Picking a topic

Of course, you can't have a thesis without, well, a thesis, so be sure to think about your topic good and hard before you even think about anything else. If you aren't sure where to start, write out your thoughts in a chart or diagram. If you are in a university program, then the general area of your thesis is already determined.

If you are in a high school independent study program, or you're writing a thesis as a way to boost your application for graduate school, you must first determine whether you want to work in the hard sciences or in the social sciences. Ask yourself the following questions: Are you interested in examining people? animals? chemical reactions? biological reactions? astronomy? physics? and so on and so forth until you have settled on a field of interest.

Chances are, your field is too large and broad to tackle all at once, so think about with part of your field, or which sub-field, you're interested in. Once you have it down to a sub-field, start thinking about your general interests - I guarantee you that most of your interests can actually be studied in an academic fashion.

It is absolutely essential to pick a topic that is interesting and stimulating to you; if it's not interesting to you, it probably won't be a great paper. This should be a subject that you can stay up until 3am working on without wanting to throw yourself off a cliff. Remember - whatever topic you pick, you will be eating, breathing, and sleeping, so make sure you really really like it.

After you've thought of something you're interested in, think about how it ties into your field. How does it connect? Is there some aspect of your interest that overlaps with your academic field?

Here is an example of topic selection process:

Hard sciences or social sciences?

People? Yes
Animals? No
Chemistry? No
Biology? No
Astronomy? No
Physics? NO!

Social sciences

Psychology or Sociology?

Individuals? No
Groups? Yes
Individuals and groups ? No
(as in, how any one person in a group may respond to the group)

(Note: If you are interested in historical events, you can actually combine History with Sociology and Psychology to make Psychohistory - stay out of the shower!- and Sociohistory. The nice thing about History is that it can be combined with pretty much any other field. Though most fields can be combined together to come up with some really neat academic fields, I won't spend too much time on that.)

Sociology

Areas of interest?

Shopping

Where is there overlap?

When does the average amount of shopping increase in a society?
How does shopping differ based on types of societies (individualistic vs. communistic)?
Which groups in a population shop the most often?

Do any of these ideas sound interesting to you?

Yes - Which groups in a population shop the most often?

Following this, you should be able to figure out what topic you will be happy with. Remember to keep your topic somewhat narrow; if the topic becomes too broad, the thesis will become very complicated and confusing, potentially compromising the quality of the paper.

Once you have selected your topic, the next step is to decide how you will go about studying your topic. Stay tuned for the next installment!