Learn from my mistakes to gain the most from your thesis or dissertation experience.
It’s only been a few weeks since I completed my Master’s thesis, and I’m still riding an emotional wave of relief. Although the research was valuable and the learning was rich, it feels incredibly good to be finished. It’s a chapter closed and a professional goal realized.
As I look back on my thesis work, I know that I made the journey a lot more difficult than it needed to be. After weeks of reflection, my intention in this piece is to share some insights and strategies that might spare others the agony I experienced in the last few months.
My Context: A MEdL Degree Program
I registered for Vancouver Island University’s Master of Education in Educational Leadership (MEdL) degree program in the spring of 2017. Spoiler alert: it was an amazing program, and I highly recommend it to fellow teachers. My first year of studies began later that summer on the VIU campus in Nanaimo, and I enjoyed it from the beginning. My instructors were inspiring, colleagues were encouraging, and the course content was engaging. The #studentlife was back, I was learning a lot, and I was pleased by my progress.
Those first two weeks of classes in August 2017 were followed by ten months of online…
