Dissertations, theses, master's projects...Ever wish you'd used a different topic?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m currently finishing up an MS in software engineering*. I’ve recently finished the specification and design of the product I want to prototype for my CS 597 project, and in my other class, CS 543 I recently finished a term project which, I think, turned out pretty good in spite of the fact that I had to change my topic substantially at the last minute.

For the 543 class my original intent was to look at some analysis tools, like Lattix, that let you load in an existing .jar or dll, and have an automated dependency analysis done. For reasons that need not sidetrack us, I was prevented from going that route and instead decided to look at the issue of documentation drift in software–the virtually inevitable divergence of actual software from the documentation that’s suposed to describe it.

Meanwhile, my 597 project is to design a product that is specifically useful to libraries, but not much else.

But in the course of working on the CS543 project, it hit me…documentation really IS a serious issue in our field. It might be one of the key factors that prevents software development from evolving to a true engineering discipline.

So, looking back, did any of you ever wish in the middle of a major project, thesis,or disseration, that you’d chosen something else? I don’t mean like a different degree, school, or department as much as just a different topic in your field?

Sometimes I think I could have done well in English literature, specifically humor. A dissertation on the common threads from Wodehouse all the way through Douglas Adams and Frank Park would have been fun.

*yeah, yeah, software engineering. It’s just the name of the program, but it diesn’t mean I’m going to call myself a professional software engineer. So let’s not have that "engineer " debate that raged back in 2000 or whenever it was.

2

Sorry, I thought I was in IMHO.

Can a moderator move this?

3

Ummm… how about every damn day.

I vacillated, on a near daily basis, between

“This is brilliant! Soon my name will be mentioned in the same breath as Boas, Kroeber, Sapir, Huntington, and Swadesh!”

to

“This has got to be the biggest steaming pile of crap ever put forth in the halls of knowledge. If I turn this in I will be a complete and total embarrassment to my field, to my department, and to my adviser.”

to

“I don’t care if this is brilliant or a steaming pile of crap - I just don’t want to work on it any longer.”

So, in short, absolutely yes.

4

Perhaps this is more of a problem with shorter MS type theses? I had plenty of time to think about something for my PhD topic - in fact I switched schools so that I could get an adviser and the right support for it. I’m not saying I didn’t get fed up with it once in a while, but I’m still glad I did it.

5

BTW, I reported the post for you, so it can get moved.

6

I was pretty far along in my studio project required for my Master’s when I finally said, “You know, I don’t have the skills needed to do the artistic part of this justice.”* I changed horses in mid-stream and instead worked on the process aspect of the issue. One of my panel recognized that in his critique and actually gave me some extra points.

*I developed an urban design concept for a business area and instead of trying to actually draw my designs, I came up with a process by which the concepts could be vetted by the business owners, worked through with the City Planning, Engineering, and Transportation departments, and implemented. My stick figures and Crayola drawings were’nt going to cut it.

7

The funny part is that it took me over two years from the time I finished to when I actually picked up my thesis and read it again.

And you know what? It wasn’t too bad. Not great, but not too bad.

8

Moved to IMHO per OP request.

9

Well, it wasn’t my choice.

I was offered a summer job which came with an internship that would have covered my undergrad thesis, doing some research in CO2-based extraction. I would have been able to take extra classes, thus ending with a double specialty (ChemEng spec Eng and spec Orgo).

The company decided not to go on with the research, though, so I had to find a thesis advisor with “free” subjects when everybody else had already chosen. The subject was creating some computer programs he needed; while I enjoyed it, did a good job, and was able to do it from home (so it was cheaper than being at Uni with no internship), it really would have been nice to be able to do the first one.

It’s all “oh well” by now, of course.

10

I’m working on my MPhil Thesis in Political Science. I’m pretty good at not second-guessing so once I picked my topic I usually stick with it at the expense of other things that I know might have been interesting. So I usually think about how things might have worked out topic wise if I’d gone for something else, but I rarely if ever regret it.

There is one thing, though, that I am very passionate about and sometimes think I should have gone for instead of Pol Science (and sometimes think I might have been really good at, too) is something like comparative linguistics. I just love learning languages and comparing them and thinking about all the little similarities and dissimilarities. I wish I could have developed that more than I did now.

11

Everyone ends up hating their dissertation project. I literally could not open my dissertation for 3 years after I graduated.

The name of the game is graduation - do what you need to do to finish and then put it behind you. I’m not saying do a sloppy job, or do something worthless, but the idea that you have to win a Nobel with your thesis/dissertation is silly. You will not be defined by what you did as a grad student.

12

I’m tryna do my graduate thesis on the effects of computers on music composition and creation. I’ve only recently realised, 3 and a half years into it that it’s a steaming pile of shite. I wish I had studied history instead. That stimulates me in a way this research I’ve been doing hasn’t for a long time.

13

thanks for doing that.

I never really get fed up with the topic I’m working on, it’s more a case of thinking of things that might have been easier, or that might make a better impression in the field, and so on.

14

That’s rather like where I am. My adviser says the spec and design of my project look really good, but I don’t have the C#.Net skills yet. So he’s giving me till the end of summer session to get it done, which I think I can do.

15

RCA offered me a job supervising people in my old department working on a government grant based on my dissertation two years after I graduated. I smiled, and said “no fucking way” but very politely.

Yes indeed. My goal was to get my compiler running just well enough to do the examples. I did mine in the days before laser printers, so I made every diagram printable easily by a line printer - and no Greek letters. A lot of grad students worked part time for my adviser’s company, and that slowed them down. One guy became an expert in formatting dissertations. His stuff was very useful, but he learned too much about the infrastructure, and spend more time on it than on his dissertation - which he never finished. You have to do a good job, but you have to be focused.

The whole field I did my dissertation in disintegrated about seven years after I finished, which is further evidence in favor of your position.

16

I didn’t know pharmacy students had to do dissertations.

17

That used to be the case, but in my field (computer science), hiring committees were pretty much hiring according to your field as determined by your thesis. So you couldn’t go in for a job talk and say, “Gee, that was a fun subject to work on for a while, but now I’m interested in subject X”. Departments were trying to fill very specific slots. This was particularly problematic for me as my thesis spanned two areas both of which went into a spectacular decline just as I was finishing up.

So, in answer to the OP, when it came time to go job hunting, I was sure wishing that I had the foresight to choose the hot topic for my particular graduation year.

18

If I’d picked a different topic when I was working on my Master’s, I might actually have gotten the degree.

Although, in fairness, it’s really a case that picking a different topic would have meant I’d have had a different advisor, and it was a personality conflict with my advisor that lead to me dropping out without a degree (mostly).

19

After passing my qualifying exams in grad school, I moved into a project that I hated for about 3 years. I kept thinking it was going to get better.

Eventually, I left school with a masters.

I don’t regret that at all, but I think if I’d found a topic I liked, I would have been much more likely to stick it out. So, sometimes I wish I’d usd a different topic. I had a chance to early on.

Are you in graduate school right out of undergrad, or have you worked in the industry for a while?

I don’t mean that to sound snarky (like, “look at the cute grad student who thinks about documentation.”). I mean. . .you’re actually probably right, but, in my experience, it’s not something that the people I know – who do it for a living – really care about.

Well, they do a little, but even if they realize the righteousness of your position, it’s always one of those things that just ain’t gonna get done.

But, you’re not alone. People in graduate school in every area of science and math care about a lot more shit than people who do it for a living.

20

I went through phases while working on my MA thesis (I was a humanities major with a focus on English literature). I had two potential topics - one that I was really really interested in but wasn’t really a hot topic in the field (themes of Paradise Lost in The Passion of the New Eve), and another that I was only mildly interested in but was one of those areas just starting to pick up momentum (authenticity of cultural representations in Asian American literature). I was trying to avoid the second topic perversely because I AM Asian American and I felt like it was too predictable or something, but that’s the topic my preceptor ended up advising me to take.

In the scramble to find a good (i.e., well-known in the field) advisor, the professor I wanted suggested I take my topic in a completely new direction; a direction I wasn’t looking forward to because it would involve researching Korean texts (which I hate doing for a variety of reasons) but in the end I revised my entire proposal based on her suggestions. She was more excited about it than I was, at the time.

I ended up enjoying my thesis much more than I thought I would. Of course, I was sick of it by the end, but most people were, regardless of how excited they initially had been. I re-read it again recently and it actually isn’t as bad as I remember it to be. But for the longest time I didn’t even want to look at the stupid thing. On the other hand, I did learn a lot from the research I did, and if I end up pursuing a PhD I will probably pick up where I left off.