Tag: school

How many emails does it take to complete a Masters Degree?

After posting a few tips on completing a Masters Degree and a Thesis, I had a thought that it would be fun to post about the same topic from a lighter angle. How many emails does it take to complete a Masters Degree?

I started using Gmail in 2005. Unfortunately, I don’t have any archived email from before that time. I started school in the Fall of 2003 so there are a number of email conversations I wasn’t able to include for this post. At that time however, I was participating mainly in coursework and had less frequent emailings than later when I was working on my Thesis.

For this post, I’ve considered every email that I sent or received, that pertained to school, since I started saving everything with my Gmail account. I’ve grouped them by the recipient or sender’s responsibility to simplify the summary.

Sender/Recipeint Emails
Major Professor 267
Councilor or Department Staff 62
Graduation Comittee 38
Department Chair 23
Misc People 5
Generic Department Email 4*
Total 399
* I actually deleted a lot of these emails

There you have it. Unfortunately, the communication part of my program was not the bulk of the work for getting my degree!

How much work does it take to complete a Masters Thesis?

After defending my thesis in December, I completed the rest of my graduation papars and will receive my Masters Degree in Computer Science. I don’t have to expound any further to express how excited I am to be finished with the whole process.

Most Masters programs take around 30 credit hours of graduate course work and thesis research to complete. If you are a full time student, you can typically complete this coursework at the rate of about 6-9 credit hours per semester and you can expect to be finished with your degree in approximately two years.

I was lucky enough to have access to a program that allows graduate students to take their classes in the evenings and from various locations around the state. In this way, I was able to complete my degree while working full time and not living around the school. I took a couple semesters off while we moved. In addition, I had a couple of semesters where I was feeling overloaded and only took one class. In the end, it took me about 4 years to complete my degree. The amount of work required, however, should be pretty close for many programs and the time it takes should be dependent on how fast you can do the work.

So just how much work is it to complete a thesis anyway? Most thesis work is 6 credit hours, which can be completed over two semesters. It took a little longer than that for me so I’ve included below what I learned. Perhaps you can learn from my experience to complete your thesis faster. Continue reading “How much work does it take to complete a Masters Thesis?”

A Few Latex Tips

I’ve been finishing up the final formatting for my thesis this last week at Utah State University. Latex is great when you are provided a style file beforehand. If you have to modify or create your own style however, beware. That is a more time consuming process. I haven’t yet switched back to a traditional word processor (heaven forbid) but I have had a few mornings of pulling hair.

I thought I’d add a few of the things I discovered here: Continue reading “A Few Latex Tips”