During my final year as an undergraduate, I wrote a thesis paper to graduate with Honors in my history degree. The topic focused on suffrage in New Mexico, from 1850 to 1920, and more or less investigated the political climate at the time of the suffrage movement specifically in New Mexico and revealed the moments where New Mexico deviated from the norm, as it did when other western states had already granted suffrage by 1914 and New Mexico would not until 1920 or when New Mexico suffragettes had to turn to a lot of Hispanic women, more so than other states, in order to procure support for the vote. I also addressed when New Mexico followed the stereotypical suffrage movement narrative, generally with public displays and rhetoric used to argue both for and against suffrage. I really enjoyed my topic and the paper, which, including citations, was around 50 pages long and was actually voted the Best Honors Thesis in History (speaking of the department, of course, but I appreciate the title extremely). That being said, there were definitely a lot of mistakes I made upon the way that I'd like to comment on in the hopes that, in the very near future, when I am writing my Master's dissertation, I will listen and learn and improve.
1. It is never too early to start writing
This is probably the most important thing I learned while working on my thesis. In my undergraduate, the thesis was split up into two semesters, one for reading and research and the other for writing. Naturally, I thought it would be best to wait to write until my second semester, in spite of my advisor's recommendations to start writing early, even if all I could write were rough drafts and messy paragraphs and outlines. While you will not be able to fill in all the blanks in writing your paper before the research is done and while it may seem that whatever you do have is not enough to put something together, trust me, you do have enough to write something, and you want those blanks in your paper. I realized that when I finally start writing, I still had a lot of research to do and gaps to fill that I had not originally thought of in my research. Writing will allow you to not only structure your argument from an early stage, it will also reveal gaps of research or pockets where you can add more information and stretch out what you have. Otherwise, you might spend too much time researching and reading, but not really finding anything that would be relevant to the paper itself in its writing stages.
2. You can't read everything
As crazy as it sounds, when I started my thesis, I had an idea that, since I had an entire semester and if I worked really hard, then I could search through all of the documents available to me and put together a brilliant argument just from those materials. I was very wrong. By all means, do as much research as you possibly can, but don't go overboard and don't spend your time on pointless documents with the hope that they might just reveal something groundbreaking for your piece. I spent far too long looking at documents just outside of my time period or at collections that could be relevant to my topic, but were not always directly linked. If you have the time and you have a specific reason to be looking somewhere (not just a whim or an idea that something might be there), then definitely check it out. If not, spend your valuable research time elsewhere.
3. Microfilm and physical documents are your friend (and sometimes, the internet is your enemy)
Surprisingly, I managed to get through almost my entire undergraduate as a history student without having to use the microfilm available through my library. Many documents I needed were digitized, and so the internet and electronic resources kind of became a crutch for me, and I tried to avoid actually going to the library or searching through newspaper archival material. I did get lucky, truth be told. Many of the newspaper sources I used were available online and searchable by keyword (thank you, 21st century technology) and so my work really was cut out for me. I did check out several books and spent hours in our archival material, but there was a point that I just stopped searching for physical documentation and tried my luck in pdfs and websites. While I did find some great material, there was a point where I had to go to look at the microfilm and find a specific newspaper from a specific date that was not digitized. And I did manage to find some really great stuff. The machine was daunting at first, but I'm glad that I overcame trying something new (even if it seems like old technology, it was definitely new to me) and felt accomplished in doing so. I also felt a bit more validated as a historian.
4. Take Notes!
This was something I actually did do, but could have been a bit more organized. Because I was going through so many different materials and articles, I found it more useful to type out the notes or passages I thought would be useful into a Google Doc with the source as a heading. I would include what kind of document it was (primary or secondary) and any notes as well as a summary of the article to jog my memory. This was extremely useful in writing, where notes were searchable by keyword and I could add citations or references as I wrote fairly easily. Keep the books and articles if you can for quick reference, you will forget page numbers or titles from time to time, but also have the live document handy to keep track of what you have looked through and what information might be really useful as you go along.
5. Check the endnotes
This is a bit more oriented toward history students, but this piece of advice is probably one of the most useful ones I've received. If you have a secondary document or source that you're using to back up your research, check their endnotes and find the sources they used. You will save a ton of time finding primary documents and will have a great guide to different and new sources to look into. Further, you can strengthen your own argument and add some historiographical elements to your thesis or dissertation by arguing for or against other historian interpretations of materials. If you hit a roadblock in finding new primary (or even secondary) material, checking your sources' sources can be an extremely useful solution.
6. Trust yourself and make your argument
This is something I am still trying to learn and was one of the biggest critiques I received from my advisor and second reader. I spent far too much time looking into other historians' arguments and not fully crafting my own. I did put together a good paper, but I relied a bit too much on historians like Joan Jensen, who already wrote on the topic. My paper did have a bit more emphasis on suffrage specifically in the UNM/Albuquerque area and pulled from sources like the Daily Lobo, which Jensen did not, and I should have trusted my abilities as a historian to make my own arguments and not entirely piece together the thesis narrative through numerous secondary and primary sources. As my advisor said, there comes a point where, in your research, you become somewhat of an expert on your topic and are fully capable of making an informed and well-versed argument. Do not take this power lightly, but do not be afraid to use it and to assert your status as a scholar.
2. You can't read everything
As crazy as it sounds, when I started my thesis, I had an idea that, since I had an entire semester and if I worked really hard, then I could search through all of the documents available to me and put together a brilliant argument just from those materials. I was very wrong. By all means, do as much research as you possibly can, but don't go overboard and don't spend your time on pointless documents with the hope that they might just reveal something groundbreaking for your piece. I spent far too long looking at documents just outside of my time period or at collections that could be relevant to my topic, but were not always directly linked. If you have the time and you have a specific reason to be looking somewhere (not just a whim or an idea that something might be there), then definitely check it out. If not, spend your valuable research time elsewhere.
3. Microfilm and physical documents are your friend (and sometimes, the internet is your enemy)
Surprisingly, I managed to get through almost my entire undergraduate as a history student without having to use the microfilm available through my library. Many documents I needed were digitized, and so the internet and electronic resources kind of became a crutch for me, and I tried to avoid actually going to the library or searching through newspaper archival material. I did get lucky, truth be told. Many of the newspaper sources I used were available online and searchable by keyword (thank you, 21st century technology) and so my work really was cut out for me. I did check out several books and spent hours in our archival material, but there was a point that I just stopped searching for physical documentation and tried my luck in pdfs and websites. While I did find some great material, there was a point where I had to go to look at the microfilm and find a specific newspaper from a specific date that was not digitized. And I did manage to find some really great stuff. The machine was daunting at first, but I'm glad that I overcame trying something new (even if it seems like old technology, it was definitely new to me) and felt accomplished in doing so. I also felt a bit more validated as a historian.
4. Take Notes!
This was something I actually did do, but could have been a bit more organized. Because I was going through so many different materials and articles, I found it more useful to type out the notes or passages I thought would be useful into a Google Doc with the source as a heading. I would include what kind of document it was (primary or secondary) and any notes as well as a summary of the article to jog my memory. This was extremely useful in writing, where notes were searchable by keyword and I could add citations or references as I wrote fairly easily. Keep the books and articles if you can for quick reference, you will forget page numbers or titles from time to time, but also have the live document handy to keep track of what you have looked through and what information might be really useful as you go along.
5. Check the endnotes
This is a bit more oriented toward history students, but this piece of advice is probably one of the most useful ones I've received. If you have a secondary document or source that you're using to back up your research, check their endnotes and find the sources they used. You will save a ton of time finding primary documents and will have a great guide to different and new sources to look into. Further, you can strengthen your own argument and add some historiographical elements to your thesis or dissertation by arguing for or against other historian interpretations of materials. If you hit a roadblock in finding new primary (or even secondary) material, checking your sources' sources can be an extremely useful solution.
6. Trust yourself and make your argument
This is something I am still trying to learn and was one of the biggest critiques I received from my advisor and second reader. I spent far too much time looking into other historians' arguments and not fully crafting my own. I did put together a good paper, but I relied a bit too much on historians like Joan Jensen, who already wrote on the topic. My paper did have a bit more emphasis on suffrage specifically in the UNM/Albuquerque area and pulled from sources like the Daily Lobo, which Jensen did not, and I should have trusted my abilities as a historian to make my own arguments and not entirely piece together the thesis narrative through numerous secondary and primary sources. As my advisor said, there comes a point where, in your research, you become somewhat of an expert on your topic and are fully capable of making an informed and well-versed argument. Do not take this power lightly, but do not be afraid to use it and to assert your status as a scholar.
