I am finally done with my Masters degree. I hand-in my thesis in April and got a really nice grade. I am somewhat proud of my work but the best is yet to come. My director Jean-Claude Cosset, co-director Anis Samet, and I are working together on its publication. My research process of the last eight months has been relatively smooth – not too much stress. Though, I have to admit that my thesis experience at the bachelor level helped me a lot. Nonetheless, I have done some very stupid and common mistakes during the process. I would like to share with you these mistakes because that is how we learn and get better for future research. We learn much more through errors and mistakes than successes. Here they are:
(1) Never assume your readers know what you are talking “about”
(2) Never write any value judgment sentences in your work (e.g. “I believe that this work is a major step towards better comprehension in the field of….)
(3) Never cite a paper without having read it
(4) Never ignore the contribution and motivation in your introduction
(5) Never forget to list your assumptions
(6) Never ignore most recent published or working papers in your research field. Always stay up-to-date through the writing process of your research
(7) Never work to fast! Research always takes more time than expected…but that is sometime the beauty of research
(8) Never tackle your research without a plan…but never believe that your plan is “set-in-stone”
that’s pretty much it!