The very word “thesis” seems to suggest that you’ve got something to prove—an idea you want to advance. So I suppose it’s no wonder that most of my thesis directing projects began in the same way: with a student appearing at my office to propose the study topic, invariably saying, “I’d like to prove . . .” They always seemed startled when I would respond by asking in return, “Why study the issue if you already know the outcome?”

Thesis and Hypothesis

Of course, every thesis and dissertation is built on some kind of insight—some theory that will be proven or disproven in the course of the study. That is to say, every academic thesis begins with some hypothesis. But if the truth of the hypothesis were clear before the study was even begun, then it would hardly seem worthy of the time, the effort, and the trees that are bound to be sacrificed to the project.  No, if a thesis or dissertation is worth writing, then its outcome has to be an open question—a question no one has yet answered in the way it is being posed in this work.

Willing to be Proven Wrong?

“What is your hypothesis?” After startling my would-be directee with the question about why the thesis should be written at all, my next question was usually about the theory that had inspired the work. And the very next question after that was always as startling as the first: “Are you willing to be proven wrong?” It’s a question worth asking because it gets to the heart of one of the greatest threats to any academic work: BIAS.

We all know the righteous indignation we feel when we discover that the outcome of a legislative process has been designed to benefit a powerful political lobby—that’s bias. We would be horrified to learn that the outcome of a drug’s clinical trial had been bought and paid for by a drug company—that’s bias. But the same is true of the studies that go on in every area of academia. They are intended to be in the service of people’s search for truth—not anyone’s pet idea or fragile ego. We can never divorce ourselves from the perspectives we bring to our work, of course, but those perspectives don’t have to determine the outcome of our research; if an academic is going to make any kind of real contribution to thought, his or her work has to be free of bias. And that means beginning any serious study with the willingness to be proven wrong. The interesting thing is this: a dissertation or thesis project that disproves the author’s hypothesis is every bit as valuable to the academic community as one that proves the author right. And it is just as worthy of the degree—maybe moreso, since that kind of conclusion makes it pretty clear that the author didn’t rig the results.

Sometimes a topic is just too close to the author’s heart to be given the objective study it deserves. What do you do if you find you care about something so much that you couldn’t imagine having your ideas about it proven wrong? Simple: write about something else! Seriously. Odd as it seems, the things we care most about are often the worst topics for our academic study—because academic study requires objectivity. And where we care too much, our study is likely not to be objective. Those may be the topics we have to leave to someone else.

What Is the Point?

All lofty ideas aside, there is a very practical reason why master’s and doctoral students are expected to write theses and dissertations: to learn (and prove that they have learned) the methods and theories involved in conducting serious research in their disciplines. The thesis is a kind of test, proving that one has mastered the skills required to carry on serious research in this field without supervision. The harsh truth is this: if you cut corners and force results when a committee of professors is going to examine your work, the hopes are fairly dim for honest, rigorous research when your only critics are your own students. In short, careful, unbiased research in the thesis develops a habit that is likely to live on in your professional life—and so does its opposite.

OK. Let’s not leave all lofty ideas aside. This one seems worthy of mention here: a rigorously researched dissertation or thesis might just make a contribution to future thought in your field. I suppose we all begin our studies thinking that our brilliant ideas are going to be striking new edifices of thought rising above everything built before us. Then we get bogged down in the tedious details of the research and begin to wonder if we can build anything of value at all. In reality, your master’s or doctoral work will probably not become a skyscraper of its own in the academic city. But it can be the next floor you build on top of someone else’s work. And if you build it carefully—so that it is solid and unshakeable—it may prove to be a good foundation for the work of someone else yet to come. In the world of academia, that kind of collaboration is how really great ideas get built. And isn’t that reason enough to do our work as honestly and carefully—and that means as objectively—as it deserves to be done?

Have some experience with academic writing? Some thoughts on bias in thesis-writing? A question about this topic? Leave us a COMMENT to share.

ALBERT—Read more about this editor

Finding Your Voice 

As a professor of composition and rhetoric, I’ve read countless college essays. I’ve read students’ thoughts about everything from justice in Plato’s Republic to salsa dancing at the Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. What I’ve discovered in these essays is that while students often struggle with choosing a topic and sticking to it, their biggest difficulty in writing is finding their voice. By “voice” I mean the expression of their thoughts in a mode that fits both the assignment and its intended audience. Conquering this much-dreaded hurdle, however, requires only three simple things: thought, a clear grasp of the assignment, and an awareness of the reader.

First Requirement: Thought

Whether you’re texting a friend or composing the next great novel, what is made visible in the act of writing is a unique mind, specifically your unique mind. Writing, of whatever sort, is a deeply personal act. And that is no less true when you’re grappling with a European history paper or a chemistry lab report. Even when you’re given a topic you find boring, the more you make an effort to engage thoughtfully with it, the clearer your writing will be.

Second Requirement: A Clear Grasp of the Assignment

The second requirement for finding your voice is to have a clear grasp of the assignment. This is important! If you’re confused or the assignment is very general, catch your professor or TA after class or shoot them a brief e-mail and ask for clarification. This is not brown-nosing; it’s commonsense. You don’t want to waste time or valuable fractions of your GPA by writing an essay that misses the mark.

Third Requirement: An Awareness of the Reader

Developing an awareness of your reader is the final component of finding your voice. For most college essays, your professor is where the proverbial buck stops, meaning you need to maintain an appropriately formal tone and use proper diction in your writing. Texting shorthand is not permissible, nor is slang. And unless the assignment specifically allows first- and second-person references, refrain from using them. A word of caution about vocabulary: six-syllable words dragged out of a thesaurus should not be mistaken for a formal tone. Formality in writing involves using terminology that most clearly expresses your thoughts. The goal in writing is always clarity of expression, and that isn’t guaranteed by the length of the words used.

The Key is You

In brief, the work of writing a college essay involves thinking carefully about a specific assignment and articulating your thoughts in an appropriate manner. The key to this is you—your thoughts. One of the most disheartening things for me as a teacher, besides reading papers where “u” has been substituted for “you,” is when students are completely disengaged from their writing, when their “voice” is absent. Whether you’re summarizing the findings of an interminably long journal article or writing a narrative essay about your career plans, be present to the (clearly grasped) task. This will give you a firm foundation for the (appropriately expressed) accomplishment of it.

Have some questions about your college essay writing? Or some thoughts or experiences you’d like to share? Leave us a COMMENT.

CLARE—Read more about this editor

I’ve probably never been to a faculty cocktail party that didn’t involve at least a few funny stories of failed student attempts at pulling one over on the professor. And most of those involve some form of cheating—the most clever attempts always in the realm of plagiarism.

I recall an indignant C+ student who was shocked that I might think his paper was not entirely his own. When asked how he came up with the phrase “eschatalogically and millennially focused,” he insisted that he looked it up. But why had he looked it up—what caused those words to occur to him? OK … that wasn’t such a clever attempt.

One of my colleagues shared the story of a student who plagiarized in her course, pilfering from the professor’s own doctoral dissertation! I suppose that one wasn’t very clever either—but he certainly gets points for a gutsy move!

My all-time favorite (so far!) was a young woman who argued with me for 20 minutes, insisting that the work was entirely her own until, having had the plagiarism proven beyond a reasonable doubt, she resorted to a tearful cry of, “But I’m having my period!” Clearly she didn’t know that the standard excuse in these cases is to say, “I didn’t know you couldn’t do that.”

Well … you can’t. Whether you’re ‘borrowing’ someone else’s words OR his or her ideas (which you’ve carefully masked in your own words), the material belongs to someone else, and passing it off as your own will get you in a whole heap of trouble—from a failing grade on the paper to dismissal from a program. If you get caught. And here’s the thing: you probably will.

Getting Caught

There was a time when catching plagiarism required a certain amount of resourcefulness on the part of the professor. Like a literary source critic, the professor would look for:

• Fluctuations in style
• Uncharacteristic vocabulary
• Harsh connections
• Deviations in perspective
• The failure of the written work to address the specific topic assigned
• Inconsistencies in format
• The unavailability of sources cited

And, of course, there’s always the possibility that a competent expert in the field might actually recognize the material!

Today, it doesn’t take much resourcefulness at all to catch plagiarism; it takes a computer. In addition to all of these traditional methods of recognizing plagiarism, it’s now standard fare for individual professors—and entire universities—to employ plagiarism-checking software as a matter of routine. And, while these programs do rely (at least in part) on matching words and phrases to existing sources, the more sophisticated programs also check the internal consistency of the vocabulary, style, and format of the document being submitted. Some of the more popular programs currently available are these:

• TurnItIn
• CheckForPlagiarism
• EVE2 Plagiarism Detection System
• iThenticate
• LexisNexis CopyGuard
• DOC Cop
• EssayFraud

Of course, not all plagiarism is intentional. But here’s the problem: intention cannot be proven. Whether or not you knew it wasn’t allowed, you can be charged with plagiarism if you’ve:

• Used someone else’s words without placing them within quotation marks (or within block quotation format, if the quotation is long enough);
• Paraphrased in your own words someone else’s words or ideas without citing the source;
• Rearranged a quotation and/or replaced some words so that it is not exact, and then passed it off as your own;
• Included data from a source that you did not cite;
• Cited the wrong source for material that you’ve borrowed;
• Included your own, previously-submitted material as original to the present assignment; or, of course, if you’ve
• Submitted someone else’s work and called it your own.

Avoiding Plagiarism

After years as a professional editor, following upon nearly two decades as a college professor, I’m astounded by the number of papers I’ve read that have involved plagiarism—even at the doctoral level, where the stakes are extremely high. I like to think that most of it is unintentional. That, in itself, is rather unnerving, however, since it means that you can fall into this trap, too! If your intention is to pass off someone’s work as your own, there’s no advice I can give other than, “Proceed at your own risk, and be prepared for the consequences; any professor who cares to catch you probably will.” If your intention is to avoid plagiarism of the unintentional variety, however, here are a few tips that might help:

• Beware of paraphrasing. If you do it, make sure that you’re not simply changing a few words. And if you are paraphrasing, it’s obviously someone else’s material—so cite it!
• Never use someone else’s words without (a) quotation marks (or block quotation format), and (b) a source citation.
• Do not cut-and-paste from any source without citing that source.
• Be aware of the citation conventions of your prevailing style sheet (i.e., APA, MLA, Chicago, Turabian, etc.), and take care to follow them precisely.
• If time and resources allow, have your paper edited by a reputable professional.
• Remember that the only material that may be ‘borrowed’ without citation is material that is considered ‘common knowledge.’ This area presents the greatest risk for unintentional plagiarism, but the solution is simple: “When in doubt, CITE!”
• Consider employing a plagiarism-checking service on your own. Several of the services listed above are available for individual use, and other—even free—plagiarism checkers are available online.

For Further Information

There are some excellent resources available on the Web for getting information on plagiarism, how to avoid it, and how to detect it. Check out some of these:

• Plagiarism.org is a well-organized, clearly-presented resource for understanding what plagiarism is, understanding what lies behind it, and learning to avoid it.
• Plagiarized.com is an online guide to Internet plagiarism, with information about plagiarism and its underlying causes, news, detection tips, prevention tips, and more.
• The OWL at Purdue is a comprehensive, free, online writing resource. Its “plagiarism” pages include information on recognizing plagiarism, tips for avoiding it, and best practices for teachers to deter it.
• Northwestern University provides a set of tips for avoiding plagiarism, along with some excellent examples of how to use borrowed material appropriately.
• “Plagiarism Stoppers: A Teachers Guide” offers links to online detection tips, free plagiarism detection sites, prevention training, and some potential paper mills.

Have your own experience to share? Or questions about plagiarism or academic writing? Leave us a COMMENT.

ALBERT—Read more about this editor