarios:
Luisa will go to law school after undergrad. She intends to be a high-powered defense lawyer. She’s interested in learning how suburban prosecutors differ from big urban county prosecutors. It doesn’t really matter if she uses the flashiest techniques, but she would like an opportunity to interview prosecuting attorneys and defense attorneys to find more about how the electoral context influences the prosecution. The thesis is important to her, but what’s more important is how she can learn about nitty gritty details involved in her future career.
Fatima wants to work for the United Nations as a data analyst. She’d like to have an opportunity to get more familiar with how UN operations are conducted and to play with their datasets. She’s less interested in the specific questions to answer and more interested in learning about methods.
Kevin thinks he’d like to do something in the campaign world. Political consulting sounds interesting, and he thinks maybe there’s a way that he could learn more about how effective campaign teams learn to win from other campaigns. He’s already done an internship with a DC-based consultancy and he’s seen that campaign consultants pay a lot of attention to other teams’ work. But he’s not sure how to go about testing different hypotheses.
These are, let’s be clear, easy examples. You can tell that for Luisa there’s going to be a different emphasis on learning about academic theory than for Kevin, and you can tell that both Kevin and Luisa could have more specific interests in what faculty member they’d want to work with than Fatima.
Advising students who have such a clear idea of what they want to do is pretty straightforward: a matter of connecting them to the right faculty members and helping them devise a project that lets them focus on the aspect of the thesis that’s most important to them.
Not every student is going to have interests that are so clear! (Although some folks will—really.) And that is okay. Don’t feel bad if you, dear student, haven’t figured out every next step yet. What you should be taking from this post, though, is why having an idea of what you want to take from the thesis can matter a lot in how you approach the rest of the process.
And, relatedly, you should be thinking more about what you want. Just to be clear: it doesn’t all have to be about careers or skills. Maybe you’re genuinely, deeply interested in something for it's own sake. Maybe you’re trying to resolve some questions in your mind about what you want to do and the thesis is a chance to explore and take a chance. The thesis does not need to be a practical, career-building exercise. But there’s a difference between how you’ll feel about something you choose to do for love and how you’ll feel about a decision you didn’t even know you were making.
Every thesis has discrete components: a subject area, a puzzle, a theory, methodological approaches, and data. Knowing what the step after your thesis will be will help you decide which of these elements you want to focus on and how you want to proceed.
Like it or not, “What are you going to do when you get older?” is a question you never stop answering—even after you stop working someone is going to want to know what you plan to do with all that free time. Sometimes those answers are conscious, and sometimes the answers come from default—or, to be more specific, from timidity, terror, or trauma. The more in control you think you are, however, the better off you’ll be—and the more concrete your plan for the next few years, the more in control you will be.
The takeaway: Writing a thesis isn’t about writing a thesis. It’s about developing skills or interests that you can take to the next stage—or about chasing a passion or exploring an interest. The key is that your thesis should satisfy your goals, rather than your goal simply being to write a thesis.
The practical: Think systematically about what you want to accomplish. Make lists, ask questions, research—whatever it takes to make a better informed decision.