Research - Honors Program in Psychology
Senior Honors Thesis Experience
My Research course for the LeADERS program called Honors Program in Psychology involved my senior honors thesis proposal. I completed the course and successfully proposed last semester. It was a grueling process that I continued to this semester. My defense is scheduled for April 19th, 2019. The entire thesis writing and presenting experience required countless hours revising, drafting, collecting and analyzing data, and performing statistical analysis in R. It is an extensive but rewarding path.
Pictured to the right is the poster I presented at the 2019 Perry Honors College Undergraduate Research Symposium Reflect. It was about my thesis proposal (i.e. before data collection). This is my first poster that just had my name on it. I was very nervous but I sought advice from graduate students in my lab. Poster presentations are ubiquitous in academia and since I plan to further my education, this experience was an important learning step for me.
The image to the left is a screenshot of my advisor's and my edits on an early thesis proposal draft. I included it to show that an undergraduate thesis, like any thesis, requires a lot of work. The whole process took me two semesters. However, it provided me insight to how graduate school would be and it allowed me to be ahead of my peers if I choose to apply to graduate school. When talking to another graduate student in my lab who was undergoing the masters thesis process, I noticed many similarities. The proposal process and defense process are pretty much the exact same. The biggest difference is the advisor's involvement, which decreases as the student's education increases. Because I have experienced a thesis presentation and soon a defense, I feel more comfortable repeating this process in the future.