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and i don't necessarily believe any of this i'm just saying words recreationally

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Heyo it’s back to school time and here’s a research tip from your friendly neighborhood academic librarian.When searching for any topic on the internet just type in the word ‘libguide’ after your topic and tada like magic there will be several  beautifully curated lists of books, journals, articles, or other resources dealing with your subject. Librarians create these guides to help with folks’ informational needs, so please go find one and make a librarian happy today!!

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One time this man approached me in a bar talking in Spanish. So I assumed he was Spanish and we started speaking, we had a whole ass conversation and at some point he was like. So what part of Spain are you from? And I said well I’m Italian actually. What part of Spain are you from? And he was like. I’m Greek.

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Resumen del 13 / 07 / 2021:

Conocido como el día en que Lizette descubrió que Juan grababa sus clases.

*Nota: abrir las imágenes para verlas en Full tamaño y calidad.

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Nunca olvidemos esto.

— Ali.

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LLEGÓ JUNIO. EN QUÉ MOMENTO.

— Ali.

En el momento en que leí que las clases podrían ser semipresenciales a partir de Junio, lo que significa que veremos un comienzo de semestre del caos y luego lloverá en infierno sobre nosotros al final.

— Ali.

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Aiwhnekdidjdi PESADILLAS.

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“A pesar de que tenemos poco conociendonos, creo que he sido más yo con ustedes que en 18 años de vida”

— Percival, 20/05/2021.

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Rip Moisés. (01/05/2021)

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Ana Karina en un día normal del chat:

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Hey rising college seniors (or anyone needing to write a thesis-length work)! Last year, I tackled not one but TWO theses, one of which was honors-length and over 100 pages long. One was for Art History and the other for International Studies, so if you come from a discipline from outside of the humanities, it might look a little different for you. Here is my advice for making your thesis a little bit less scary to navigate.

1) Focus on a topic before developing an argument.

I don’t know about y’all, but whenever I write a research paper, my argument drastically changes from the conception of the paper to its final draft. It’s not necessary to have your argument nailed down right away. My Art History thesis loosely started at “20th century art and politics” in September, but by November it had gone through 2 or 3 different iterations before becoming “everyone forgets that Jackson Pollock was a communist”. Often choosing your argument before doing your research boxes you into a place from which it is difficult to grow.

2) Try to avoid falling into a research hole.

I’m a jSTOR hoe. I love clicking through library search results and scholarly articles and collecting anything that seems relevant to my topic. This always leads me into hours of sifting through articles that are ultimately unhelpful and a waste of time and brain energy. Start with four or five sources. Read, analyze, regroup. Take notes, and when you are done with those sources, move on to more relevant information. Don’t forget to look up the citations of your most relevant sources. This is a treasure trove!

3) If you need to collect data, do it early.

Nothing is worse than being unable to move forward with your research analysis because you still have to collect more data. If you need to conduct interviews or produce survey data, make sure that you prioritize the research required to generate these things and get them approved and out early. I couldn’t analyze my results until a month before my IS thesis was due, and it made my last month of college rather hellish.

4) Have an accountability partner.

Try to find any friends or classmates who are also thesis-ing and band together. Host library write-ins or start a group chat if you prefer to work alone. You can also turn your thesis into a social activity! My friends and I would spend our Friday nights drinking and talking through our arguments and exchanging feedback in a casual social setting. That might not be what it looks like for you, but regardless of what you do, it’s great to have someone who will hold you accountable and work alongside you.

5) Format your citations and works cited right away.

While it is super tempting to footnote sentences with links to articles while writing, leaving all of your citations for the very end makes life harder. Format your citations frequently to give yourself a mental “break” and keep them in a separate word doc.

6) I don’t know if this actually needs to be said, but keep all of your work backed up.

For the love of all things that are good do not leave your work saved exclusively do a desktop. I like to use Google Drive to manage all things (I even upload journal articles so that I can organize them in folders and access them anywhere from any device), especially because it autosaves constantly. Use whichever platform works best for you, but please, please, please back up your work to some sort of cloud.

Hopefully some of these are a helpful place to get started. Good luck!

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Thesis 101: Condensed version

In my experience, there is always someone somewhere starting their thesis, or struggling to the thesis finish line, or stuck in that middle part where it’s hard work without the reward. If you are just getting started on your thesis (or another big project) and you feel a bit lost and overwhelmed: fear not, I have your back. I created a list of tips that I found useful while writing my MSc thesis (psychology).

Let me know if this was helpful and if you want more. I originally wanted to post a whole series of tips on different stages of the thesis process, so consider this the drastically condensed version of that.

Getting started

Find a lab that works on a topic that interests you and with a team that you feel comfortable with.

Make sure you know where to go with questions and get to know the structure.

Set up your goals from the beginning and make a planning.

The best thing you can do at the beginning of your thesis is figure out what you want, what your university requires, and how the project works.

Planning

Create a list of all the steps you need to take to finish your thesis and divide them over the time (months, weeks?) that you have until the deadline.

At the very beginning, discuss this schedule with your supervisor.

Create in-between deadlines, with your supervisor and also with yourself.

At the beginning of each month, write down what you should do each week.

At the beginning of each week, write down what you should do each day.

Make a list of things you need to do each day, preferably the night before, so you can start right when you sit down.

You could even calendar block if that’s your cup of tea.

Steps

Here’s an example from a psychology graduate (me):

Literature search/brain storm

Research question, hypotheses

Summarizing results into proposal

Make a plan

Learn how to analyze data

Execute plan (e.g., data collection)

Analyse data

Write down results

Draw conclusion

Revision, feedback, revision, feedback, revision!

 Reflection

Every week (or at whatever interval you prefer), sit down for 20 minutes and reflect on your progress. Ask yourself:

What did I do this week?

What went well?

What did not go as planned?

What can I do to improve next week?

What is on my to do list for the next week? What’s my focus? Are there things on the long run that I need to start working on?

Reflection keeps you on track but also allows you to think about what you learned in the process.

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**1 New Mail Notification**

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En el momento en que leí que las clases podrían ser semipresenciales a partir de Junio, lo que significa que veremos un comienzo de semestre del caos y luego lloverá en infierno sobre nosotros al final.

— Ali.

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El último grupo de neuronas que nos queda mientras "investigan" lo necesario para la tesis.

— Ali.