Honours for Dummies

Getting into the program
As a psychology student, you no doubt signed up with the intention of getting qualified to help people with mental problems (current students, please be advised that current NSW legislation prevents you from administering psychological therapies to immediate families in a paid capacity). But then, at some point during your undergraduate career, a lecturer in a monochrome shirt and a hideous tie will have told you that psychology is, in fact, a minimum six-year haul, including the inevitable fourth year and postgraduate study. And you will probably think, Ah, well, I can hack a fourth year. Because when you are in first or second year, honours seems really far away, like a distant speck on the horizon.

The tongues of many lecturers are silvered and enchanted – they will make you think you are somehow special, head-and-shoulders above your peers, an academic treatise waiting to happen. At the time, you will probably be swayed, as I was, by staff who say things like, ‘You should be thinking about doing a PhD on this. Are you thinking about doing a PhD on this? And, if not, why not?’. But when they say that not everyone is cut out for honours, are they talking about academic prowess, or are they referring to your general stamina in surviving the most difficult year of your university career? Ask yourself such questions before filling in any forms.

The supervisor
Some disciplines, like linguistics or history or science, let you choose a supervisor who shares your academic interests. Psychology works something like LoveMatch.com – you write down your name, age, and academic interests, and the department will line you up with a supervisor who shares approximately equivalent interests, allowing them to contact you discreetly by e-mail (no need to write or wait for old-fashioned letters). When it works, it works, and you can get to know each other before you meet for the first time. But sometimes, LoveMatch.com will give you a 68 year-old Russian-speaking man who enjoys potato-arranging and collecting antique samovars, when you really wanted a 22 year-old woman from Sydney who likes painting and drinking tea. And so it is that the department will sometimes hand you a supervisor who isn’t interested in your passions, has trouble speaking English (for the last time, ‘once’ is not pronounced phonetically), and has a bad track record with students. Unfortunately, unlike LoveMatch.com, there isn’t much in the way of an escape route.

It is good to be a little bit afraid of your supervisor. This will make you work harder, get things done on time, and try to make your thesis better. It’s also good to have a supervisor who has their own lab, complete with everything you need. However, try not to pick a supervisor who give you jobs he is meant to be doing, thinly veiled as ‘exercises to make your thesis better’ (to the person who wrote articles on pronoun usage for the Asian Journal of Social Psychology, yes, I edited those for you, so be thankful I thought they were better than my supervisor did), or give you inconsistent instructions, or give you extra homework when all your assignments are due. This will leave you feeling like you can’t say ‘no’ to him, and an ablated sense of self-worth when you realise you can’t live up to his expectations.

Also, limit the contact details you give to your supervisor, so he can’t call you at odd hours and ask if you’ve finished your analysis yet. Certainly, home telephone numbers are out of the question. Don’t tell him where you are going on mid-semester break – he will either ask you why you are going away when there’s so much to be done, or, less likely, will announce that he planned on taking his family there for a week, and would you like to catch up with him when you get there?

Finally, try and avoid supervisors who do not get on with anyone else in the department, who terminate their contracts in June and take up positions with universities overseas, who become verbally abusive when you question their comments, who do not read the drafts you send them, who relinquish their responsibilities as supervisor a week before your thesis is due, and who quietly refuse to pay you back the money you spent on software that you have since posted to them.

The ethics application
Not much to say on this, except that the ethics committee is always right. Even when they are wrong. If you have to go and see anyone on the committee, take off your shoes, kneel before them, and wait to be spoken to before saying anything. And, make sure you get your application in on time.

The thesis
The process of writing a thesis is somewhat like a romantic relationship. There’s a lot of feeling invested in it – you’ve really got to have some emotional stake in what you’re writing about, otherwise you’ll tire of it by April – and there are times when you’re quite happy with what’s going on. Then, there is inadequacy, jealousy, anger, separation, guilt, and tempestuous reunion. Factor these stages into your study timetable.

Choose a title that is clever (e.g. Blood and chocolate, which was an article about fear appeals in health campaigns). This will make it look like you know enough about your field to make cute little jokes about it. This will, in turn, make your thesis look more attractive and erudite to your markers, compared to a thesis called, say, The effects of gasoline on fire: a thesis by Thomas McGurtey. But, be careful not to be too clever, because nobody likes a smug honours student – this precludes obscene humour, politically-sensitive puns, and use of Latin.

Mentioning Freud at least once in your literature review adds historical credibility to what you’re saying. Actually, while you’re at it, read some Freud, even if your thesis is on the psychophysics of visual perception or something similarly unrelated. His style is clear and consistent and logical. You might do well to emulate bits of it (but not the bits about psychosexual development, maybe). Also, references for articles which were partially in another language, or had bilingual titles, look awesome and give you cred.

Back up your thesis drafts (I recommend saving each new draft separately), your data set (again, saving new versions each time you make significant alterations), all the journal articles you’ve downloaded from online databases, all the important correspondence from your supervisor, any stimuli you use in your experiment, Word and Publisher copies of your questionnaires, procedural documents, ethics applications and correspondence, and your high scores on Tetris. There is no such thing as being overcautious about these sorts of things – every new paragraph, nay, sentence, must be preserved. Back up onto CD, DVD, a USB flash drive, print hard copies where you can, and consider uploading all your data to a server cluster in Ecuador. It’s not paranoia if you’re right.

Make friends with ex-students who still have photocopy debit cards they can’t use any more. Through my job, I got to know one of the photocopier technicians who serviced the Level 2 photocopiers in the library, and scored three cards, totalling about $50 in credit.

I started writing my thesis in May or June, though the first draft was about twice the length of the final copy, and it was mostly rubbish. Even if you do start writing early, you will not be ready to submit until the final week or so. During the drafting process, you will find it easy to swing from hating your thesis with a passion usually reserved for Jews’ feelings towards Nazi war criminals, and loving it so intensely that you refuse to share it with anyone else. This is normal – narcissistic, but normal. However, if someone actually wants to read it, swallow your pride and accept that a layman might actually be able to fathom your thoughts and truly understand your point.

The end of it all
Even if you think you’ve finished your thesis, you never have. For this reason, never hand in your thesis early, but keep working on it – people who hand their thesis before the due date are obviously aliens of far greater intelligence than mere humans, and should be regarded with suspicion (for reference, the national security hotline number is 1800 123 400). Importantly, you should spare some hours for proofreading and spell-checking. Don’t let Microsoft baby you – you will make mistakes, and many of those mistakes will be silly and easily correctible. A small proportion will make you wonder what you were thinking at the time.

Get to the office early (i.e. before 5pm, if that is when your time’s up). Be gracious if the honours officer is seeing someone when you’re about to submit the biggest piece of academic work that you’ve spent the last nine or ten months preparing. To accomplish this, you may have to have your three copies printed and bound the day before.

Finally, during the final stages of your thesis, you may feel the urge to drink large quantities of alcohol. Try to remain level-headed; if you are still inclined to get drunk after you submit, save it for the end-of-year function, at which you can at least get smashed for free. Otherwise, resort to the usual psychological mechanisms of repression to get over your honours experience.

Oh, and the marks came back the other day. I got second-class honours (Class IIA) overall, but my mark was ‘substantially higher’ for my thesis – the markers called it ‘ambitious’ and ‘beautifully-written’. So I feel satisfied that, despite a dodgy supervisor, I’ve come out of honours with a reasonable result.