Writing for Visual Thinkers is an e-book textbook. The book explores various relationships between writing and design, allowing students to incorporate various ideas and methods of writing into their work. The e-book format allows for dynamic media (such as podcast interviews, video and downloadable PDF exercises), to be easily accessed. The book is currently under development and this blog is intended to create a dialogue and share ideas for book content.
{Publisher: New Riders/AIGA Press}
Monday, November 12, 2007
Thesis Projects
This question pertains to writing and thesis projects at both the graduate and undergraduate level. How is writing utilized in both the process and final thesis projects?
This would be (is) a long discussion, wouldn’t (isn’t) it?
As a person who developed his own writing skills in the realm of fiction, I think the process of writing—the wrestling with a construction of a narrative—is, in the truest sense, an act of creation. By creation I mean mostly the act of discerning and defining insights into otherwise inchoate scenarios. It seems that only at the point of contact (where the pencil meets the paper) can any good critical considerations develop, and so the task is in the effort and determination required to reach that point of contact, and to sustain it for as long as possible.
I tell my students that writing a thesis is like trying to enter the atmosphere of a planet, in that only in the persistence of intuiting the right speed AND right trajectory can anyone find their way into the logic of an argument. The intuiting, of course, is itself a result of understanding the topic well enough through your research to stumble upon such comfort levels of imagining. And, without diligence in determining the proper speed and angle--and without the wherewithal required to alter one’s way of thinking in order to attain that proper angle and speed--one is inclined to bounce right off that atmospheric barrier, destined to float aimlessly around the subject matter; on the outside looking in without any sense of what the ‘in’ really is. The result: the dreaded paralytic ‘float’ that too many thesis students find themselves drifting in.
To really beat this pun to pulp, a thesis requires the ability to enter the atmosphere of not just one planet (area of thought), but numerous planets. And to able to use the force of gravity of one planet, as you leave it (temporarily), as a slingshot that provides the proper speed (and trajectory), to penetrate the atmosphere of another planet. A cartoon-like weaving and rounding of seemingly disparate topics (planets) ensues, with a recognition (often sudden) of the ties that bind eventually resulting.
The wonderful thing about this is that the planets can be different for every individual—they can be any single mix of ideas that provide the necessary clarity at the end. A thesis CAN be original, if only in it’s unique weaving together of previously expressed ideas.
1 comment:
This would be (is) a long discussion, wouldn’t (isn’t) it?
As a person who developed his own writing skills in the realm of fiction, I think the process of writing—the wrestling with a construction of a narrative—is, in the truest sense, an act of creation. By creation I mean mostly the act of discerning and defining insights into otherwise inchoate scenarios. It seems that only at the point of contact (where the pencil meets the paper) can any good critical considerations develop, and so the task is in the effort and determination required to reach that point of contact, and to sustain it for as long as possible.
I tell my students that writing a thesis is like trying to enter the atmosphere of a planet, in that only in the persistence of intuiting the right speed AND right trajectory can anyone find their way into the logic of an argument. The intuiting, of course, is itself a result of understanding the topic well enough through your research to stumble upon such comfort levels of imagining. And, without diligence in determining the proper speed and angle--and without the wherewithal required to alter one’s way of thinking in order to attain that proper angle and speed--one is inclined to bounce right off that atmospheric barrier, destined to float aimlessly around the subject matter; on the outside looking in without any sense of what the ‘in’ really is. The result: the dreaded paralytic ‘float’ that too many thesis students find themselves drifting in.
To really beat this pun to pulp, a thesis requires the ability to enter the atmosphere of not just one planet (area of thought), but numerous planets. And to able to use the force of gravity of one planet, as you leave it (temporarily), as a slingshot that provides the proper speed (and trajectory), to penetrate the atmosphere of another planet. A cartoon-like weaving and rounding of seemingly disparate topics (planets) ensues, with a recognition (often sudden) of the ties that bind eventually resulting.
The wonderful thing about this is that the planets can be different for every individual—they can be any single mix of ideas that provide the necessary clarity at the end. A thesis CAN be original, if only in it’s unique weaving together of previously expressed ideas.
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