Bachelor Thesis Log 20

November 16th, 2010

And already another week has passed, here comes the last report from (at least according to my current plans) the last writing phase of my thesis. That doesn't mean that it's the last report altogether – there are still a few weeks left until I'm finally done with this undertaking. Unfortunately, not so much has happened in the last week, I haven't been able to find good inroads into the related methods yet. The goal now is to get this done by the weekend.

The First Impression Counts…

…and the first page of a bachelor thesis is typically a cover page. But what does such a thing actually have to look like? I read the relevant parts of the examination regulations again and found nothing at all – so there are no formal requirements. As I wrote last week, I also have a PDF file floating around that contains “Advice for student theses” from SWT (as of 2003…), but these are recommendations at best.

Most of these recommendations are kinda obvious to boot. That the title of the thesis should be on the cover page is a piece of wisdom I would probably have come up with without any help. The SWT recommendations and I only differ on two points:

1. They recommend to place the matriculation number on the cover sheet. What deeper purpose does that have? In effect, the whole world would know my matriculation number, which is constantly used at our university as a pseudo-anonymous identity key, e.g. in grade lists? If I wasn't the only Julian Fietkau at this university, there would at least be an argument for it. But I am. Therefore: why should I put my matriculation number on my bachelor thesis? Seriously, if no one gives me a reason for that, then I won't do it.
2. Postal and email addresses. I find the idea of writing my private mailing address on my bachelor thesis a bit ridiculous for similar reasons. Maybe that's more for people who have something like an office at the university. The purpose of an email address, to be able to contact the author, is clearer. But even there my gut feeling goes more in the opposite direction, even if I can't say exactly why. Although I've only changed my main email address twice in my life, email addresses seem so fleeting and anonymous to me, not to mention the difficulties with plain text email address data on the web. How would you handle it? I'm leaning towards not including it. Fortunately, I'm not particularly hard to find on the web (anymore), so that should be the lesser problem.

By the way, my cover sheet now contains the nice phrase “Bachelor thesis to obtain the academic degree Bachelor of Science. (B.Sc.).” That was in almost all templates I could find and somehow gives the undertaking a slightly more dignified touch. It also sums up the official purpose of the work. So I included it.

Future

Now I still have a few days to be active, probably up to and including the weekend. After that, the whole thing should finally be complete. Feedback from Axel will hopefully come in time, which may result in some minor changes, but more in the context of individual wordings, etc. instead of completely new sections – the end of the line is in sight. Maybe there will be some short term feedback from other people, to whom I will send this version of the work, a few expressions of interest have come. But I don't expect any miracles.

For the next report that means: next Tuesday I can tell whether I was able keep to my plan and manage everything or not. If yes, then I can write something about the content of this last remaining section. See you then!