Sometimes I talk with students about the thesis process and its results. I’m surprised by the arguments in favor of letting the whole process slide. For example, you can hear things like: “Why bother, if other people copy-paste and get good grades?” or “Whatever, no one’s going to read this thesis anyway.” Or even the heresy: “10 minutes of shame — and you’re an engineer.” Let’s look at these arguments one by one.

Why bother

For a “young specialist” (a term from the three-party employment agreement concluded between the “young specialist,” the university, and the employer), very soon after the defense it will come as a pleasant surprise that to find a job you will have to go ahead and make an effort. Sitting at home on the couch, the job will not find itself. After looking through the vacancies on the labor market, the “young specialist” will once again run into the fact that you need to make an effort to meet an employer’s basic requirements; otherwise you’ll look like an idiot at the interview. That is, you need to read some books, or at least Wikipedia. “What’s the difference between an abstract class and an interface?” the employer asked. “The bastard is trying to fail me!” the applicant thought.

And very often job postings also put forward requirements for work experience. The “young specialist” simply cannot wrap his head around it: “How is that possible? I spent five years not making an effort; where would I get work experience? And where is it supposed to come from now, if I don’t want to make an effort?” In the “young specialist’s” opinion, work experience should appear out of thin air, all by itself, without any effort.

But the biggest disappointment for the “young specialist” will be that even after getting hired as an intern or junior specialist, his torment will not be over. Turn off the lights, cover yourself with a blanket, and sit closer to the monitor — I’m about to reveal the scariest secret: at work, too, you have to make an effort. There everything is grown-up: the shareholders (the people who put money into the business) have authorized the director to lead the business to success (read: “make a lot of money”), and they in turn determine the personnel policy: you need to hire the very best, control them, and demand results from them. Who needs illiterate people who produce no results and make no effort to get them? What kind of business success can you have with employees like that?

No one will read the thesis

Is the thesis writer himself ready to let someone read it?

At the very least, the “young specialist” should read his own thesis himself: “Well, did I write some bullshit here or what?” Or check it for spelling mistakes.

Next, you need to give the thesis to your immediate supervisor to read. Maybe someone doesn’t know this, but it is the direct duty of the academic supervisor to read the work, write a review, and put his signature under this thesis. The academic supervisor gets paid for this.

The thesis also needs to be given to the person who will write the external review of it. This person also gets paid for it.

You can run an interesting experiment: give your thesis to a friend to read, and out of healthy curiosity ask to read his in return. Here, like with litmus paper, you will be able to identify a dumb asshole. The dumb asshole, cracking jokes, will refuse under various pretexts to show his work. It turns out that behind the moaning of “no one will read the thesis,” the dumb asshole is actually cowardly hiding the pathetic result of his training. A reasonable person, however, will give you his work and politely offer feedback on his friend’s work.

Of course, you should not expect that in the 15 minutes allotted for the defense, the members of the State Examination Commission will have time to grasp the essence of the thesis, or at least read it. But believe me, they have several other reliable methods for determining the “young specialist’s” level of preparation.

10 minutes of shame — and you’re an engineer

Let’s start with the fact that with that attitude toward the thesis process, after ten minutes of shame what you get is some random dickhead, not an engineer by any means. A plastic diploma is not a magic wand, and with a wave it does not turn a limp male sexual organ into an engineer.

And now the main point. Indeed, maybe no one will read the explanatory note itself, and you may never need it again in your life. The only thing the young specialist will be able to take away from the university is the engineering method for solving assigned problems. Problems can be solved in different ways. You can do it any which way, or you can do it methodically. Look up the etymology of the word “engineer” in dictionaries — it comes from Latin words meaning “genius,” “inventor.” So, about the engineering method: 

  1. Was the research problem formulated?

  2. Was the literature on the subject analyzed, and was the experience of previous studies taken into account?

  3. Was a mathematical model developed?

  4. Were numerical experiments carried out?

  5. Were tests developed for the model? What is the quality of the test?

  6. Were the results reliable?

  7. What conclusions were drawn?

And plenty of other questions in general, too. You can tell from the thesis right away whether the thesis writer asked himself these questions.

How it is for the humanities people — I don’t know, haven’t seen it.