Dear students,
I was reading this NYTimes article about how to write a thesis as I am writing my Master’s Thesis.
It is hard to believe but it has been over five years since I created this book. Not many people have read it. But it is like a capsule about my time in college. I am now 38 and I am finishing up a Master of Science and an MBA and considering a PhD. I think of this moment in time, I think of what it means to be educated today. It means so much, because those who do not complete college education, are nearly guaranteed a life of poverty. Having college education will not absolve you of debt or make you rich, but it will prevent you from being poor. Even so, the education has come to be devalued. Professions are disrespected, degrees are scoffed at. The time and effort it takes to get one is assumed to mean nothing. But it is not nothing. The effort it takes to get a degree transforms a person. Take any college graduate and compare their ability to think and write compared to a high school graduate. There is no comparison. Compare a Master’s graduate ability to work and a Bachelor’s graduate, there is no comparison. Compare the expertise and trajectory of a PhD with a Master’s graduate, there is no comparison. They are all in a league of their own. They are different not because they are different people, at some point the Master’s student and a PhD candidate were no different from each other, but the experience of research, of failure, of writing and publishing changed the person.
When I began my Master’s thesis, I knew that the difficulties I would face were the difficulties of a man who completed a Bachelor’s and was transforming into a Master of Science. It would not be easy. The man would not want to change, it would take concerted effort to make that man. I have not yet succeeded, I am on the way though. When I complete that thesis, I will be a different person, someone who can take research, complete it after many years of work, and present it to the world.
The world scoffs at scientists who speak of climate change, it scoffs at doctors who try to give vaccines, it does so because too many, went through college for the college experience instead of the learning. They crammed and they passed and they assumed that all that knowledge had no value, that passing the class had value. They have no idea how they changed, how they became better people, even if they cannot recall all that they learned.
I plan to write another book now, for the Master’s and PhD students. I hope to convince you that you are not about to waste your time, you are investing in creating a better you, for a better world. I hope to also convince the rest of the world, that knowledge is not easy to gather, that studying is hard work, that people who have a degree, fought hard to get it and it is more than a piece of paper, it is the culmination of learning hard to learn knowledge, reading of dozens of dense textbooks, of writing dozens of hard to research papers and of dozens of experiments that failed and one that opened up the world to all of us, to something new.
Knowledge isn’t free, it has value, we have value. Let’s value knowledge and those who worked so hard to get it and then pass it on, through work or through teaching. Because without knowledge, when we discount knowledge and trust in hypotheticals and demagogues and charlatans without knowledge or experience, we create chaos and suffering.
seven year degree 