# Reducing a college thesis to 1 sentence **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 4, 2014, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-a-college-thesis-to-1-sentence/677904 "2014-01-04T21:13:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Lasciel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e79b87/32.png) [@Lasciel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lasciel)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2014, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-a-college-thesis-to-1-sentence/677904/41 "2014-01-08T00:47:28Z")
Ooh, I wanna play! Undergrad: Masonic temples used really spiffy painting techniques on their ceremonial backdrops and the one I made for my graduate project for our theatrical production of \*Antigone \*is totally as good as theirs were, I swear. Coda: Grommets suck ass. Masters: People are sheep, and the internet/cloud is a wildwood with brambly thickets and patches of what looks like grass but is really poison ivy, so librarians need to techno their shit up so they can shepherd these fools before someone brings about the next Dark Ages due to rampant stupidity. I’m planning on a doctorate, but haven’t done one yet. Looking at those two examples, I feel like I ought to switch focus again to keep things fresh. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![psychobunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/54ee81/32.png) [@psychobunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychobunny)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2014, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-a-college-thesis-to-1-sentence/677904/42 "2014-01-08T01:29:03Z")
I ended up having to give up my undergraduate thesis and turn it into an independent study class after breaking my leg (you can’t carry glassware up and down 4 flights of stairs on crutches) so this was an initial conclusion. I mixed yellow and green stuff and got purple stuff although I have no idea why or what the purple stuff is. ---
**Author:** ![mozchron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c2a13f/32.png) [@mozchron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mozchron)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2014, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-a-college-thesis-to-1-sentence/677904/43 "2014-01-08T02:09:26Z")
My undergrad thesis: “I think turtles can hear earthquakes”. My PhD: “Bacteria can control mosquito-borne diseases, maybe”. ---
**Author:** ![sinjin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ebca7d/32.png) [@sinjin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sinjin)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2014, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-a-college-thesis-to-1-sentence/677904/44 "2014-01-08T02:20:18Z")
“Sulfur reduces wear in rubbing contacts due to chemical/thermodynamic/physical interactions and these interactions are???” Give me another grant, kthanks. ---
**Author:** ![Red\_Stilettos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/fbc32d/32.png) [@Red\_Stilettos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Stilettos)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2014, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-a-college-thesis-to-1-sentence/677904/45 "2014-01-08T02:27:24Z")
Masters thesis: When you infect someone with a virus, they develop antibodies to said virus. (Yeah, definitely not earth-shattering in 2012) PhD: The bacterium that causes whooping cough in turkeys has a complex system to control iron uptake, just like nearly every other bacterium. ---
**Author:** ![GargoyleWB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gargoylewb/32/199_2.png) [@GargoyleWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GargoyleWB)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2014, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-a-college-thesis-to-1-sentence/677904/46 "2014-01-08T20:20:18Z")
“Strange shit happens when lead, argon, vacuum pumps, liquid nitrogen, twisty tubes, and beakers are used to generate data which is then shoehorned into log plots.” At the end of it all, all I really got was a new [vocabulary](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adsorption) word that occasionally results in an opponent’s dictionary-challenge in Scrabble. ---
**Author:** ![Encinitas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee7513/32.png) [@Encinitas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Encinitas)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2014, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-a-college-thesis-to-1-sentence/677904/47 "2014-01-08T20:34:34Z")
“I watched _Raiders of the Lost Ark_ 100 times and figured out how to get a master’s degree out of it.” ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2014, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-a-college-thesis-to-1-sentence/677904/48 "2014-01-08T20:54:38Z")
Master’s capstone: “Here’s an entire listing of cultural, artistic or semi-interesting stores, buildings, sculptures and/or assets within these five districts of the city.” ---
**Author:** ![AnalogSignal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/analogsignal/32/1085_2.png) [@AnalogSignal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AnalogSignal)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2014, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-a-college-thesis-to-1-sentence/677904/49 "2014-01-08T21:22:56Z")
Undergraduate project: “I built this custom controller for focusing this lens, as you suggested Professor, which could have been useful for machine vision but it was a useless waste of time because I didn’t have accurate documentation for the lens.” ---
**Author:** ![Iggy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iggy/32/3364_2.png) [@Iggy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iggy)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2014, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-a-college-thesis-to-1-sentence/677904/50 "2014-01-08T22:38:57Z")
Undergrad: Testing all newborns for the gene for cystic fibrosis is not a good idea at this time due to high costs and high false positive rates. It got passed along as a policy paper to the state legislature that was considering such a requirement. The state did implement the requirement. ---
**Author:** ![EmilyG](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/emilyg/32/364_2.png) [@EmilyG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EmilyG)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2014, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-a-college-thesis-to-1-sentence/677904/51 "2014-01-08T23:18:39Z")
> [@Munch](#): > > Master’s capstone: “Here’s an entire listing of cultural, artistic or semi-interesting stores, buildings, sculptures and/or assets within these five districts of the city.” That actually sounds kind of cool to me. ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2014, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-a-college-thesis-to-1-sentence/677904/52 "2014-01-09T00:33:28Z")
My master’s thesis also confirmed the obvious: Although people don’t like it when you put group homes for the mentally ill in their neighborhoods, there are strategies you can use to minimize their resistance. ---
**Author:** ![Charley](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/97f17d/32.png) [@Charley](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charley)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2014, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-a-college-thesis-to-1-sentence/677904/53 "2014-01-09T01:31:20Z")
My first undergrad: there are some thematic similarities between the horror fiction of the late 19th and the late 20th centuries. For some definitions of horror. And of similarities. Masters: smart phones aren’t associated with a deterioration of work life balance, it’s more that people with undefined boundaries between work and personal lives can’t identify exactly what counts as work. The Masters was much more fun and much less pulled-out-of-my-arse. ---
**Author:** ![drewtwo99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2014, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-a-college-thesis-to-1-sentence/677904/54 "2014-01-09T01:55:45Z")
> [@GargoyleWB](#): > > “Strange shit happens when lead, argon, vacuum pumps, liquid nitrogen, twisty tubes, and beakers are used to generate data which is then shoehorned into log plots.” > > At the end of it all, all I really got was a new [vocabulary](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adsorption) word that occasionally results in an opponent’s dictionary-challenge in Scrabble. despite your link, I still refuse to believe adsorption is a real word. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Pixel\_Dent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bc8723/32.png) [@Pixel\_Dent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pixel_Dent)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2014, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-a-college-thesis-to-1-sentence/677904/55 "2014-01-09T03:33:18Z")
Law review article. “It doesn’t matter what the legislature intended if the judge has other ideas.” ---
**Author:** ![ENugent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/4af34b/32.png) [@ENugent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ENugent)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2014, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-a-college-thesis-to-1-sentence/677904/56 "2014-01-09T04:34:44Z")
“When modeling metal matrix composites, grain boundaries are really important.” ---
**Author:** ![OldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3bc359/32.png) [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2014, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-a-college-thesis-to-1-sentence/677904/57 "2014-01-09T04:49:42Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Conclusion? > > “Grasshoppers without legs can’t hear.” I realize this is a joke, but as I recall the conclusion is correct for many insects; they hear by picking up the sound vibrations via hairs on their legs. ---
**Author:** ![SprungFromCages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f17d59/32.png) [@SprungFromCages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SprungFromCages)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2014, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-a-college-thesis-to-1-sentence/677904/58 "2014-01-09T19:51:45Z")
Let’s suppose you and I verbalize something very similar, but slightly different. In a few weeks, \*you yourself \*will not be able to remember what exactly you said (versus what I said). This is called an error in source monitoring. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2014, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-a-college-thesis-to-1-sentence/677904/59 "2014-01-09T20:13:27Z")
Anthropology: Religious mass movements often begin as responses to a culture under serious stress: in some cases, they are the only way for that culture to transcend internal organizational limitations and deal effectively with the causes of that stress. ---
**Author:** ![lazybratsche](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ba8739/32.png) [@lazybratsche](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lazybratsche)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2014, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-a-college-thesis-to-1-sentence/677904/60 "2014-01-10T13:21:12Z")
Undergrad: These worms don’t poop because their synaptic transmission machinery is busted. I’ll get back to you on the PhD thesis. But I’m hoping it will be “The part of a signalling protein that gets chopped off isn’t always chopped off and is more important than everyone thinks.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-a-college-thesis-to-1-sentence/677904.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-a-college-thesis-to-1-sentence/677904.md?page=4)