Thesis it, pansit.

Research is the birth of information. By research, this is a bloody and detailed work of extracting facts with literatures and scientific inquiry and not entirely dependent on google. Whenever I hear 'research' from the mouths of many, "Mag-research ka kasi." it felt so heavy that I have the urge to tell them it's not an easy task. But off course, we are in a different context. Now that the pregnancy length of our research has ended, I want to share to you some tips and things I learned while doing our research and or thesis.

1. Trust anyone if you are about to save and print your document but your spell-checker.
Spell-checker do corrects your spellings but sometimes it mess up your grammar. Sure, it corrects your grammar,too, but more often than not it corrects the words that doesn't sound right or it is not what it means. Don't waste your years of English classes only to rely your grammar on a spell-checker, check them yourselves.

2. Choose a round-up collection of respondents.
It is very easy to choose a title for your study but when it comes to your populations, it becomes a blur. I think it would be easy if your population or respondents are easy to find in one distribution instead of clashing headache and social anxiety identifying your respondents to fit to your population's profile. Population can be students at your university, students of a certain course, respondents who have their own organizations like LGBT support organizations or senior citizens organization, Choose a population in where you could just hand your questionnaire to the person in charge and he'll distribute it. This way it would save you time in distributing questionnaires.

3.Never EVER print your paper 10 minutes before submission. These bastards can smell fear.
It's fine to be a little bit superstitious. It helps actually especially if the printers screws up or slows down when you are rushing to turn in your paper.

4. When starting your drafts, it's okay to type words that are just fillers or unnecessary.
Like what Ernest Hemingway said, "The first draft is a shit." Your thesis adviser will laugh on it, sure, but your paragraphs will improve on the process because you will have more sources to make an input. My favorite part while doing our thesis was starting with a paper with red ink all over and gradually decreasing to a pure black and white paper.

5. Dive to your resources and expand to it.
If you want to have a convincing and strong content, dive to other medium of resources. Aside from your school library and the internet as the traditional way of extracting sources, you can try other alternatives. Go to your city library or you can pay a cheap amount to other schools to make an access to their libraries. Use google books,too, aside from PDF's and some of them are free or some of them offers only limited content in which it matches the interest of your search. TV radio or podcasts discussions can also be a reference.

6.Be very careful when citing references.
How to cite references are dynamic over the years. It is confusing but you also have to stick to what your adviser tells you. While we were doing research we were always and annoyingly reminded about our references because plagiarism is off course unethical. Also, there is also a confusion about having secondary sources especially if you are deriving it from another study or from a text book. It is confusing who should you cite, the author of the book or the source of the author? Cite them both to clearly give the panel and the readers that you had a secondary source. Just a tip of the adviceberg; Whenever you have a new source cite your reference immediately before they get lost from your memory.

7. Theories should strongly coincide with your questionnaires
If you have weak theories or conceptual framework, making your questionnaires will be a pain in the butt. Questionnaires strongly lies on theories and the responses should reflect your framework. During our first defense, we were almost grilled as they asked our questions items obe by one if they,at all, falls to any of our theories. It was difficult for us to construct questionnaires, we were vigilant even because we have no theories but only concepts we made up..er, conceptualized.

8. Send your finished drafts online.
If the people you most trust stabs your back, so can your computer. The internet is probably the safest storage for your files except for your shameless private Facebook posts. Technology can turn against you so better have a back up to safe keep your files.

9. Interpretation and analysis will bleed your brain. Let it.
One of the bloodiest chapter for thesis is interpretation and analysis. This chapter has to come out directly dug out from your own brain. It's your own words. Sometimes you just have to give it time to internalize your interpretations basing from your chapter 1.

  
10. Never be afraid to harass your adviser with help and questions

They might hate you and be sick of your repetitive mistakes, but they are welcoming and willing to pull an all-nighter to read your content. Ditch your inhibitions and ask away from suggestions or to agree on some point to improve your study. Don't hesitate to come to their desks or wait for them after their class. Your adviser is your fairy godmother. In our case, our fairy-godfather. Do it appropriately

Pre-defense anxiety