Don’t let your thesis become a nightmare: expert shares keys to a successful thesis

diciembre 26, 2023

In his new book «The University Researcher», the academic of the Universidad Católica del Maule, Jaime Vásquez-Gómez, offers recommendations to students who are on their way to fulfill the last requirement of their university majors in 2024.

The New Year’s holiday usually represents an opportunity to make changes in life, which many embrace with joy and optimism. For others, however, New Year’s Eve marks the beginning of a period full of tensions, starting with the writing of the dreaded mandatory report to qualify for a university degree: a degree thesis.

This is a text, also referred to as a seminar thesis or bachelor’s report, whose objective is to demonstrate the theoretical or practical application of what has been learned throughout their major.

The contribution must be novel, according to Jaime Vásquez-Gómez, an academic at the Universidad Católica del Maule, who wrote a book to guide students through the challenge.

«This is the book I always wanted to read to do a thesis, because of all the texts one can read, I thought something simpler, but equally rigorous, was needed,» he said.

The work, titled «The University Researcher,» is 121 pages long and has a downloadable version on the UCM Editions website.

«My fifteen years of experience as a researcher are materialized in this book. Students will be the judges of it because they will say if the text is relevant or if it is just another book,» added the doctor in Physical Activity and Sports and member of the Center for Research in Advanced Studies of Maule (CIEAM), which belongs to the campus.

Regarding specific strategies that transform tension into fuel for academic success, the Physical Education professor pointed out that the basic structure of the thesis should revolve around the research problem.

«We were always told that 70% of the thesis is the delimitation of the problem. I address that issue in one chapter with analogies and examples. It is a book that guides others, based on the ways university students reason,» he pointed out.

book’s url here