nehs

Yes I even received written approvals. I was thinking of $50 then I increased my budget to $100. MAy be I will go back to $50

I finally successfully completed my master's thesis. Although, I was mad at my advisor since he was not able to meet my expectations interms of advising, nevertheless he was very friendly and approachable. Just that we could not expect subject expertise from him. Basically, my research was my own. I still feel I want to send him a thank you note and a gift card (starbucks, since he loves coffee). What do you think? Yes or No? If yes, $100 card should be enough? Your thoughts ans experiences? Also, I was thinking of mailing it to him, I can definitely go visit him but I figured that this will be a nice surprise since it comes in mail. P.S.: Hopefully, this will not be looked upon as bribery!!

I'm wrapping up my master's this month and I realized that I like academia/teaching/research. I'm applying to jobs at CC and other small places to get my foot in the door. Bigger universities both public and private mostly demand a PhD and some experience in teaching. So , I finally have received two interview calls that are lined up for next week. These are adjunct positions. I'm not sure how to handle the "teacing experience" question as I do not have any experience in teaching but I have research and publishing experience. ofcourse, these positions do not really care about publishing or research. Although, I never mentioned on my resume or cover letter that I have experience, I'm guessing the experience question is inevitable. Also, any other pointers on what type of questions I can expect. This is my first time in academia interviews, I work in the industry full-time and would like to do 1-2 adjunct classes for the summer or fall.

Congragulations!

Thanks You have helped me out in several posts of mine. I will be updating all of them soon

Thank You All! I just opened this web page to update something and I see that I have indeed received responses!!! The good news is -- my thesis got accepted! I'm ready to graduate. However, paperwork takes some time, so i'm hoping i can still get everything done by may 31. if not, the diploma date may read summer gradaution... I'm definitely going for my graduation function!!!

you must be happy, congragulations! i read through the whole chain of posts because i am in a simialr situaiton - revising my master's thesis based on committee comments. my committee member is not particualarly nasty but i'm hoping that i'm done this time. one thing i learnt from your posts is that -- it helps to sit down with them and see if the comments are "leave it" or "take it" types..... if all goes well, I graduate in 2 weeks too!!! Congragulations again, most importantly thanks for coming back with updates.

What do you mean by did not graduate at all? I'm scared now

Yes, I re-submitted after revisions. Now waiting for approval, hopefully or another round of revisions (darn!).

I have submitted mine, but haven't gotten the approval yet. EDIT: Sorry, I should have mentioned -- I submitted mine 3 weeks ago and now need to do some revisions. I did the revisions too and re-submitted. hoping it is approved now ( We don't have oral defense in my dept.)

I am not a PhD student and I don't have a website of my won in acdemia. Having said that, I woould never link my social media like FB(hate FB anyway) and twitter to my academic website because of spam, privacy and also to keep my personal life separate. I would integrate linkedin though.

I'm a master's student, some of you may know me from my previous posts. I expected to graduate this month but my thesis is stuck now (Crap!). So I will be graduating in the Summer. We are allowed to attend our graduation ceremony which is in 2 weeks from now since we only have the thesis pending. i'm not able to decide whether to attend or skip it? I'm more inclined to attending though and I know some classmates who are in the same position as me and they say they would like to attend as well. Your thoughts?

Interesting, atleast this may make the dissertation feel less daunting. Although, I am sure, it is a stressful task anyway. I just re-submitted my master's thesis after revisions, and that thesis itself was a nerve wracking process.

I'm a little curious now -- Does this mean that in STEM fields too it is common to publish 3 papers and then combine into a PhD dissertation? I thought this was more like a norm for Humanities and Social Sciences. As TakeruK puts it -- my thesis advisor says the same, master's theses are published later if the student and/or advisor decide to.

LOL@ Heavy drinking! Good one... Makes sense - wanting their "pound of flesh" to feel good. I did address mosto f the major comments and did overall restructuring too (just for the heck of it, there's always scope for improvement). I'm a little anxious to see how it goes now..I hope it goes through smoothly this time and I'm also going to think positive and starte dreaming about "acceptance" as opposed to what I had been doing (dreaming of possible revisions again!).

ELM : We seem to be at a similar stage. I resubmitted mine yesterday after my revisions and I've been sick since that time anxiously hoping that all goes well this time (may be minor corrections). Yes -- it is so much work. In my Dept too, they allow us to "defend" from anywhere in the world. The defense in my dept is really short, 5 mins that's it. They usually want to approve the written document before the "defense" and that's what i'm doing now. I should start running again, I've been so busy with this thesis stuff that I stopped running thinking it would waste time.

In my department, our graduate program advisor fixes these issues. We email her, she emails the department secretary and the secretary is pretty quick usually. In the rare ocassions, that I had issues I usually followed up with the instructor of the class and ask him/her to inform the secretary by phone. Things move very slowly in my department , typical public school.

I submitted my master's thesis originally 2 weeks back. I didn't receive great feedback and so had to do major revisions. Finally, did those revisions and submitted today morning. It is 8 hours since I submitted now but that thought of "anticipating feedback again" is making me so anxious, that I'm feeling sick. How do you guys handle this phase of "thesis revisions"? In my Dept. we do a "formal oral" defense only after the thesis has been "officially accepted". I'm so paranoid about hearing feedback again that I'm losing sleep and my peace of mind!!! P.S.: My advisor is pretty much useless in this regard. The feedback that I await is from my committee. One of the committee members happens to be the Department chair as well.

Same here! MS coursework completed. Have been working on my thesis for the last 5 months. Submitted my thesis last week and it came back for major revisions. Re-submitting tomorrow and I'm anxious!!! I'm hoping I don't have to wait another semester to graduate.

Update : I finally made major revisions to my thesis and will be submitting in a few hours, tomorrow morning. How do I handle the nerves? I am feeling so overwhelmed and nervous that I will again have to do major revisions (minor are ok !) that I am losing sleep over this. Your tips/experience to handle this anxiety?

Interesting topic. I just submitted a major master's thesis to my committee members and got back major revisions. Almost everything discussed in this thread is relevant to me. I agree with NicholasCage -- my advisor says the same: recycle the thesis for journals. Once we have a few journal acceptances, we can then think of developing the thesis further for a PhD or exploring a little different area. TakeruK -- completely agree with you. I would also just look at a thesis as a requirement to gradaute. It is a great gateway for those who want to go on for a PhD or to recycle the material into a journal article/conference etc. I, for example, read two master's thesis in my department from cover to cover taking a lot of notes on the structure and content. This helped me immensely to structure mine. I also cited the theses in my writing ( as suggested by my advisor). I think same way, my thesis ,hopefully, will be useful to future students or the Dept(if they want to re-use in classes). As TakeruK puts it, it is definitely something that helps us better ourselves and delve a little deeper into our field. I don't look as my thesis as a huge contribution to my field but perhaps, it can be reworked upon to make it a significant contribution.

artimacia -- your post was a major morale booster for me, thanks. I guess the positive side is my advisor is mostly willing to send to my committee (ofcourse the product is half-baked sometimes!!!). I'm working on the revisions now, they are really major and I had to add one whole chapter of 10 pages.

I'm going to take this piece of advice, thank you! I just panicked a little worrying that this major revision may cost me my degree. I thought my committee and my professors will thinking " she does not deserve the degree itself" while I have been a pretty good student throughout the program except for my thesis, ofcourse.

NicholasCage(nice name ) -- makes sense, when I now thing of it , I do agree with you, possibly he wanted to submit it to my committee members to get their opinion. However, when we students received feedback, he took it personally (saying things like they want to feel important, they are asking silly changes etc). That I felt was immature. I imagine revising is pretty common - I revised an article almost 7 times for a journal. But, I'm feeling overwhemed when it comes to my thesis(too big a paper perhaps?). Also, I wonder -- if I have shot myself in the foot by giving this mediocre paper. So does this mean that almost all students, master's specifically, receive major revisions and this cycle goes on for a long time? I'm not sure how it has been for previous students in my program but the current students have all received major revisions.

danielewrites -- I'm thinking if I can make an appointment with my committee members,I'm working on the revisions now anyway. My advisor is basically clueless himself. I hope revisions and re-submissions are not a "bad" thing. fuzzylogician -- No, I didn't communicate with him. May be that's one issue here but the larger issue, I feel, is that he needs to involve himself more with the research as opposed to what he involves himself with now (he just skims through and points out some grammar, is he kidding us?, in my field no one cares about the language to a great extent). I understand that the first draft cannot be expected as-is. However, I am so demotivated now that I'm scared the second submission will come back with major revisions too and then I will be mentally drained. Also, I'm wondering if typically there are any "number of attempts" for this back-and-forth process. In my department, we do not have oral defenses for master's students UNLESS the committee wants it AND the thesis has been accepted. This means out of 10 students submitting master's theses every semester only 2-3 do a defense.