Many of you may not have heard the term “student resumes.” For those of you who have not, these are resumes that students construct when they are seeking their first career position upon graduation. They are called student resumes, because, in most instances, the only experience and/or background a student may have is just, well, being a student.

If you are at the point of preparing to write our Master’s thesis, then you are at that tail end of obtaining that degree. It’s a great feeling. Now, to get that thesis written. There is no way to sugar coat this – a thesis is a complex and difficult project, and anyone who tells you differently is not being truthful.

If you are just now getting ready to think about your thesis or dissertation, then you know the first step is finding a topic for your research – one that you can get passionate about and one that will meet with the approval of your advisor and/or committee. There really is a process that you can go through to find those research proposal topics, and it will make your search both easier and faster

You are close to graduation, and your institution requires a thesis paper – oh great! Now, with all of your other demanding coursework, here’s one more requirement to add to the list. Don’t panic. You already have some of the skills you need even if you are asking yourself, “What is a thesis paper?” Follow this step-by-step process and you will be able to get this done.

Writing a research proposal can be a tough project if you have never written one before. Usually, these documents are prepared as students get ready for their theses and dissertations, and they must be approved either by an advisor or dissertation committee before work can begin.

Chances are, you have never written a thesis proposal. You are about to learn how. When you are ready to begin your thesis, you and your advisor will discuss possible topics for a good thesis, and ultimately you will pick one. But this is just the beginning. The next step is going off on your own to conduct some preliminary research on that topic, so that you may develop a good research question and a hypothesis.

If you want to be successful, you should find out what successful people are doing. Then, you should do what they are doing. This is wise advice. Here is some more good advice; take note of the things that successful people aren’t doing, and avoid those habits as well.

By the times students are in doctoral programs in health care, they have moved into very specialized areas, and health dissertation topics will become students’ concerns as soon as they enter their doctoral programs. Given that they are fully specialized in terms of coursework, locating potential topics for dissertations will come from that coursework.

If you are a doctoral student, you are certainly looking toward that dissertation and, even early on in your programs, you are undoubtedly thinking about possible dissertation topics in education that are related to your area of specialty – higher ed, educational leadership, elementary or secondary education, special education, multicultural/bilingual/trilingual education, or early childhood education, to name just some of them.

Your dissertation will be unique in many ways. First, the research question you have devised is yours and yours alone.