Standards for M.A. Theses/ Internships/Projects

by Patrick Moore

Introduction:

If you want me to be your M.A. thesis/internship/project advisor, or if you want me to serve on your M.A. thesis/internship/project committee, you must follow the standards in this document. If you do not follow any of these standards, I will not pass you on your M.A. thesis/internship/project.

The reasons for these standards are probably obvious to you: high standards improve the market value of your education and your degree; they help you earn more money; they make it easier for you to find work and to keep your job once you have it. High standards can bring personal rewards too: they increase your ability to solve complex problems, including personal problems; in the long run they can minimize your problems in dealing with other people and with the state; and they can increase your confidence in yourself. High standards are also important if educated people are to advance knowledge so that all people can adapt and survive the constant changes in life. To paraphrase Leonardo da Vinci, only poor students do not excel their teachers. That is, high standards help students improve upon the knowledge of their teachers for everyone's benefit. Most people can do high-quality work; the purpose of the standards below is to encourage such work.

To avoid writing a composition handbook, I do not touch in these standards upon many things: your awareness of purpose, audience, and scope in your writing; the adequacy, appropriateness, and accountability of your writing; the organization of your writing (including its unity, emphasis, and coherence); the clarity, concision, and tone of your writing; the correctness of your writing (which includes avoiding all errors of spelling, punctuation, grammar, and usage); and so on. I expect you to know these things and to be able to embody that knowledge in your writing.

Here, then, and the standards.

Format:

Theses should be typed, or written on word processing or desktop publishing equipment. Theses should be double-spaced, on 8 1/2" by 11", high-contrast, bond paper. The format of internship and other writing project materials should be appropriate to the standards of the organization for which they were written. If your internship or other writing project materials strike me as nonstandard, I may require a signed letter (on letterhead) from your organizational manager saying that the writing you have submitted meets the standards of the organization.

Please use graphics where you think they are appropriate. Graphics should be legible, well labeled, accurate, close to where you refer to them, and appropriate to your purpose.

Use headings every now and again, but the frequency of headings will vary a lot from one project to the next, so I do not have any specific guidelines. It is generally safer to err on the side of having too many headings than too few. Please have a table of contents that includes all major headings.

Please be relatively generous with white space. Cramped and crowded writing and graphics are intimidating and unpleasant to read. Be careful, however, of using white space to pad your writing. If I suspect that you are padding, I will require you to reformat your writing extensively and to come up with more material.

If you use electronic media to present your M.A. thesis/internship/project, please consult me for guidelines.

Length:

The length of your thesis/internship/project must be a minimum of 80 pages. Those 80 pages may include an initial title page, a table of contents, a "Works Cited" section, graphics, and endnotes (if applicable). If you are doing an internship or M.A. project, your 80 pages must include an introductory essay of at least 35 pages to explain your work: what you did, why you did it, problems you encountered, how you solved those problems, etc.

The 80 pages do not include title sheets for individual chapters or sections, appendices, blank pages separating sections or chapters, or blank pages inserted before the initial title page or after the last typed page of the thesis. The 80 pages also should not include many short pages (i.e., pages with few words on them). If I suspect you of padding, I will require to to revise extensively and/or to add new material.

Evidence and Credibility:

As you know, you must have credible evidence to support your assertions. Usually this evidence consists of quotations from authorities or from research data and informants. Writers often misquote. Sometimes misquotations are accidental and minor; sometimes they are outrageously dishonest.

For example, in a two-part article published in The New Yorker in 1983, Janet Malcolm repeatedly ascribed fabricated quotations to her informant, Dr. Jeffrey M. Masson, a psychoanalyst and former projects director of the Sigmund Freud Archives. When Masson said that Freud was "a man who just lost his courage," Janet Malcolm quoted him as saying the Freud was guilty of "moral cowardice." When Masson said about an invitation to live in Anna Freud's house in London that "I would have had some fun," Janet Malcolm quoted him as saying "I would have made it a place of sex, women, and fun." Janet Malcolm's fabrications were explained away as "rational interpretations" of what Jeffrey Masson had said. I don't think so. I think they were acts of gross irresponsibility. Please quote accurately, and please double check your quotations. (For more information on fake quotations and misquotations, see They Never Said It by Paul Boller and John George.)

The motto of the Royal Society of London is "Nullius in verba," which means, according to Sir Peter Medawar, "Don't take anybody's word for it." I will not take your word for the validity of your quoted evidence or research; I want to check it for myself. That is, if you have quoted material from a book or article (or whatever), I want to see a photocopy or the original copy of the complete chapter or article that contains your quotation.

Unless I already have a copy of a book or article that you have quoted, you must supply it to me when you give me your thesis/internship/project to read. If you have transcribed an interview from a tape recording, I want a copy of the tape to check the transcript. If you have videotaped an interview or some other activity, and if you have referred to that videotape in your thesis/writing project, then I want a copy to verify your work. And so on.

If you do not give me copies of the material you have quoted, transcribed, taped, etc., then your thesis or project is incomplete, and I will not sign your final exit project approval sheet.

Knowledge of Research Literature:

A "Master" of English (or anything else) ought to be familiar with many of the standard authorities in her (or his) area of specialty, and such a "Master" should be able to show in writing that she has considered those authorities and benefited from them where appropriate in her M.A. thesis/internship/project.

To that end, you must cite at least 35 sources (that is, academic books or articles in academic journals) in your "Works Cited" or bibliography section. If you get my permission in writing, you may add or substitute other authoritative sources such as interviews, video tapes, newspaper or magazine articles, tape recordings, hypertexts, and so on. You may count up to three articles in a single book-length collection of articles as part of your 35 sources.

Your M.A. thesis/internship/project writing must show that you have considered and benefited from the 35 or more sources that you cite. That is, you may not merely list 35 sources in a long paragraph and consider yourself to have fulfilled this requirement. You will need to discuss each of the 35 sources (or groups of them) at least briefly and show me that you have learned something from them. Your discussion may include your disagreement with some existing "authority." In fact, if your M.A. thesis/internship/project is any good at all, you probably should explain how the "authorities" are limited or mistaken in certain areas.

You may choose to fulfill this "Knowledge of Research Literature" requirement in a "Review of Research" section, or you may discuss your sources as they naturally come up in your writing, or you may use a combination of approaches.

Academic Dishonesty:

Students cheat, as do professors. (For examples of scholars and researchers cheating, read Betrayers of the Truth: Fraud and Deceit in the Halls of Science, by William Broad and Nicholas Wade, and Forgers and Critics: Creativity and Duplicity in Western Scholarship, by Anthony Grafton.) So I must give you the standard warning: the writing that you submit for your Master's thesis/internship/writing project must be your own work. If you fabricate data, misrepresent some else's work as your own, etc., I will not serve as your Master's thesis/internship/project advisor or be on your Master's committee. I will also report your academic dishonesty to the Dean of Students and to the Graduate School Dean.

In short, do not cheat. Legitimate questions about academic fairness and propriety do come up; if you have any doubts, please asks me.

Nature of your Subject:

The subject of your writing should not be trivial. You may have heard the limerick (attributed to Ogden Nash) about the fate of the scholar whose writing became an exercise in trivial pursuit:

There once was a scholar named Fressor,

Whose knowledge grew lesser and lesser.

It at last grew so small,

He knew nothing at all,

And today he's a college professor.

Please avoid Professor Fressor's horrible fate at all costs!

Ideally, your thesis subject (if you are doing a thesis) should be something original, significant, and meaningful that is capable of being published. Any kind of published scholarly work is--again, ideally--supposed to be an original and significant contribution to the advancement of knowledge. If the writing you submit for your Master's degree is for an internship or something work-related, then it should still be a significant contribution to some organizational goal.

Obviously, determining the significance or meaningfulness of your thesis or internship or writing project may be tricky. Thus, this is one area that you should be careful to discuss with me in advance so that we can agree (in writing, preferably) about what constitutes "significant" or "meaningful."

Whatever subject you choose, you should have plenty of details, plenty of persuasive and penetrating analysis, and plenty of persuasive and informative interpretation.

Theoretical Approach:

If you are writing a thesis, or if you are writing an analytical essay as part of your internship or writing project, you will probably be using some kind of theory (or several theories) to frame your work. Here are a few well-known warnings about theories:

1. Some theories are bad. They have unpalatable social ramifications (e.g., they make one race or gender superior to another); they have unrigorous methodologies; they rest on faulty assumptions or are illogical. Avoid such theories.
2. Some theories are trivial or simplistic. They explain the obvious. Avoid such theories when writing to professors. Good theories are supposed to lead you (and especially your readers) to insights, discoveries, and connections that you (or they) might not have had otherwise. If your theory does not tell your audience anything new, find another theory.
3. Some theories are not internally consistent. If parts of your theory contradict each other, find another theory or adjust your theory to eliminate the contradictions.
4. Some theories are very technical. Don't use such theories unless, (a) your reader is a genius, (b) your reader invented the theory, or (c) your reader has lots of time and patience to learn the theory. For the purposes of your M.A. thesis/internship/project, assume that I am not (a), (b), or (c) above.
5. All theories are partial or limited, some much more than others. In short, all theories leak. You must use any theory appropriately. Do not apply a limited theory to something it does not map onto well. Do not overgeneralize a theory. Do not misrepresent a theory.
6. All theories embody ideologies. Sacvan Bercovitch has defined ideology as "the system of interlinked ideas, symbols, and beliefs by which a culture--any culture--seeks to justify and perpetuate itself; the web of rhetoric, ritual, and assumption through which society coerces, persuades, and coheres" (Critical Inquiry, Summer 1986, p. 635). Ideologies (and thus theories) are often--or perhaps always--quarreling overtly or covertly with something (e.g., with technology, with profit-oriented capitalism, with some power group). The theory that you adopt may be an attack on the deepest beliefs of your audience, including one of your professor/readers. Thus, pick your theories and the professors who read them with some care.

Here are a few things to remember about professors and theories: First, no professor knows all the theories. Don't assume she or he does. Make sure the professor knows the theory you will present; if not, make sure the professor has the time to learn it. You may want to provide an appendix that summarizes a theory, or spend a lot of time in the your thesis (or whatever) explaining the theory, or attach articles that explain the theory. Whatever you do, discuss your theoretical approach with your Master's readers beforehand. Second, no professor respects all theories equally. To some extent, the reasons for this point are explained in the previous warnings about theories. You must ensure in advance that your professor/readers will respect your theoretical approach.

Completeness of These Standards:

I doubt that I have thought of every virtue that I want your M.A. thesis/internship/project to have. I have surely left out something important. I reserve the right to hold you accountable for any significant omission in your writing, even if I have not mentioned the omission specifically in these standards. But I will not use this section to harass you.

To head off problems that I have not been able to anticipate here, keep in touch with me as you write your project (i.e., show me an early draft), and make sure you give me your thesis/internship/writing project to read well in advance (i.e., at least three weeks) of the date you want to defend it.

Conclusion:

The British philosopher, Michael Oakeshott, has said that you have an education when you have "good intellectual manners." By "manners" he means, simply, ways of doing things. If you are well educated, you have the following manners, among others: you are skeptical of authority; you are honest; you pay attention to detail; you know who you are; you can synthesize the analytical methods and knowledge of academic disciplines and apply them to solving problems outside academia; you are thorough; you express yourself clearly; you are candid; you are creative; you are politically circumspect; you are courteous; you respect the truth; you are fair; you have a global perspective; you persevere in the face of adversity; you are patient; you can negotiate effectively with others; you are modest; you are well-read; you have a sense of humor; you are thoughtful; and you care about the welfare of others.

As you have gathered from reading the above "manners," you can have them all and not have a college degree--or high school diploma. You may also have relatively few of them and have a Ph.D. Nonetheless, in addition to all the other things I have mentioned in the previous pages, I want to see these manners--when appropriate--in your Master's writing.

Chances are, if you have gotten this far--in your education, in your life--you will have few problems with the above-mentioned standards or manners.

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