Graduation : Challenge Accepted 9789462741645, 9789462364868

Citation preview

Rugdikte: 12mm – 07/11/2014 – Textcetera

This book will challenge you and your current perspective on your upcoming graduation. It will change into a very practical and useful perspective. In seven chapters we give our views, ideas and practical tips of what it means to be in charge of your own graduation, how you can benefit from it and what ‘being the leader’ of the project actually entails. We encourage you to adopt a realistic and very workable graduation attitude through a combination of practical tips and tricks, questions, small exercises and examples from both students and teachers who have been through the process of graduation.

Alexander de Haan Elianne de Regt

ISBN 978-94-6236-486-8

G R A D UAT I O N : C H A L L EN G E AC C EP T ED

How are you going to make yourself and your graduation project stand out? How are you going to make sure that your graduation represents you and everything that you are capable of, instead of what all students in your program can do? The only way to do this is to make your thesis entirely your project. And the only way to do that is to continuously take initiative, stay active and most importantly, stay in charge of your work. Nobody should get to steer you in directions that you do not want to go.

G R A D UAT I O N CHALLENGE ACCEPTED

ALEXANDER DE HAAN & ELIANNE DE REGT

9 789462 364868

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GRADUATION: CHALLENGE ACCEPTED

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You are essentially who you create yourself to be. All that occurs in your life is the result of your own making. Stephen Richards

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GRADUATION: ­CHALLENGE ACCEPTED

Alexander de Haan Elianne de Regt

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Published, sold and distributed by Eleven International Publishing P.O. Box 85576 2508 CG The Hague The Netherlands Tel.: +31 70 33 070 33 Fax: +31 70 33 070 30 e-mail: [email protected] www.elevenpub.com Sold and distributed in USA and Canada International Specialized Book Services 920 NE 58th Avenue, Suite 300 Portland, OR 97213-3786, USA Tel: 1-800-944-6190 (toll-free) Fax: +1-503-280-8832 [email protected] www.isbs.com Eleven International Publishing is an imprint of Boom uitgevers Den Haag. Lay-out: Textcetera, The Hague The drawings are based on sketches by Renata Renema. ISBN 978-94-6236-486-8 ISBN 978-94-6274-164-5 (e-book) © 2014 Alexander de Haan & Elianne de Regt | Eleven International Publishing This publication is protected by international copyright law. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Printed in The Netherlands

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TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 1.1 1.2

GRADUATION: CHALLENGE ACCEPTED Our alternative approach to graduation projects Overview of the book

9 9 14

2

WHAT STORIES  AND MYTHS EXIST ABOUT GRADUATION PROJECTS? 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Five myths about graduation projects 2.3 Examples of realistic research 2.4 Time for action

21 22 24 35 42

3 ARE YOU READY TO SET SAIL? 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Personal goals for a graduation project 3.3 Essential building blocks 3.4 People who make you perform 3.5 Taking the lead 3.6 Time for action

51 52 53 55 60 65 74

4 WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO GET PEOPLE ON BOARD? 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Creating interest and momentum 4.3 Meeting potential team members 4.4 Proposing research: the basics 4.5 Time for action

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81 82 84 86 91 113

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5 WHO IS IN CHARGE OF YOUR GRADUATION PROJECT? 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Boss versus leader 5.3 Being the manager of your project 5.4 Time for action

117 118 120 122 131

6 HOW TO DEAL WITH THE UNAVOIDABLE SETBACKS? 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Accepting the challenge 6.3 Well prepared is half delivered 6.4 Time for action

135 136 139 143 150

7 HOW DO YOU ENVISION THE FINAL STEPS? 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Finalizing is a joint decision 7.3 The floor is yours 7.4 Time for action

155 156 157 160 172

8

177

GRADUATED: WHAT’S NEXT?

WHO ARE WE?

181

FURTHER READING

183

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS185

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1 GRADUATION: CHALLENGE ACCEPTED The secret of getting ahead is getting started. Mark Twain Congratulations! The fact that you are reading this most likely means you are about to start on a graduation project. In that case you are only one final step away from completing your academic bachelor or master’s curriculum, an MBA or a PhD. And yes, that is indeed worth a compliment. Getting to this point is already a major accomplishment, something to be extremely proud of. Not everyone who starts such a curriculum or program makes it this far. Not everyone is able or willing to finish what they start. And you will, not so very long from now.

1.1

Our alternative approach to graduation projects

Finalizing your curriculum or program will likely be one of the most rewarding things you will ever do. We1 think graduation is wonderful, for starters because it gives you credits for all the time and energy you have spent and everything you have learned over recent months or years. And it will be something tangible to present to the outside world and 1

Curious who ‘we’ are? Directly after chapter 8 we introduce ourselves briefly and say something about us, our backgrounds, experience and us as the authors of this book.

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show what you are capable of. Graduation is a deliverable, a business card and a perfect crown on all your hard work. If you are working on an MBA or MBA related curriculum, you have so far been in a class with fellow professionals following a prescribed schedule. You may have been studying part-time alongside your regular job, meaning that you have been juggling your studies, your work, your family and your friends while trying to fulfill your personal ambitions at the same time. And you have probably sometimes felt there were not enough hours in a day. Has it all been worth it so far? Either way, it’s now time to finish up and start applying the knowledge you have gained. If you are working on your Bachelor or Master of Science degree, your graduation project will be totally different from anything you have done so far. No more course work, no more obligatory attendance and no more exams. You are no longer tied to a schedule, prescribed reading or lazy group members who seem incapable of doing their share of the work. Instead, you will be able to do pretty much what you want, how and when you want to do it. Sure, your institutions will have some conditions or guidelines regarding the subject, execution and planning of your project. These will vary at different institutions, and may differ per faculty or even per individual supervisor. Regardless of the format of graduation at your institution, one thing remains the same: it is about you crossing that highly desired finish line. This book does not give a step-by-step guide to writing a graduation project. Partly because there is already a lot of literature in this field, and partly because we think there simply is no one-size-fits-all approach. Or if there is, we are not aware of it. Nor does it give you instructions on what methods or techniques you should use to get the ‘best’ results, whatever these may be.

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We encourage you to adopt a realistic and very workable attitude to graduation by using a combination of practical tips and tricks, questions, exercises and examples from students and teachers who have already been through the process.

G r a d u atio n : c h a l l e n ge accepte d

What this book is about This book will challenge your current perspective on your upcoming graduation. It will transform it into a very practical and useful perspective. In seven chapters we give our views, ideas and practical tips on what it means to be in charge of your own graduation project, how you can benefit from it and what ‘being the leader’ of the project actually entails.

This book is for all aspiring graduates Whether you are in your early twenties and trying to finish your engineering bachelor, in your forties rounding off an MBA, or retired and aspiring to a master’s in psychology, each graduation project involves some similar elements. It is a means to an end, namely completing your degree. It may also be your entry ticket to another program or a specific job. But graduation is also something much more personal. A way to show your parents what you have been doing all those years besides partying with friends, or to show your boss that your education has not been a waste of the company’s resources. Graduation is about you During your curriculum you may consider the educational system at your institution to be a bit too ‘schoolish’. People telling you what to read, what to do, when to do it and whether or not you are doing it right. Especially when there are a large number of students in your program, you can sometimes feel like a sheep in the student flock, with the teachers herding you in the direction they want you to go. In such a system it is difficult to stand out. Until now, that is, because your graduation project is the perfect opportunity to do pretty much what

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you want, how you want it and when you want to do it. The question is how to make yourself and your graduation project stand out from the crowd. How are you to make sure that your graduation project represents you and everything that you are capable of, instead of what all students in your program can do? The only way to do this is to make your project entirely your own. And the only way to do that is to continuously take the initiative, stay active, and most importantly, stay in charge of your work. Nobody should get the chance to steer you in a direction you do not want to go. Your graduation project will bring together things you enjoy, things you are good at and things that motivate you alongside your existing knowledge, experience and curiosity. The challenge lies in combining all these ingredients in a way that makes the final product totally yours, while still complying with the rules and regulations of your institution. Moreover, you are going to have to do this knowing that there is somebody (or several somebodies) who are going to tell you what is good and what is not. Not only will they have an opinion about your work, they will also be the people who decide whether and when you graduate and, when you do, the grade your work is awarded. Boss versus leader The key to accomplishing that perfect mix is to understand, remember and make sure that the ‘boss’ and decision maker of the project – your professor – does not also have to become the leader of your graduation. Because these are not necessarily one and the same. Bosses are the people who have the mandate to make decisions. That is often part of their job description. During your graduation project you cannot change the situation that there is a boss judging you and signing your degree certificate. But does this boss role make him the undisputed leader of your project?

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This may sound like news to you. But perhaps you have already taken the leadership role on several occasions, for instance when you had questions and asked them. At that moment you were leading the process. Or when you chose a professor, or when you set a meeting with her. Or when you applied for that amazing graduation internship at an external organization. Here too you were taking control of your own project. In all these circumstances you are taking the initiative, you are making your project happen. Right there and then.

G r a d u atio n : c h a l l e n ge accepte d

This is where you come in, because there are many things you can change. You have the ability to influence the topic of your graduation, the composition of your committee (your team), the schedule and of course the content, direction and goal of the project. And does it not make much more sense for you to lead your own graduation project? In the end it is your project, and always will be.

We are almost sure you’re thinking ‘yes, but’. You are about to tell yourself that this is not how it works, that the committee decides everything and that they have control over when and where you graduate. And that surely this will only be after you have completed your project just the way they wanted you to. You simply have no say in the matter. Well, too bad. Because we are pretty sure nobody has ever told you that’s the way it has to be. It is merely a picture that you have created in your mind about graduation. And right now that is the one thing holding you back from taking the lead in your own project. And it should not be. So, have we roused your curiosity about the idea of being in charge of your own graduation? Good! Read on, give it a go. We promise it’s a lot easier than you may think. The question is not whether but when you will have the ‘is that all?’ moment we are sure will happen.

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Figure 1.1

1. Graduation: challenge accepted

3. Are you ready to set sail?

5. Who is in charge of your graduation project?

What do I want? What do I need from myself and from others?

Leader vs. Boss Managing your project

10 km 20 km 50 km

2. What stories and myths exist about graduation? What is a realistic picture of graduation?

A+

4. What does it take to get people on board? Research proposal Personal proposal

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. n.. he

dt an

FINI SH

6. How to deal with unavoidable setbacks?

7. How do you envision the final steps?

8. Graduated: what’s next?

Completing, presenting and defending

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1.2 Overview of the book Whatever the graduation format at your institution, the people who will be supervising you or the subject you choose or get assigned to, graduation is serious business. And regardless of the endless possibilities of what your graduation process and project can look like, it will require your time, effort and dedication. Others will be there along the way to support you, whether academically or socially. But in the end there is only one person who is truly motivated to cross that finish line. You. You have only a limited influence on the binding conditions for your project. But, as you may already have figured from the previous section, we are convinced that you do have a choice when it comes to your own role in the process. If you decide that you want to have both the responsibility and the opportunity to determine the course of your project, well then this is your book! Figure 1.1 shows the elements we will discuss in order to help you assume control of your project and become a good leader of your graduation team. Chapter 2 You have probably heard many stories about graduation projects. And we guess many of these were not particularly positive. It is the bad stories you hear and remember. And believe it or not, the stories that people tell each other are in many cases pretty much the same. But are they purely objective observations from the person who tells the story, or might there be something else underlying all these horror stories? Our first step is therefore to take the most common stories that people tell each other about graduation projects, and in each case determine what truth there is to them. We then describe some possible ways to set

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Chapter 3 After disposing of all the myths about graduation in the previous chapter, we use this chapter to get you into graduation mode. We encourage you to define your personal goals for your graduation, whatever they may be. Making these goals explicit is necessary in order to determine the ways and means of reaching these goals. What do you have to do to get started, and what does it take to stay productive? It’s almost equally important to also define what you need from others. From your committee, but also from your fellow students, friends and family.

G r a d u atio n : c h a l l e n ge accepte d

up a graduation project that may show you it’s not such a big deal as you perhaps have imagined.

Chapter 4 Now you are in graduation mode, but that does not mean your team members are too. So what do your team members need from you? You will have to convince researchers that your project is worth their time, effort and expertise, for example. You will most likely do this in the form of a research proposal. We will discuss the elements of such a proposal together with insights into why they are valuable in the first place. We will also consider whether people outside of your institution might play a role in your project. What does it take from you to help them help you? Chapter 5 By now you have set your graduation goals, decided who you want in your team (and who not) and you have convinced them to be a part of it. But this does not immediately mean you are the leader of this group. You still have to actually do the research, so the best part is yet to come. Becoming the leader of your project might not even be so difficult. The real challenge lies in staying in that leading role during the course of the project so that you can complete it and achieve the goals you have set in your planning.

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Chapter 6 When everything is going great it might seem easy to keep everyone motivated, including yourself. But what happens when you encounter situations where things are suddenly not running so smoothly? Even when you are in charge, have clear goals and a good team, ‘stuff’ will happen. The so-called ‘graduation dip’ is apparently unavoidable. For some this immediately means crisis. But it does not necessarily have to be. Chapter 7 After all the hard work you put in, you find yourself in the final stage of your project. It is time to round off, time to actually graduate. Many students believe that the graduation committee decides when you have reached this point, but we will explain why that is not how things work. Even in this final stage you can still take the initiative and remain in charge of your project. Sure, your committee will have the decisionmaking power, but that in no way makes your pre-discussed goals and planning suddenly worthless. Chapter 8 Suddenly it strikes you: you have graduated! You are now a Bachelor or Master of Science, an Engineer, a Master of Arts, a Master of Business Administration or a Doctor. What’s next? In this chapter we connect everything discussed earlier with things you can do after graduation. You can decide whether you want to use your graduation experience as an example of how you will handle any project in the future. Are you also going to be in charge here? Or are you going to let your future boss steer you in the direction of his or her goals, instead of your own? It’s up to you.

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2 WHAT STORIES  AND MY THS EXIST ABOUT GRADUATION PROJECTS? Myths which are believed in tend to become true. George Orwell Remember that course in your curriculum that took forever to complete, that you perhaps even had to retake a couple of times. The course everybody around you was always talking about, about how hard it was to pass. So, do you have that in mind? OK, now, from your memory, think about this: how thick was the book for this course? Just spread your fingers and make a rough guess. And how many pieces of paper did you use for lecture notes, assignments and practicing? Again, just an estimate. Fifty, one hundred, two hundred? Now go to the attic, grab the big dusty box with old books from under your bed or go to the library. Anyhow, find the book and measure it. We bet that in reality it is quite a bit smaller than you remember it. The same goes for the amount of paper you used. That also will be far less than you thought. Even if you did not do this little test, you can imagine the outcome to be true. But how come? Well, this is how it works: your brain loves shortcuts. Bad memories about a difficult course must be backed up by bad information. So, because a thick book is worse than a thin book, your brain files it to be thicker than it actually was. The same goes for your graduation. Since you picked up this book, you are probably looking for a way to make your graduation project a little

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easier, or you want to feel a bit more in control. Maybe you are looking for ways to make it more fun. This must mean that somewhere you are slightly afraid of your graduation, whether you admit it to yourself or not. Guess what happens… Your brain plays the same tricks on you as it did with the book of that horrible course. It is full of negative and false information. Information that for sure does not help you in any way. So it is time to get rid of it and create a more realistic picture.

2.1 Introduction Even if you have not yet started with your graduation, you will probably have noticed the huge number of negative stories that exist around it. True, some are nice and positive, but these are unlikely to outweigh the horror stories that tend to get around. When we are uncertain, unfamiliar or even a little afraid, our brain picks up on these negative stories much more readily. And just as we do with gossiping, we somehow seem to enjoy the bad stories and even make them worse (and more spectacular) every time we pass them on to others. Just take a look at what happens on TV, in tabloids or on social media… But although exaggeration may make any story sound more interesting, it is no help whatsoever in reaching our goals in daily work, study or life as a graduand. It is actually counterproductive. Consider for instance the valuable weeks it could take to change the unrealistically negative picture of your new manager or supervisor after hearing (and perhaps elaborating on) the negative stories about this person. The same principle also applies to your graduation project. It is all too easy to collect numerous stories about loathsome committee members whose sole purpose is apparently to make your graduation project as difficult as possible. Stories that range from ‘them coming up with something new you had to include every time you met them’ to ‘them

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Now ask yourself the following question (and answer honestly): does it help you when you hear or think about these stories? Does it help you if you make these stories more interesting and probably more alarming when you tell them to others? We can assure you with absolute certainty: No, it does not. Apart from the fact that such stories will not do you any good, they are often also untrue. Of course a much less dramatic version of a story may well have taken place at some moment in time. But the truth is that most of the negative things you hear about graduation projects are highly exaggerated, and may even never have happened. We are convinced that such stories are no more than someone’s impractical attempt to blame someone or something else for something bad. People in general are very good at pointing fingers to others or to ‘the system’ when plans don’t work out. We seldom blame ourselves. As already said, we will help you get a realistic picture of graduation into your head. This chapter therefore starts by discussing some common stories or (as we’ll call them from now on) myths about graduation. We will test their level of truth and their level of usefulness. We will then suggest a couple of research questions and approaches to illustrate more or less what graduation is about, followed by the experiences of an individual professor and a former student concerning what we discuss in this chapter. After reading this you will undoubtedly have an ‘is that all?’ moment, convinced that the start of your graduation project ‘can’t be that easy’.

W h at s to r ie s   a n d m y t h s e x i s t abo u t g r a d u atio n p r o j ect s ?

correcting their own corrections from last time’. No wonder it can drive people crazy.

We conclude the chapter with the most important part, the part where you can make a start with taking charge of your own graduation project.

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We will give you some small exercises and questions that will help you get a more realistic picture. This picture will form the basis for what you read and do in the following chapters. We then round off by listing some common pitfalls and give you some tips and tricks on how to avoid or deal with these.

2.2 Five myths about graduation projects In this section we discuss a number of very common mythical stories about the graduation process. We derived these from our own experience and from interviews with students who were about to start or had already completed the process. We also asked supervisors about their take on what graduation really is or should be about. From all this, we selected the five most common issues. There will be many more, but we are sure that after reading this paragraph, you will be better able to put those also into perspective. In section 2.3 you can fill this freed-up space in your brain with more concrete and notably more realistic ideas of potential graduation projects. 2.2.1 ‘Whatever I do, I will have to change it the way they want’ People, in general, love solutions. They also hate problems and uncertainty. When somebody perceives a problem, he or she will immediately start looking for ways to solve it. This is also the case when you are discussing your work with your supervisors. How they respond and the sort of reaction you get depends in large part on you. More specifically, it hinges on the way you present your work. Consider a situation in which you have just come up with what you believe is a great way to solve a problem you were having in your project. You have done the research, written up your findings and sent the latest

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Although it was not really what you wanted to hear, you walk away with the idea that you now know exactly what to do. You have a to-do list, changes to be made, literature to be read and so on. You are happy because you now just have to incorporate their opinions, finish your to-do list and be done with it. Or so you thought, until the next time you meet your committee… Again you walk into the room, big question mark on your face, waiting for your committee to give you their comments. And again, you will walk out of the room with their view on a solution for that problem. This circular dialogue will repeat itself a few times. Each time you walk out of the room a little less happy than the time before. Sure, each time you did exactly what they asked you to do. You try, again and again. And every time you think: maybe this time they will be satisfied. And yet, there you are again, with your committee in a room, an even bigger question mark on your face this time. This is so frustrating. Is the committee completely ignoring your work and ideas and are they just trying to turn it into what they want it to be?

W h at s to r ie s   a n d m y t h s e x i s t abo u t g r a d u atio n p r o j ect s ?

version of your report to your committee. During a meeting you ask them what they thought of your work. Your committee members, who really want to help you, start giving their view on the matter and suggest other methods of solving the problem and why these will work perfectly.

Even though it may sometimes seem that way, they are not. They are merely trying to provide their solutions for problems you seem to keep having, the one you thought you had already solved a while ago. But instead of presenting your solution, you kept presenting them your problem. By asking a general question like ‘what do you think of my work’, you are basically telling your committee that your work is a problem and you do not know how to solve it. So your committee members, who really want to help, explain their solution assuming it will solve your problem. At the next meeting, however, you seem still to be stuck at

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the same point, with the same problem. That can only mean that their last suggestions did not work, so they need to think of something else. And this time it will not be your original solution either, because you have already made clear that you were not all that sure about it. This can go on endlessly. If nobody changes anything in the situation, that is. So when does this stop? Simple. When you stop presenting your project as a problem. 2.2.2 ‘Graduation is about finding the truth, which is impossible’ A long time ago people thought that with enough research, you could find out the truth about anything. However it eventually became clear that in most research areas it is impossible to find the indisputable truth. People continuously develop things that work. And figure out how these things work. They do research in the hope of getting a better understanding of how the world works. Every day new articles are published in many different fields with conclusions that complement or even contradict earlier research on the subject. But can we be sure that this time we have found the truth? Do we know that whatever happens, in any situation, the conclusions of the researchers will be valid? No, we do not. At most we can say that we have found a worldview from the perspective of the researcher, based on a set of assumptions (which is nothing more than theory) and collected data from (for instance) experiments. Analysis of this data and inductive reasoning then leads to conclusions, that merely – or at least – hold up under that specific set of assumptions. Another researcher who uses a different approach will almost certainly end up with slightly different conclusions. Even the first researcher can do his work a little differently the next day, leading again to slightly different results. And nobody knows which experiment leads to the truth. This does not mean that all these

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Your graduation project, like all research projects, is not about finding the truth. It is about producing a defendable work, given the goal and scope of your research and the boundaries you have set. If you promise somewhere in the introduction of your report that the goal of your research is to find the truth about something, you will find yourself having a very hard time finishing and defending it. Your work will simply never be comprehensive enough to keep that promise. There will always be more literature to read, more methods to apply and more people to interview.

EXAMPLE Imagine that you are interested in the issue of sick leave. When you promise to find the reasons why sick leave takes place, you will have a very hard (and not so happy) time during your graduation project. So promise something else. Promise that your contribution to a better understanding of sick leave is interviewing 25 people from a certain company and see whether, somehow, their reported reasons cluster in some categories. Read some literature on sick leave and compare the reported reasons you categorized with the reasons cited in the literature. Some will be the same, some will be different. Interesting! Your work is based on existing research and your work taught us something new, as you have found some reasons that had not yet been described! So you suggest, and no more than that, that it is worthwhile researching these new reasons a bit more, so that maybe in the future, if other researchers keep on finding the things you found as well, we can include these extra reasons for sick leave in a newly developed theory.

W h at s to r ie s   a n d m y t h s e x i s t abo u t g r a d u atio n p r o j ect s ?

results are not equally useful. Without all this research we would not know so much about building bridges or the inner workings of the human brain.

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But, if not the truth, what do you claim in your research? Consider the example on sick leave. Note that it makes no promise that it will give reasons for sick leave in general. It merely promises to examine whether there are any clustered reasons for sick leave in a specific 25-person group, and if so, what these reasons are. The results from this research may or may not hold up for all the sick leave in the world. We simply do not know. What we do know is that the results are valid for the part of the system you delineated. This alone will provide relevant insights and will help to direct future research into the subject. So, this particular myth about graduation projects is busted. Your project will not be about finding the truth; you will make a defensible research report. Time to discuss another myth. 2.2.3 ‘Graduation has to be scientific, which is very difficult’ Every day people ask themselves questions that require some sort of research in order to answer them. Just consider what you do when deciding on your summer vacation destination this year. There are numerous options: French Riviera, Tuscany, South America, Sweden or Australia. You could of course also just stay home. Eventually, your choice will be based on a number of criteria like weather, costs, cultural possibilities or preferences of friends. Since few people know all this information by heart, it will require some research to make your final decision. Most likely you can relate to the issue described here. You have probably done something similar many times, whether it concerns your vacation destination or the movie you are going to watch tonight. Nothing new here. However, when the research is labelled ‘scientific’ people suddenly become worried. They seem to think it is too difficult or too time consuming. And they think they cannot do it.

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• Scientific research has to be open and explicit. If you write a report and someone else reads it, that person should be able to do the same research again exactly the way you did it. Basically this means writing down everything you did very clearly and explicitly. What did you read? Whom did you interview? Which methods did you use to analyze your data? • Scientific research builds upon existing knowledge. This means that the moment you know what you want to research, you go and look for things we already know about the topic. You can talk to experts, read existing literature and search the internet for past and current studies into the same subject, summarize what you found and explain how or what your research will add to the existing knowledge.

W h at s to r ie s   a n d m y t h s e x i s t abo u t g r a d u atio n p r o j ect s ?

What does ‘scientific’ actually mean? Many people have tried to discover and define it. And just as many books and articles have been written about it. Definitions and explanations vary, but in practise it comes down to a few important, but very basic things. Here are the two things we consider to be especially important when it comes to a scientific graduation project.

Of course it is difficult to cover all aspects of a certain topic. It is impossible to read everything that is relevant to your subject. However, if you find yourself in a situation where there is too much to read, your research is probably aiming for too much. Simply ask a smaller question! Change it into something more specific and narrow down your research area. There will be less relevant literature to read. And for sure it will be easier to find a small element or angle that nobody has yet researched.

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TIP Are you having difficulties overseeing the literature? Consider interviewing a couple of people in the field. A few hours later you will know key publications to look into and be aware of current trends and developments in the area. That is an efficient way to turn from novice into someone with expertise!

We are not trying in any way to downplay the relevance of scientific research or make your graduation project sound as easy as picking a vacation destination. What we do want is to make you reconsider your original thoughts or fears about writing a scientific report. In the end it is nothing more than an incentive to structured working. And an easy way to make you start with your research. 2.2.4 ‘My professor and my supervisor are never satisfied’ Think of a sport you used to be into (and might still be into). Maybe field hockey or soccer? Ever since you were a kid you have been out on the field and every Wednesday you and your team practiced for the next game. Regardless of whether or not you won last weekend, you were there, trying to improve and become a better player. Probably you also had a coach at that time. Someone who had a lot of experience with the game. Maybe you have also coached a team yourself. Good coaches praise the players for the things that go well: last game’s beautiful shoot-out and striking cross-pass, the great team dynamics or the players’ individual strengths. That same coach, however, also always pushes the team and its players to become better. During training (s)he will make you practice your tactics and techniques. And when that improves, work with you on your physical health and endurance. When that also gets better, your coach will turn to your ability to work

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But you should not confuse ‘room for improvement’ with ‘not good enough’. Just consider world-class field hockey players like Luciana Aymar from Argentina or the Dutch player Naomi van As. Both are seen as the best hockey players in the world. But that does not mean they stopped practicing at some point. They always had something they could improve, and someone from whom they could learn. The same principle applies to your graduation project. You yourself are the player and your committee members are your coaches or experts from whom you can learn. It is the nature of experts to focus on things that can be improved. So they will never stop motivating you to be better and to keep improving yourself, your skills and your research. They might even be a little too eager to help you and sometimes forget to focus on the good things you have done.

W h at s to r ie s   a n d m y t h s e x i s t abo u t g r a d u atio n p r o j ect s ?

in a team, both tactically and socially. And by then you will find that there are ways in which you can improve your techniques even further, so you start practicing more complicated ball-tricks. The cycle never ends. It might change, but you will keep practicing. As long as there is something to improve, you will never be completely satisfied.

Unfortunately, it is also the nature of experts to ‘know how it works’, to ‘know better than others’ and to say things like ‘if you only do what I say, things get better’. That can be somewhat of a trap. The trick here lies in the way you ‘use’ them. As long as you consult them as experts on the substance of your work, they will react as such by constantly giving you suggestions on how your work could be changed. The moment you play the role of the ‘project leader of your own project’ their roles will change as well. For instance, by presenting your work to them and asking them to review it as it is, as a graduation thesis.

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Then you force them into the role of just decision makers, and they will no longer (need to) be substantive consultants. Project leaders not only present their work, they also lay down the research plan, their own planning, and express their ambitions (6, 8, A-level, cum laude, whatever you want). This forces your committee to review your current work in light of both your ambitions and the amount of time you have planned to spend on your thesis. ‘My professor and supervisor are never satisfied’ might be a myth that we do not want to bust completely. What we do want is to change your perspective on what ‘being satisfied’ means. It is you yourself who can keep your committee endlessly in the role of experts. They will by definition never be satisfied, just like you will always want to improve the hockey skills of your pupils. And it is you who can change these roles. Then, automatically, the others will follow. 2.2.5 ‘I can never defend my work, my committee always knows better’ Ask yourself this: Who is the expert on the topic of your project? Maybe after reading the previous sections you can guess where this is going. But oddly enough, even though it makes so much sense in theory, this is something we are not really used to in practice. Growing up, probably from preschool on, there has always been someone to tell us if we found the right answer to a question. That concept does not hold up anymore. Remember that, if all goes well, you are focusing your project on something that has not been done before. So although it may not start out that way, in a very short time after you start you will be the only expert on your graduation topic. Some students take a question posed by somebody from a business concern as the starting point of their project. The chance that that person already knows the answer to that question is slim, otherwise

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Graduating academically, whether for a PhD, an MBA, a Master of Science, a Master of Arts or a Bachelor of Science, means moving towards the frontiers of current knowledge. Yours and everybody else’s. It is about finding out something new. That means that neither your committee, nor your client, knows the answer when you start. Nobody knows where you will end up, that is the joy of it. Most (or all) members of your committee will have experience with supervising graduation projects. They are familiar with the graduation process since they have seen it many times. That is why you have put them in your team. After all, you do not graduate often, so you basically asked a couple of experts to help you out. This means that they can help you pursue a certain path when you carry out your research. They can help you formulate a research question, find key publications and select an appropriate method for answering that question. They will also know the right questions to ask in order to get the most out of your research. They can even help you in drawing and formulating conclusions and answering your research question, given the data you collected and analyzed. However, they do not know in advance what the answer to your question will be.

W h at s to r ie s   a n d m y t h s e x i s t abo u t g r a d u atio n p r o j ect s ?

he or she would probably not have entered into this elaborate process just to have you figure out something that is already known. The same applies to the professor or methodological expert in your committee. They love their job of doing academic research, find new things and publish about them. Trust us, they would not be spending time supervising you if you were working on something that has already been done.

Your defense will thus not be about your committee judging whether the answer you found is correct. Nobody can know ‘the correct answer’, let alone judge whether or not it’s yours.

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But then why do they still seem to know better as they ask such tricky questions? There are two reasons for this. Firstly, like we said before, your committee does not know the answer. But they do know a thing or two about the process of getting to that answer. The questions they are asking you are a way of testing your research skills. Secondly, they are only able to make those questions look tricky because it is easy to look at your process in hindsight. Realize that when you started with your graduation process they would not have been able to formulate those questions. Now, when everything is finished, it is easy to suggest other possible routes you could have taken. Maybe another method would have been better, or possibly a larger or different sample group? It is easy to question your approach when you have a process to look back on. There is no way you can answer these types of question with certainty. Fact is, neither can your committee. They are basically suggesting another method than the one you used because they are curious about what you expect will happen if you were able to go back and make changes. Not because they want to torture you or because they know the answer. They just want to hear what you think and want to hear your reflection on your work. The question that remains is what to do? Especially when your committee formulates the question a little starkly by saying things like ‘your method of interviewing people is wrong, you should have used experiments!’. A possible answer could be: ‘Dear committee, thank you for your interesting new methodological suggestion. Although it has not been part of my research, so I do not have elaborate and well-grounded answers, it is for sure interesting to discuss. Compared to interviews I see now, with hindsight, some clear advantages.

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And that is pretty much all there is to it.

2.3 Examples of realistic research When a toddler suddenly crosses the street, lots of people get stressed out. Drivers who fear they will hit the kid, anxious parent(s) standing on the sidewalk and of course the scared kid himself who sees a car coming closer very fast. Given this, you might think that it could be interesting to study the street-crossing behavior of children. The resultant insights could reduce accidents and child fatalities and save peoples nerves. Consider the following possible research question:

W h at s to r ie s   a n d m y t h s e x i s t abo u t g r a d u atio n p r o j ect s ?

These are […] (tip: most of the time, the committee already mentioned one or two advantages in their questioning). But compared to not doing interviews at all, I would also miss these elements […]. However, it is a very interesting suggestion for further research to look into the opportunities that this other method can bring.’

Do 5-year-olds look ‘left and right’ before they cross the street more often than 4-year-olds? You might think this sounds like an easy enough question. But it really is not. It is far too large for a graduate project. Let’s take an example to illustrate what answering this question would entail. First, what kids are we talking about? Kids living in cities? Or in the countryside? And in what culture? An individualistic culture, or a more

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group oriented culture? And to what social group do these kids belong? And do you mean you want to study crossing behavior when they just come from school and are excited about going home? Or when they are in a city center and tired from a day of shopping with their parents (and probably already crying…)? Secondly, what are your ideas behind all this, your expectations? In research jargon: what hypotheses do you want to test? Is there existing literature on this topic? What does it say? Do older kids watch look out for traffic more often before they cross? If so, why is that? Is their brain more developed socially? Or are they better at making cause and effect relationships? And do all authors who have written articles about this subject agree with each other? Probably not… If you really want to tackle all these (and probably many more) issues in your thesis, go ahead. But be prepared for very lengthy graduation process. But if you, like us, prefer a more manageable research project, the question needs delineation. You need to ask yourself what exactly the gap is in our current knowledge about the street-crossing behavior of kids. For this you have to determine what piece of information is missing. If you know this, then you know how your research is going to contribute. The most obvious way to deal with this is to make your research question a bit simpler. Merely promise a bit less. How about: ‘do city kids in elementary schools in Amsterdam more often look for traffic when they want to cross the street before they go to school or when they go home?’. It might seem too small at first glance, but it will prove to be enough of a challenge as it is.

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• Study the literature and come up with a clear explanation why answering this particular question would fill a gap in the knowledge about kids and traffic safety (societal and scientific relevance), and • Describe a suitable methodology, probably observations and interviews, you want to use for data collection, and • Explain the kind of answer you will come up with, and • Draw sharp and founded conclusions, reflect on your work and identify opportunities for further research. Then you could definitely graduate on a ‘simple’ research question like this. Let us take a look at another example. Imagine that you are about to graduate as an aerospace engineer. As aircraft become larger and larger, the material used to construct them gets thicker. Also new materials are being developed. Classically, aircraft have lots of riveted lap joints.2 But nobody knows how these riveted lap joints behave when new aircraft materials are used, or what happens when the materials get substantially thicker.

W h at s to r ie s   a n d m y t h s e x i s t abo u t g r a d u atio n p r o j ect s ?

Be aware that small, specific questions are just as relevant as bigger, more general ones. If you:

The main issue in aircraft is that cracks grow due to fatigue of the material. Fatigue occurs when certain forces are repeatedly applied. This is no problem if it only happens once or twice. The material can even withstand much larger forces. However, repeatedly applied relatively small forces may at some point cause cracks to grow, which 2

No, you do not have to know what riveted lap joints are to understand the rest of this book. But if you really want to know: sheets of aluminum that form the outside skin of an aircraft need to be joined together. You overlap them a little and join them using rivets. That is a riveted lap joint.

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might lead to fatal accidents. It is thus very useful to identify the forces needed to make these cracks occur, to find out after how many repeated cycles the cracks start growing and after how many repeated cycles the structure collapses. So, before we continue, do you think that ‘creating insight into crack growth behavior of both thick and new aircraft materials’ would be a good subject for a graduation thesis? Remember that you only have limited time and resources, while gaining any real insight into crack growth behavior would require hundreds of research projects, if not more. That is the reason why professors of a certain age write thick classic books in their field of science. They can write these ‘insight’ and ‘overview’ books, because they and their staff have actually done all these smaller research projects over many and many years. Several of these smaller projects were probably even graduation projects at some point in time. The feasibility of a project is essential. You have to determine what you can do during your graduation time. Probably you can do some experiments by making several sets of lap joints of the classic material, a few the new aircraft material and a few of the classic material, only a bit thicker. You can test these sets in a comparable way by applying repeated forces on each of the specimens. Then after, say, 10.000 cycles of repeatedly applied and removed force you look for cracks. If they appear, you measure the length of the cracks. This gives you some interesting data. Now you can analyze this by comparing your findings to available literature and see whether you can explain the differences or particularities you might have uncovered with your tests. Now think about what kind of research promise could tie in with this defined experimental research. Definitely not ‘insight into crack growth behavior’, as that would be promising far too much. Maybe something like ‘comparing three sets of lap joint specimens of different thickness

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You see, there is not that much to it. Just remember to keep it simple. It will make your graduation time much more pleasant. If you have the idea it’s getting too simple, you will be much more on track to a practical graduation project than if you tried to be ‘complete’.

The professor Ernst ten Heuvelhof In my experience as a graduation supervisor I have indeed noticed that people tend to tell each other different kinds of negative stories about graduation, stories that could very well discourage students from even starting with graduating. But I have also seen it happen later in the process, when they let such stories reduce their efficiency, causing delays and frustrations that were completely unnecessary. I will give you three examples.

W h at s to r ie s   a n d m y t h s e x i s t abo u t g r a d u atio n p r o j ect s ?

and material in crack growth occurrence and crack growth speed under controlled applied and removed force conditions’.

‘Committees make appointments and agree with each other, but when you talk to the committee members individually, they all have a different story about your graduation thesis.’ ‘The companies you have your graduation internship with load you with enormous amounts of work, and, after that, you also need to find time to write your thesis.’ ‘Committee members each have their own so-called hobby horses: their favorite topic that they frequently dwell on. These ideas, methods, thoughts or theories have to find a place in your graduation, despite earlier agreements.’

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You have to understand that the people around you tend to help you when they have the idea that you are struggling or that you have no clear idea of what to do (yet). In general this means that your committee members, or anybody who is involved in your graduation project, will try different ways of ‘helping’ just to see what works for you. They might for instance have the idea that the original plan for some reason does not work for you, so they come up with something different in order to make sure you stay productive. In my opinion, that is always better than putting the process on hold completely. In addition be aware that, even if it may not always seem that way, committee members and external advisors are also just people. People who tend to forget things or change their opinions, just like everybody else. I therefore think that taking minutes of meetings is extremely important, just as clearly documenting appointments, action points and project schedules. As a student you should always bring these plans with you and – subtly – bring these plans back to our minds when you think that is necessary. It also helps to maintain the pace of your work, so that committees and companies do not get the time to change opinions or forget things. When it comes to riding hobby horses by committee members, fixating on some topics, theories or ideas, good reporting and a high working pace help. But don’t forget that these topics, theories or ideas your committee member likes so much are also opportunities. Making this topic, theory or idea part of the proposal in the first place guarantees you a little extra effort from your supervisor. The same holds true for companies. They are very much interested in the outcome of your study, for their own good. If they have the idea that your output is valuable for them, they will give you more freedom and more help.

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Carlijn Remmelzwaal By nature, I am a positive person with an optimistic attitude. I saw graduating as a beautiful finish to my curriculum. A project all on my own, a topic of my own interest. However, the closer this project came, the more my attitude was influenced by horror-like stories from my friends, fellow students and house mates. Deadlines would impossible to achieve, your project plan would always be turned upside down, supervisors would be permanently inaccessible, would disagree with you by default and would never think your work is good enough. It has been a dreadful thing to experience my initial happy mood turning 180 degrees into a big fear of starting this brutal final project… During my graduation project I discovered there was not much truth in these horror stories. Good planning and self-discipline and you will make the deadlines. The attitude of the supervisor is basically a reflection of your attitude towards your supervisor. If you are prepared, (s)he is willing to support and guide you. And more willing to free up space in the agenda to make an appointment with you! True, my initial research proposal changed a lot. Initially I wanted to do a lot of things. My supervisor told me that graduating is researching a very small thing, otherwise you cannot do it and your conclusions will be very vague and general.

W h at s to r ie s   a n d m y t h s e x i s t abo u t g r a d u atio n p r o j ect s ?

The student

By being open and honest, also about my doubts and frustrations, I came closer and closer to finalizing the graduation project. I discovered that in this way I got positive feedback. From my supervisor, but also

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from myself as I made progress, there was a finish that I could see. It made me proud that I was simply ‘doing’ this horrible final project. Given my experience, I have the following tips for you: Choose a topic you are honestly interested in and feel related to. This gives you twice as much motivation and the project looks like half of the work. Be open. Do not push away your fears, doubts and frustrations. Talk to your supervisor, but also to your fellow students, house mates, study mates, friends and family. If you get stuck, better to immediately express this than to stop working for weeks, feeling unhappy about it and feeling more and more insecure. And don’t forget to express that you are happy and that you are proud of your project! Make a complete planning schedule of the research project before you actually start. It may be difficult to plan for half a year or so. However, it makes you think in advance where to place the deadlines and evaluations. This also gives you an idea how the project relates timewise to all the other things you plan to do in that same period, both privately and professionally.

2.4 Time for action Do you remember the stories about graduation we talked about earlier? What stories do you tell yourself? Are they positive (e.g. ‘when I graduate I can finally look for a job and live my own life’) or negative (e.g. ‘so far, taking the courses was already a struggle, let alone graduating’)?

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W h at s to r ie s   a n d m y t h s e x i s t abo u t g r a d u atio n p r o j ect s ?

Also think about what stories you tell other people about your graduation? Positive (e.g. ‘yeah, indeed, I am almost there; you guys are going to come to my party, aren’t you’) or negative (e.g. ‘these stupid regulations, procedures and forms we have in our university delay the graduation so much’)? If all the stories you tell yourself or others are positive, that’s great! Keep that up! We will continue to work with these stories in chapter 2. If one or more negative stories are making an appearance for some reason, it’s time for action.

EXERCISES Write down what people tell you about graduation. Write down what you tell others about graduation. Write down what you tell yourself about graduation. Make two groups of these stories: ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ ones.

Some of these stories will be about yourself, e.g. that you say you are always staying late at parties and therefore wake up too late to start working. Stories about yourself are relatively easy to deal with. Buy an alarm clock. Ask a friend in your team to drag you away from the party on time, or make an appointment with fellow graduates to start working on time together in the morning.

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Figure 2.1 Positive stories Graduation stories

Negative stories about others (myths)

Negative stories Negative stories about yourself

But there are also other negative stories. They are not about you, but about how other people affect you. This is the category of stories in which the myths occur. It is in these stories that graduates blame others, the system or the outside world for why they themselves have such a hard time graduating. Myths occur for two reasons: 1. Because we don’t know things. 2. Because it is simply easier to blame others than ourselves if things don’t go well. And, very important, as we saw earlier in this chapter, the bad stories also tend to get worse when passed on. They will frighten ever more new people who want to start a graduation project. And that is a shame! So we will now deal with these stories. We gave you five very common examples. You will probably be able to think of many similar stories, related or unrelated, in your own situation.

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Ask yourself whether these stories make your life easier and your graduation project more enjoyable. Will they help you graduate faster? Will they help you get a better result? And also important: will they make your fellow graduate students be happier and enjoy their graduation time better? Does it help your friends or your parents to hear these stories? Does their sympathy and compassion about ‘the horrible time you are having’ really help you? We guess you know the answer. Of course these stories do not help you at all! Or anybody else for that matter! On the contrary. They drain energy, they reduce motivation. Why? Because you have found someone else to blame. You have told yourself you cannot do anything about it. As a result, you will not do anything about it. And nothing will change. Accept your attitude and motivation. But not for the better!

W h at s to r ie s   a n d m y t h s e x i s t abo u t g r a d u atio n p r o j ect s ?

Dealing with them is not so difficult. The main question to ask is: do these stories help you? Your horror stories about supervisors? Or the stories and complaints about all the forms and procedures as obstacles along the way?

So what do you do? Here is a short and simple action plan that will most likely help you to see these stories for what they really are: useless.

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Figure 2.2

Graduate! • Use your energy for your research Bust and thesis, • Just forget about the myths. instead of Test Tell others not worrying about • Does the all the supposed to bother you story have horrors of Realize with these some graduation. • Negative characterisitics stories. stories do of the myths • Work from the not help at discussed in realtistic picture all if you you have created. this chapter? Listen • Correct the • The stories take no stories you that you tell action. made up or are told, yourself into are they realistic ones. negative or postive?

Dealing with the critics Maybe after you have read this text you will tell your friends about it. Their reaction? ‘Yes, but in reality it is much different. Reality is more difficult than a simple book can describe.’ In this stage of the graduation process, when you are gearing up to start, this is the most classic pitfall you can encounter: ‘Yes, but…’. What then? Do we all just say ‘OK let’s forget everything we have read and go back to the point where we believed graduation was extremely hard and difficult and we will never be able to do it.’?

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We notice that a lot of people seem to be comfortable within their fatalistic perspective on why things don’t go the way want them to. These people are the people who regularly use ‘yes, but..’ remarks, very often in reaction to others who offer a solution to their issue, or who try to make them see things from a different perspective. They feel that things happen to them, and that they have no control over it. Whatever the reason for people to use the words, ‘yes, but…’ is a guaranteed motivation-killer and energy-drainer. It is also a showstopper, because nothing changes or happens. Also not your graduation. But instead of taking action and at least attempting to change things, the ‘yes, but…’ people sit down, do nothing and wait for things to get better. This, in most cases, will not happen unless you make it happen. So why would you accept a situation in which you don’t do what you want to do, or don’t reach what you are aiming for? So do you put yourself back into your negative thoughts by the ‘yes, but…’ remark of someone else? Or do you ignore it and use your newfound perspectives to complete your research and thesis the way you want it to?

W h at s to r ie s   a n d m y t h s e x i s t abo u t g r a d u atio n p r o j ect s ?

Well, that is an option. It is a choice. Your choice. But do you want it? Does it help?

The choice is totally yours.

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TIP Here we have a few ‘yes, but…’ remarks for you. We thought we could list them already, as they will cross your path anyhow, sooner or later. And we have put our reaction between brackets. Just as a suggestion. Yes, but… … reality is different (of course it is, but so what?). … supervisors do what they do anyhow (okay, put your supervisors in that role so you will delay your graduation if that is what you want). … that is easily said from a distance (the only thing easy here is to sit back and do nothing because the world is so bad for you). … for psychology or so this might work, but I am an engineer (sounds very practical and convincing to us, complaining that engineering is more difficult than anything else, doing nothing and seeing the psychology students graduate). … in the end it is the professor who decides (hey, we have seen this one before, it means you are not in charge, and it’s another reason to sit back and do nothing and see the others graduate). … you can’t learn graduation from such a simple and stupid book (okay, fine, then either take another book and get to work, but shut up to the others who do want to give it a try and graduate).

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Are you still with us? Nice! We promise you much more practical stuff to come. Keep your head up. And keep enjoying. In the end, your graduation project is by far the most rewarding part of your studies!

W h at s to r ie s   a n d m y t h s e x i s t abo u t g r a d u atio n p r o j ect s ?

Now that we have challenged our ideas about graduation and rejected the not useful and demotivating ones in favor of useful and practical ideas, it is time to get ourselves and the people we work with into graduation mode and ready for action. We will discuss this further in chapters 2 and 3.

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10 km 20 km 50 km

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3 ARE YOU READY TO SET SAIL? The ones who win have a plan, the ones who lose have an excuse. Marc Lammers In some ways, a graduation project is like a journey. Common elements in both cases are that you are heading somewhere, you have a choice of routes to get there, and the trip is often already a challenge or an enjoyable adventure from the start. The journey itself can influence your enjoyment of the whole vacation, long before you reach your destination. So you can choose to enjoy it as much as you can. There is also a difference. In travelling, the ultimate freedom of ‘we’ll see where we end up’ is often very appealing. Many people deliberately choose to travel without a fixed plan. They just get in their car or book a train ticket to wherever. They travel around Europe with a Eurail Pass, spend a year backpacking in Australia, or rent a car to travel through North America. Nothing is fixed and anything can happen along the way. That is precisely the beauty of it. If you ‘just travel’, without a fixed plan, then travelling ‘just happens’ along the way. Something that you might find pretty rewarding, and for good reason.

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What happens if you adopt the same attitude to your graduation program? If you want to graduate in the same way as you like to travel, without a plan or destination, graduation will also ‘just happen’ to you. You will have no idea where you’ll end up, with whom or when, and, importantly, you will have no idea whether the trip itself will be enjoyable or not. So you might want to consider keeping that concept of ‘ultimate freedom’ for your after-graduation trip, and embark on your graduation project with a little more sense of direction.

3.1 Introduction Think back to a time when you were performing at your best. Perhaps that was with your soccer team, when you were aiming for the annual championship. Or when you were organizing that amazing party that everyone was was still talking about weeks after. Or the time you managed to produce that amazing dinner that looked so difficult when you first read the recipe. Then again, remember a time when you felt a little lost. A project that seemed impossible and you had no idea how to start. Or a week of summer vacation that you spent dejectedly indoors because it never stopped raining, while everybody around you was enjoying the sun somewhere else and you had already seen every episode of your favorite TV show. You had simply no idea what to do. How do those two situations differ? Well, aside from the obvious ones of course, a significant difference is the presence of a clear goal in the first example, and the lack of any goal

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.

Not having a goal or doing things without a purpose is not always negative, but it is not an ideal state to be in if you want to get things done. People simply perform better when they have goals. Without an objective, you wander around directionless, often without reaching or achieving anything substantial. And as you may have guessed, the same applies to your graduation project. That is why this chapter is about making your goals explicit and giving you something to aim for. We will also discuss the tools and the people you may need along the way. Because just like travelling, if you know where you are heading, and with whom, it is much easier to figure out how you are ever going to get there.

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in the second. Of course we all ‘just hang around and do nothing’ from time to time, and that can be very fulfilling, for instance because it is so much in contrast to our day-to-day life.

3.2 Personal goals for a graduation project Determining your destination, your goal, is not that hard. Even for your graduation project. When will you be completely satisfied? If you get a specific grade? If you graduate cum laude? If you have mastered a specific skill or worked with a specific professor? If you had fun? Why do you want to graduate in the first place? When we ask students this question there are a couple of things we hear quite often. The reasons vary: personal, business or social motivations.

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Personal motivation Personal goals can be to prove to yourself that you can do it, hence making the personal goal the academic degree itself. Others want to have a good time, while yet others are fed up with studying and cannot wait to start a job. Or, if they do an MBA, they may just want to go back to their offices and their ‘normal’ work. There are also students who can’t wait to start working with a specific method or a new theory relevant to their field of interest. Social or business motivation Students with a more social or business motivation often give reasons that amount to proving to others (not so much to themselves) that they can do it. The higher the grade the better for them, preferably in the top 5 percent of the class. Some have quite clear goals about where they want to go with their lives, and for them graduation is just one of the many steps. Now ask yourself: What is driving you to graduate? Are you driven by personal, business or social reasons, or perhaps a combination of all three? Or do you have no reason as yet, but you are doing it ‘just because you have to’? If the latter is the case, just start by asking yourself some simple questions. Try to define whether your reasons to graduate are more personal, business or socially oriented. In other words, do you want to get a certain grade or gain specific experience for yourself, or because of others around you? Or a combination? There is no right or wrong here, it is just valuable to establish what is going to motivate you in the months ahead. Then try to think of more detailed reasons. What are your specific ambitions in terms of grade, methodological experience or business connections. Do you care about your grade, or do you just want to pass?

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Enjoy your graduation project And last but not least, do you want to have a good time during your graduation project? Is it important to you to enjoy this period? Or do you just want to get it over with? This goal is just as important as all the others, even although people often take it much less seriously. We can’t understand why that is. If you enjoy what you are doing, you will usually perform much better and more efficiently than when you don’t.

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Is there a specific skill you want to develop? Or do you want to get to know people in a certain field, in order to get a better idea of what you want to do after you graduate?

For sure, if you decide now that enjoying your graduation time is not a priority or even a goal at all, you will end up not enjoying it. We can pretty much guarantee that. So you might as well start by deciding that you are going to have fun. As always, that is a choice. Your choice.

EXERCISE Now, take a post-it, write down all the reasons why you want to graduate and stick it above your desk, on your mirror or on the fridge. Just to remind yourself of why you started your graduation project in the first place

3.3 Essential building blocks There is no ‘road to nowhere’. You need a destination in order to determine how to get there. In the previous paragraph we discussed the concept of selecting a destination for your graduation project. You have formulated goals. The next step is to determine how you are going to achieve those goals.

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Achieving any goal generally requires two types of building blocks: ‘things’ and ‘people’. ‘Things’ are a plan, methods, computers, theories, books, articles, research questions, goals, materials, software, measuring devices, paper and pen. ‘People’ are friends, committee members, fellow students, teachers, fellow graduates, people from the administration, audiences, the waitress serving your daily coffee in the café, hockey team members, parents and family. This concept applies to pretty much any activity or project and certainly also to your graduation project. After establishing your graduation goals, you need to figure out how you are going to get there. And for this, you need both types of building blocks, things and people. Figure 3.1 BUILDING BLOCKS

• • • • • • • • •

Things What courses do you like? Any software you are interested in? Certain machinery you like to operate? What articles do you remember from last month's newspapers? What are the most interesting books you have read? What examples you always tell others from your curriculum? What do you say if anyone says (s)he considers enrolling in the same curriculum you are graduating from? Where does your motivation come from? Anything that gives you energy?

• • • • • • •

People What teachers do you like? What people can you work with easily? What people do you want to work with? What people can you learn from? What people make you happy? What people can motivate you? Whom do you like to be around?

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Answering these questions (and any other that you find relevant) will give you ideas on how to go about achieving your goals. On one hand you need to choose methods to collect and analyze your data. On the other hand you need a committee that guides you through the process and that gives a grade at the end. You might also need somebody you can talk to on a daily basis to make graduation a little more social and enjoyable, or who you just generally see as being able to give good advice and keep you sane. You also need friends to go out with when you are feeling downhearted. When you oversee your answers to these questions, it may look like a pile of garbage. How can these be the ingredients for a successful graduation project? Well, believe us, it is quite simple. You can compare it to the parts of a car. If put on a pile, they look like a scrapheap, a pile of useless garbage. And they are indeed useless as long as they are separate. But put them together in the right way and they form a working automobile. We will do the same here. Look at the building blocks in the figure. Yours may look completely different, no problem. All you have to do is put these building blocks in the right order and in relation to each other. Suddenly you have the backbone of your graduation project.

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Figure 3.2 Motive to do the study

Time

Topic Data Energy Fellow graduate students

Graduation committee members

Social support Experts

Question(s) Methodology

Motivation

Conclusions Friends

‘Healthy’ distraction

Let’s go through your drawing of building blocks. Have you already come up with some subjects, courses or issues you have always liked? These may provide good ideas for a research topic for your graduation. You may already have chosen a topic some time ago. These questions help you to delineate that further, if necessary. And have you found things you are particularly good at? Or something you really want to learn more about? One of those things could be used as a methodology for your research. Or as a theoretical framework. Building blocks you like are more useful Please note that at this stage it is not so much a question of whether your building block can serve as a methodological or a theoretical framework. What matters is whether you like it and want to use it. At a later stage we will try to find out how precisely we will convert your interest in a specific concept into a theoretical framework for your graduation research. Or how your interest in a particular course can be translated into a method for gathering your data. Or how your interest in

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Topics, methods and theory are highly important, but usually these concepts already get enough attention. They are likely to be the first things people think about when considering their research project. They are likely to be the topics you discuss with others. At least as important however are the people who play a role in your graduation project. Nobody can do it alone, if only because you need a professor to sign for your accreditation. You may have some people in mind when it comes to your committee. If not, what about one or more teachers you have always admired? Perhaps one of them could be suitable as your supervisor? In the remaining part of this section and the next we elaborate on the ‘people’ building blocks.

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a certain teacher can be transformed into social characteristics and roles for the members of your graduation committee.

Aside from your supervisor and committee, there are other people who are relevant during your project. You may not consider them to be part of your graduation project in the first place, but they will be. So why not give them a role that can benefit you? Think for instance of a friend who has always known how to motivate you when you needed it? He or she can function as a motivator. Don’t forget your life outside of your project! If your list of ‘people’ building blocks includes ‘friends to go out with’, you might add a standard evening out with some fellow students, once a week or once a month, just to have an evening’s complete distraction from your life as a graduand? There are other people of course who will remain or become part of your life in theh course of your graduation project. Probably many more than occurs to you at first sight, and in many different roles. These people and their roles are discussed in the following section of this chapter.

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3.4 People who make you perform Think about what people you have around you. Probably there are quite a few. Many of them will actually have to do something with your graduation project. Just consider your friends, boyfriend/girlfriend/ partner, roommates, fellow students, parents and family, teammates, teachers, supervisors, experts and so on. You can roughly divide the roles these people can take into the following three categories: 1. Professional (content and process roles) 2. Fellow (understanding your situation, like the roles of fellow graduands) 3. Personal (like the roles of friends and family) Professional People you work with directly on the content of your program adopt professional roles. These may be for instance your committee members, experts you might interview or ask for feedback, people who work at the company you are graduating with, and so on. Professional roles are also important in your research process, for instance in building a good relationship with a supervisor. Fellow Fellow roles are usually played by graduation candidates who are ‘in the same boat’ as you are. They are highly valuable, as they recognize and understand the situation you are in. They may not have a professional, content related role in your project, but you might need them just as much as your professional people. Personal Personal roles are played by people who care about you. These people are less interested in the substance of your project and do not mind much about the situation as such. What does concern them is the effect

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Of course, people combine roles. It is not so much that you need to combine a complete set of people. You need a complete set of roles. Some people perform multiple roles, so with only a few people you might be able to satisfy all the roles you need in your team.

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it has on you, how well you feel about everything. They are interested, to a greater or lesser extent, in you. Your close friends quite a lot, your soccer teammates perhaps a bit less, and the waiter at the coffee company probably hardly at all. As long as you drop by for coffee that’s fine by him, though every time you order he asks you how your project is going.

Do you need all these roles during your graduation project? That depends on your personality and how you like to work. Some people prefer to work more on their own. Working by yourself and not dealing with all kinds of interactions with other people can save a lot of time. In the long run, however these loners are more vulnerable if things don’t go the way they want, or their progress stalls. Others love to be around people 24/7. They invest a lot of their time in relations with everybody. They can take a while to get their teams up and running. However in the long run they resolve their problems more easily and are more creative as they have input from many more brains. So in a sense, yes, you will probably need many of these roles during your graduation project to a greater or lesser degree. Not everyone you involve in your graduation project will have a very extensive role. But they are all, somehow, connected to you.

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Figure 3.3 People who are close to you

People who are in the same boat as you are

People you work with

Your team

There is one thing you need to consider when decide on who to actively involve: will their presence result in something useful or not? And if not, can you change this? Your personal characteristic To answer these questions you need to know what makes you yourself perform well. Consider listing the things that make you think, or make you act or make you work. How do you make yourself start on a project? Do you prefer to think alone in your room and not be disturbed? Or do you need to talk to someone to clarify your ideas? Or do your ideas take form when you try to formulate them and someone is listening? Are you a slow-starter by default? Then you can perhaps use a motivator to get you out of bed in time for an early start. Here you could benefit from a daily early-morning coffee with a fellow student. This gives you the perfect reason to get up. And, just as important perhaps, you motivate somebody else to do the same!

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Your reaction to criticism Another issue may be that you have a hard time dealing with criticism, constructive or otherwise. Many people tend to get somewhat derailed after a harsh feedback moment with their supervisor or anyone else. This can either be because you feel a little overwhelmed and don’t know how to continue, or because you feel your work is not good enough. These are two different situations that require different approaches.

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Or are you perhaps too easily distracted by everything and everyone around you? But are you also motivated by other people at work? Then again meeting with a fellow candidate graduates might be a good idea. Pick a good place for both of you to work, like the local library. Have a clear schedule for breaks, chatting, social media, etc. This means that at the end of the day, when you stop work and start doing other things, you will not be feeling bad about ‘doing that something else’.

In the first situation, when you don’t know what to do next, you need someone you can discuss your feedback with. Especially when your supervisors are short on experience with graduate projects, they may have a hard time framing their comments in a way you can actually work with. In that case another teacher or professor may be able to help you translate those comments into something you can use and build upon. Or perhaps one of your supervisors can reserve 10 minutes at the end of every committee meeting to discuss your following steps. Then you will leave with concrete ideas on what to do. If the second situation applies in your case, and you think your work is not good enough, remember that everyone has to deal with feedback. Why not compare the feedback you were given with the comments received by other students in your group or department? You will soon find out that everyone gets both positive and negative feedback. And so do you. In general you yourself tend to focus too much on the negative

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feedback you received, while easily recognizing the positive feedback given to someone else. All roles are important Thinking about everyone around you as ‘a team’ during your graduation project may initially sound a bit strange. It is you, after all, who will be investing by far the most time and effort in your project. People who are directly involved, notably your supervisors, may spend quite some time too. But others, like the professors and experts, spend far less time. Still, in their professional role this group is probably the most involved in terms of effort and time. People from the other two groups, your fellow candidates and the people who care about you, may hardly spend serious time on your project. But they can truly also be seen as part of your team. Let’s compare this to another team situation. Sports teams consist of athletes, 11 soccer players for example. But can they perform on their own? They certainly cannot. They need coaches, trainers, doctors and physiotherapists. And they need someone who keeps everything in the stadium running efficiently, who cares about the grass pitches, who makes sure there are enough soccer balls, or who books the trip for an away match. And they need supporters. A cheering crowd boosts the performance of professional athletes. Supporters also pay entrance fees and buy club goodies. If there are enough supporters, companies will sponsor the team. Taken together, all this pays the players’ salaries. In other words, this group of people can only function if all are involved and perform in their roles. Taking a supporter and a world famous striker as both being members of the team may be just as strange as seeing your girlfriend and your professor as both being part of your graduation team. Although their roles are completely different, both contribute to your final goal of graduating. And neglecting one of them may not be such a good idea.

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3.5 Taking the lead In any team, committee or project group there has to be a leader. Note that we say leader and not boss. By ‘boss’ we mean someone with decision-making power. Bosses are often appointed. Leaders, on the other hand, automatically appear. And right now, the boss in your group is probably the professor who decides whether or not you will graduate and who will sign your degree certificate.

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Even so we have likely overlooked a few people. We leave it to you to complete your graduation team. However there is one role that needs to be discussed and will be the focus of the next section: the role of the leader of the group.

Groups with bosses and without leaders are not the ideal working environment. They can end up anywhere, and not necessarily where you, the graduate student, want to end up, which is most likely at your graduation party. Preferably well on time and having enjoyed your project and been awarded a good grade. Groups without leaders often lack someone to steer, motivate and give direction. They tend to miss a source of energy, as well as someone who makes energy emerge from the other group members. Leaders inspire. They also keep everyone involved on the right track towards the group goals. In nature things are often quite simple; you either follow or become the leader. Perhaps you have a dog, in which case you will immediately understand what we mean. If you don’t train a dog well, it won’t trust your leadership. Groups with bad leaders are vulnerable. Dogs care about the group very much, as they are social animals, as are humans in essence. So as a result will the dog will lead you, instead of the other

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way around. And you end up with a barking and biting animal that won’t listen to you, no matter what you say or do. As we noted above, leaders appear. It is possible for a leader to also be the boss, but that is not a given. And the boss, the decision maker, is not necessarily the best and most appropriate leader. Yet people tend to push the boss in the leader role, whether they belong there or not. In graduation projects the professor is very often assumed to be the leader. But can or should a professor be the leader during your graduation project? The professor might be the boss, but you are the leader You may have a guess where we are going with this. You are the candidate, so this project is about you. You have a goal with your project. It is written on a post-it hanging on your mirror or fridge. Whether it is to have six months of fun, or to be the top student of your class, or both, doesn’t matter. You have goals. You probably already have some sort of plan drawn up. So what happens if the leader role ends up with the professor? Then you may have fun, you may become top student, and you may stick to your planning. On the other hand you may not. You might also end up somewhere completely different. After all, you are not the person at the steering wheel, but merely the occupant of the passenger seat. You are along for the ride, with only limited influence on where you will end up, or on how long it will take to get there. There is no way to change the boss. In the end you will need that grade and someone to sign your accreditation. So the professor will most likely remain the boss. This is okay, no need to change this. Professors bring very valuable input to your group and usually have a great deal of experience in their field. These are very important things that you absolutely need to reach your own graduation goals.

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If the professor is also the leader, it means you are now part of the professor’s team. You will end up reaching the goals set by the professor within the time frame the professor has in mind. Chances are that these goals are not your goals. And not your planning. So in order to reach your goals and to keep to your planning, the only option is to assume that leader role yourself. You should be sitting in the driver’s seat. Why wouldn’t you, since you are the person who has to do the graduating?

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But what about the leadership role?

Let us go back to the dog example we talked about earlier. If you don’t lead a dog, the dog will lead you. Not because it wants to so badly, but because the pack needs a leader in order to reach the pack’s goals of survival by means of finding food, reproducing and avoiding danger. Leaders and followers Unfortunately humans are in that sense not as smart as dogs. Humans often appoint a boss. This person is then also assumed to be the leader. But not many people are natural leaders. Most people prefer to be followers. So, by default, most people will appreciate someone to take the lead, so they don’t have to do it themselves. So guess what will happen when you decide to take the lead in your graduation project? There is every chance that the members of your committee will immediately accept this. They will follow your lead. Not because you force them, or because you have any real power. But simply because they are comfortable with it. Moreover they will highly respect it. Try that out in your project and you will be surprised what happens. If you still feel strange about taking on the leader role, have a look at it like this. Leading is steering, not deciding. Leading is making your

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group work with you, not for you. Leading is using all the strengths of each individual in a group or team and using those in such a way that they help reach the group’s goals. Which in this case mainly consist of reaching your graduation goals.

TIP Your professor signs, on her own terms of course, but you can be proactive. By making the appointments. By sending good intermediate versions of your report. By setting an agenda for meetings. By having clear questions. By constantly addressing the planning when discussing what needs to be done. By trying to make your committee agree on the following steps at the end of every meeting (and by many more things).

Before you can be a leader of the group of people that forms your ‘graduation team’, you need these people to want to work with you. For that, they need to be convinced, some a little more than others. This convincing often comes down to showing them that there is also something in it for them, something to gain, something worthwhile. What those possible gains could be and how to go about this are the topics addressed in the next chapter, where we discuss how to build all these people into a team.

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Wil Thissen My role, in essence, is a coaching role. I am there to help students reach their goals during their graduation process. True, in the end I decide whether they graduate or not. And I also decide about their grade. So I have two roles, one is coaching and the other is judging. I can imagine this inspires fear in students from time to time as they may think everything they do will be judged. It is my obligation to separate the two roles when appropriate and combine them when necessary.

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The professor

University staff are ultimately teachers. We help our students to grow, that is the main mission we have to accomplish. We are coaches, we help, we supervise. From the perspective of the student the judgment part may lead to questions like ‘when do you, professor, think it is good enough?’. Of course we have standards, we have our quality control, we have exam committees. There are minimum requirements that we think have to be met to pass an exam and to graduate. But again, in the end, when it comes to graduation we are judges, but above all we are coaches. For a student, the best start in my opinion is to find out what you are really motivated to research for your graduation. Intrinsic motivation is what it boils down to. It is great if you really want to dive into a topic, if you really want to make something of it. If a student comes to my office and asks ‘I want to graduate, tell me what I have to do’, that intrinsic motivation is not yet present. What also often happens is that students opt for a certain method they are good at and try to squeeze a problem in. In both cases, I try to ask a lot of questions, which students don’t always like. But I want them to start thinking. Why this method? Why do you want me as a professor? What do you want from me? As it turns out, from the answers to these questions not only the student learns a lot, but I do too.

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A good start for a student is to make a good work plan. One reason is that I think graduate students should be capable of making a good work plan. The plan takes shape in discussion with the supervisor or with me, of course, but the student should manage that process. Another reason is that students need to manage me to some extent. I read stuff when I see in my diary that a student has made an appointment with me to discuss it, otherwise it easily gets lost in the pile of work, and students need to realize that and act accordingly. That brings me to another point, managing your graduation committee and the people around it. Students need to find out how the people they work with behave, what makes them do things, how they can use them for their goals, and also simple things like how they can contact them, make appointments and discuss. What does everybody expect from a meeting? You hear that a lot of students choose supervisors and professors because of content expertise. I think many other things are also very important, such as getting along well with each other. But for me, too, the content makes a difference. When I find things interesting, I dive more deeply into it. I would like to add a caveat here. Intrinsic motivation is everything to me. So if a student comes up with something that does not fit in very well with my interest, I try to find a place for this student with another professor. The last thing I want is a student losing his or her motivation. Students should have the idea I can help them during their graduation project. Everyone is different and everyone’s needs are different. Also, as a student, you may not be at all well acquainted with the professors and supervisors. So this can be difficult to find out. It helps to discuss this with other students who are being supervised by me. What do they think? What do they experience? And, what would they do differently next time?

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Some students are afraid to take the initiative, as they see me as judge more than as coach. That is a pity. I am very pleased when students come up with their own plans and goals. I am very open to that. Of course, in such a situation I will have a lot of questions. That is because I am interested, because I want to help the student to make the best of it. I want to understand the plan. I want to know the ‘why’ behind the plan. I want to learn. That is the beauty of our profession. We learn from our students. Otherwise it would be boring. If a student comes to me quite near the end of his or her graduation process, and says ‘this was the original plan, here is the planning, now I want to graduate’, I appreciate the initiative. However, if I notice missing links or gaps in the story, I will of course ask questions and make suggestions. A student can graduate if the material is up to the minimum requirements, of course, but it is a pity in my opinion if there is still substantial potential to improve things. Research is never finished, you can continue forever. That is not what I mean. But I want a student to show what (s)he is capable of, to make the best work possible for him or her. The question is whether a student wants that too. The choice is theirs. This influences the grade they are awarded, of course. Better work is worth a higher grade, but when the minimum standard is met, I will never stop a graduation from happening if it is the student’s choice to finish. I think students are often too shy or hesitant to bring things to the discussion table. I love when it happens. I love to swap arguments and talk about an issue. I want to understand what someone’s reasons are for doing something. And I try to make my reasons as clear as I can. In the end, the student takes the decision on what to do. I am the coach.

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The student Susan Lagerweij When I started my graduation project I had a couple of objectives in mind. Some were formal, some were more informal and some were research related. In the first place I wanted to graduate, and if possible with a good grade. At the same time I realized that the graduation project was probably the very last opportunity for me to really spend time on a single topic and get to know all the ins and outs. I set the objective for myself that I wanted to take fully advantage of this. Later on, in my working life, I discovered I was absolutely right at that moment. Never again have I experienced the freedom to spend so much time on a single topic, and I’m glad I took the opportunity. I wanted to combine my graduation research with an internship, because I wanted a more real-life working experience. And the topic itself had to be fun to work on and interesting enough to keep me motivated. During my studies I found all the courses about decision making more interesting than most, and after I passed them I got the opportunity to work as a teaching assistant. I had no doubt that this was my field of interest, and I had to find a way to make it the topic of my graduation project. Defining my research topic was definitely a group effort. When you involve people from a company in an academic graduation project, it’s not always easy to align the aspirations of the company that wants to see results with the requirements of an academic institute. For sure, companies could benefit from taking a bit more of an academic approach, however the other way around is also true. Academic institutes with their emphasis on developing general theories can easily remain entrenched at too great a distance from the high-speed business world.

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During my project I asked many people to help with my research, but I was ultimately in charge. I could have asked anyone, but I was the person to decide what to do. As a student I was fully responsible for my work, and I knew that if it were not to be good enough, only I was to blame.

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I spent quite some time at the start getting my research objectives very clear. Only then was I was able to make sure it was not ‘too light’ for the university and at the same time practical and useful enough for the company. It took me four to six weeks to get this done. On a total period of six months that sounds like a lot, besides which I myself am quite impatient. However, I’m sure that this investment in time has paid off during the rest of my graduation project.

I had a very specific time objective: I wanted to graduate before the summer break. During the summer people are on vacation at different times. It’s impossible to get a committee together, let alone to plan a graduation defense and ceremony. I think doing what you like and what you are good at is the best thing to focus on when it comes to a graduation project. Personally I don’t believe in students who use their graduation project as an opportunity to learn more about a new method, a new theory or a new topic. It’s already quite a challenge to graduate, so why would you make it more difficult by stepping out of your comfort zone when it comes to topics and methods? When I had to form a graduation committee I knew I wanted to involve people with good energy levels. There’s already so much you have to figure out yourself, so getting energy from the people I worked with was important to me. First of all, I wanted to build a good relation with my daily supervisor. The professor and the external experts were less important in my opinion, as I didn’t see them that often. My daily supervisor was the closest in my team and I wanted us to connect really

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well. His or her knowledge about the topic is far less important than people usually think. A good connection results in energetic and useful meetings. Of course, in the end you yourself have to do the job. However the interactions with people gave me the motivation to do that job better and more efficiently. During my graduation project I used the responsibility I had to its fullest potential. A good example is how I planned my working days. Some students who interned with companies were quite passive by saying ‘I receive a monthly salary, so I have to be at the office every day from 9 to 5’. I figured it worked much better for me to spend one or two days a week at the campus, and three days at the office. Just communicate what works best for you so you can deliver the best possible product; people around you value that much more. Universities and companies may look quite strict with all their rules and procedures, but in fact there is no truth or only one way of doing things, so you need to improvise and make things work for you.

3.6 Time for action This section gives you the opportunity to work actively with ‘things’ and ‘people’, the building blocks we discussed earlier in this chapter. Things What are your answers to the following questions? We repeat the questions we used as examples earlier in the chapter and added some more at the end. • • • •

What courses do you like? Any software you are interested in? Specific machinery you like to operate? What articles do you remember from last month’s newspapers?

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A r e y o u r ea d y to s et s ai l ?

• What are the most interesting books you have read? • What examples do you always cite when telling others about your curriculum? • What do you say if someone says (s)he is considering enrolling in the same curriculum you are graduating from? • Where does your motivation come from? • Anything that gives you energy? • What kind of programs do you watch on TV? • What issues in the world are you concerned about? • What articles in the newspaper, on TV or social media do you look for most of the time? • Anything in your direct surroundings that you would like to change? • What are you dissatisfied with in the world? • What makes you angry? • What arouses your interest? Using your answers to questions like these, let’s try to find the following building blocks: 1. Topic 2. Product 3. Method 4. Theory Let’s take an example. If your answer to ‘what courses do you like?’ is ‘fatigue in aircraft materials’, and you like testing machines, it might not hurt to consider testing specimens for fatigue crack growth in a testing machine as topic and method respectively. This needs further specification later, of course, but this is a practical start. What could be a product related to this? In other words, what would you like to be your contribution? What is written on the last couple of pages of your report? What do you add to what we already know? In our

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example this could be a model based on statistics that predicts crack growth speeds in a certain material under certain conditions. With such a model a designer could specify data like thickness, crack initiation and load and the software would use these to plot potential crack growth speeds? That may be quite ambitious, but if this is a product you like, you can find out how you can contribute to this. For example you could conduct your research as part of a broader research program in your department. If you are an MSc student, perhaps you could contribute to the research program of a PhD student? Theory is usually not so difficult. You need to use existing literature on the topic to identify precisely where the current gap in knowledge lies. You also need the theory as a basis of comparison for your own work, to see whether your findings are in line with what could be expected from the theory, and to see if your work delivers new insights that we didn’t yet know about. In that case, consult an expert to find out what crack growth theories your department mostly uses. Either choose a combination, or focus on one in particular. Of course, further specifications are needed to make this choice a useful theory for you work, but that too is for later. People We discussed three categories of roles you need to varying degrees during your graduation project: business, fellow and personal. Now try (as we did earlier) to answer the following questions in order to find the people (or type of people) who might match one or more categories. • • • • • •

What teachers do you like? What people can you work with easily? What people do you want to work with? What people can you learn from? What people make you happy? What people can motivate you?

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• Whom do you like to have around you? • If you want to go out, whom do you call? • If you want to have a relaxed evening with someone, whom do you call? • Whom do you invite to your birthday party? • What shop assistants do you remember and why? • What social reasons do you have to prefer one café to another? In the category business, you need to identify a professor to sign for your degree, one or more supervisors from your institute, external supervisors if you are doing your graduate project at a company, and experts you can consult on the content of your work along the way. Relation first, content second Very often people choose the person(s) who supervise them during their graduation project on the basis of the knowledge they have about a certain topic. That makes sense. If you want to graduate on crack growth behavior, it is useful is crack growth is the specific expertise of your supervisor. However, supervisors have to guide you through the whole process. Ideally supervisors are capable of getting the best out of you. To do so they need different skills over and above content and topic related expertise on crack growth behavior. You can get content expertise from many different sources as there are many people you can turn to and literature you can read. Good guidance through the whole graduation process requires at the very least a good relationship between you and your supervisor. It also requires certain social skills from your supervisor that need to match what you need. We therefore strongly recommend that you make sure you make a good match with at least one of your supervisors. Even when times get tough you need to be able to get on with it together and finish the project. Go

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and talk to some people and see if there is a match. You may have some candidates in mind among the teachers of the classes you followed. If these social requirements have been met, only then should you turn to content expertise. Does your supervisor have both? Ideal. If not, find another expert for the content, but do not abandon a valuable good match between you and your supervisor! ‘Other’ people around you: probably most important It is a little easier to identify people for the fellow role. You will simply know a lot of them already. You just need to let them know you are at work on a graduation project. When talking to fellow students, discuss what you want from each other during your project. That could be peer reviews of each other’s work, just meeting for coffee from time to time, early morning appointments to get you out of bed, or weekly meetings to discuss the week’s progress. When it comes to personal roles, you of course already know the people who can fulfill this role. They are the people you like a lot, the people who care about you. Even so, these people also have very important roles to perform in your graduation project. They are friends to turn to when things are difficult, to blow off some steam, to share happy moments. Other friends or family can keep an extra eye on you during your project, making sure you eat well, get enough sleep, and so on. Just talk to each other about it. These people and their relation to you could well be the most important factor for your success, because we, human beings, are ultimately social animals, to some extent like dogs. Perhaps, as we’ve already pointed out, that is not so smart when it comes to leadership. But still, being social is in our genes.

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When it comes to fellow graduates and personal relationships, just draw up a list of people. Add anyone in your surroundings you can think of. Also your soccer team members, the people at the café where you go for coffee every now and then in the morning, and don’t forget your best friend or partner. Which of these people could ideally play a role during your graduation project? Don’t think about whether they would be willing to do it. That is for later. For the present, just write down or sketch out what, from your perspective of achieving your graduation goals, their ideal role would be. And of course think of what you can do for them in return. Living and working together with other people is like sharing a social bank account. You make deposits and withdrawals, but being seriously overdrawn is not a long lasting, stable or sustainable situation. What you need to do to convince them to really work with you, that is to say to make this group into a team, is to take on the leader role and read the next chapter.

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4 WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO GET PEOPLE ON BOARD? Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it. Dwight D. Eisenhower Why do people do things they love, like going on vacation or playing an instrument? And why do they do things they hate, like studying for days for that extremely boring course or going to the dentist? Why do people train for months to be able to run a marathon? In each case they do it because there is something that drives them and motivates them. This could be some internal driver, just to see if they can do it, or it could be some goal they are aiming for, like graduating from university. Or they simply do it because they love it. Who doesn’t like going on vacation? And why do people not do things? The obvious reason is because they don’t want to. If you don’t like basketball, there’s little chance you will find yourself playing basketball or watching a match on television anytime soon. Another reason for being hesitant about doing something could be that there are other things you cannot do because of it. You can spend your time and money only once. You have to allocate these resources. You have to decide which things you really want or need to do, and which things are a little lower on your list of priorities. When you are doing a project you most likely need certain people. But people generally don’t have unlimited time to spend. People cannot take

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on every project that comes their way. Other people and other projects compete for their time. So they will opt for something that has the highest potential for them, whatever that potential is. And they prefer to commit to something that matches their interests. The important issue for you as a student starting out on a graduation program is the matter of influencing others to join your project. How do you get others on board to help you reach your goals?

4.1 Introduction Among the matters we have addressed in previous chapters is your motivation for undertaking a graduation project. We also touched on the fact that although a graduation project is something you yourself have to do, you still need some people to help propel you to the finish line. People with different backgrounds, skills and interests. But how are you going to get each of these individuals to be part of your graduation team? You are somehow going to have to convince them. If anyone were to ask you to join their project (which could be anything from shopping for groceries to solving the global food problem), you would have questions for that person. What would you ask? You would probably want to know what the project is about, why it needs to be done and how long it is going to take. And are other people going to be involved? You not only want to have answers to these questions, you also want to be convinced that this project is indeed going to lead to the goal it envisages. In order for you to participate in something, you want to know what is expected of you. Do you need to go along for groceries to help to carry them, or are you also expected to pay for it all? Without this information it is going to be difficult to assess whether or not you can and are willing

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Moreover, when the ‘project’ is more than just a small favor (like shopping for groceries), it becomes increasingly important that there is something in it for you, some sort of reward. This reward can be anything, such as feeling good about yourself, receiving a compliment from someone, or, receiving a monetary compensation. If none of this is the case, why else would you ever consider taking on a big commitment like joining an expedition to Mount Everest? Clear goals is what you need Earlier in this book we discussed the fact that people generally perform better when they have clear goals. And by clear we mean something you cannot hide from. ‘Being more sporty’ is vague and you have all the freedom in the world to determine whether this goal has been met. Going by bike to do the weekly grocery shopping could already be enough, but months of training to do the New York marathon also fits the case. A clear goal is what you need to make explicit when precisely you will be happy.

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to participate. A recent back injury or being broke might very well influence your decision.

But besides being clear, a goal should also be realistic in terms of both the accomplishment itself and the resources that are presumably needed; otherwise you are headed for a disappointing experience no matter how much effort you put in. The same principles apply to your graduation project. In order to convince people to join your team (like a professor, a teacher or even a fellow student), you need to be able to tell them about the project, what you want from them, and what is in it for them. In essence, making a project proposal or research proposal for your graduation project is nothing more than trying to convince some people around you to join

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you in that project. Whatever their role is you are asking them for their time and effort. And they want to know why. Let’s elaborate a little on what people would like to know. We will then present you with a simple setup of a proposal that you can use as a guide the first time you talk to others about your project.

4.2 Creating interest and momentum It is now time to find out how exactly the graduation process works in your institution. You can’t convince a team of people to join you in your project if you don’t know what the constraints, scope and limitations of such a project are. Go to the website of your institute, talk to a graduation coordinator, or pick up the leaflets at the student information center. Try to answer questions like: • What do you formally have to do to start a graduation project? Filling in forms? Enrolling on a website? Have a formal meeting with a graduation coordinator? • Will you have a full committee with a professor, a first and second internal supervisor and external experts with monthly meetings, or maybe only one supervisor whom you meet three times? • How do you officially find a supervisor? Does (s)he need to sign forms or does somebody else, like a professor or exam committee, need to approve such a supervisor? • Can you cast around for a bit and talk to some people so you get an idea whether you can work with someone? Sometimes the formalities make this seem impossible till you try, and then discover that academic researchers too are just people who prefer to work with people they like.

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• How do you identify your topic? Is there a list of topics available and some sort of predefined project outline and do you have to pick one of these? Or can you come up with something completely on your own? Also here, formally it can look like you don’t have much freedom, until you just drop by and talk to people. Nothing better than students to give researchers fresh ideas for new research projects! • What meetings (if any) are you formally required to have with your professor or committee during the whole process of graduation? Only one at the start and another towards the end? Or weekly? Or monthly? With the full committee? Or weekly with your supervisor and only occasionally with your committee? • Do people often graduate on real life projects in organizations, or more often on research related topics within the institute? • Do you have to finish all courses before you can start your graduation project? • Is there some sort of graduation preparation course available? • What is the official scale of a graduation project in terms of student credit points (like the European ECTS grading scale) or in terms of hours (e.g. 800 hours) or months (e.g. 5)? • What are the criteria on which your graduation project will eventually be judged? An official list of criteria is usually available, but you will see that these are general criteria. So you may want to get an idea of how these criteria will be interpreted by discussing them with your supervisor. As we pointed out earlier, there may be many ‘horror stories’ doing the rounds about all of these questions. That is normal, unfortunately. So the thing to do is not to be distracted by these. Get your information from a trustworthy source and if in doubt, be sure to really check the facts before you believe them. A concrete example of this is duration. If the official duration of a graduation program in your institute is five months, then plan your project to last 5 months. It is ridiculous to think

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‘oh, it will easily be eight months because everybody around me says so’. In that case you just have created an eight- month project in your head and we can assure you it will take you eight months. Five months is five months, so unless you personally want it otherwise, put that in your plan! The information you now have determines the constraints within which you lead your graduation project. It is like a flight slot: within these formal boundaries you have every the freedom to do things your way, but the moment you approach the limits it becomes troublesome.

4.3 Meeting potential team members Now you know the formal restrictions, it’s time to think again about your team. You probably have a few people in mind you would like to be a part of your graduation committee. Your selection of ‘committee candidates’ is probably based on their expertise on the subject, their reputation as a supervisor, or your personal experience with them in the past. You may already have had one or more exploratory meetings. Before you go to their offices and simply ask them to join your project team, take some time to really consider your project goals and how to define their role. In other words, • what you want to ask them, and, • why you are asking them. Many students, even those working for their MBA, think university staff are like high school staff. Hired to make them learn, give them grades and move on to the next class for years on end. However, university staff

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are not like your high school teachers. They are academics, they are researchers. They love to do research. And publish about it in journals. And go to conferences with their ideas and results, to discuss them with other researchers around the world. Discussions that lead to new questions and thus to new inspiration for yet more research. What about teaching? Well, that is part of their job. Some like it, some don’t, some are good at it, some a bit less. Getting a researcher who loves research, publications and conferences on to your graduation team is not so difficult. Their reward is research. Offer them a chance to participate in a very appealing research project. This is where your project or research proposal comes in. Based on what we have discussed so far, the figure below sums up what it takes to persuade someone to participate in a project. You need clear and realistic goals, otherwise others have no idea what you want to do. They will certainly not spend time on nor step into a project about which they have no idea. Another essential is a clear role definition, exactly what you want from other people. And somehow, if only between the lines, people want to have an idea about what is in your project for them. A reward. Just the pleasure of being part of yet another research project is usually enough. Even more rewarding is a contribution to their line of research or to an existing research project. This is more rewarding, but also puts greater pressure on your project, as it suddenly becomes part of a possibly critical path in another project.

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Figure 4.1 Role definition

Clear and realistic goals

Reward

Motivation to participate

There are several reasons why you need academics on your team. They have lots of research experience, while for you it is a new thing. Supervision is essential. Learning from a master. Some academics in your team will probably also have specific expertise on either the methodology you use during your project or the specific application field. And at least one of these academics (most often the professor) is the person who takes the final decision on whether your work is of sufficient quality for graduation. Here again we come back to the essential question. How do you convince someone that your project is worth their time and energy? Just assume that someone has asked you to join a project, and that you know you also have a judging role (about graduating or failing). What kind of information would you want to have before deciding to participate?

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How about the following questions? For the sake of overview we have put them in categories. Content What is the research about? What do you want to achieve? What is the application field? What people would be interested in this research? And for what reason?

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EXERCISE Make a list of questions you would ask if somebody invited you to join her project. Make it now, before you read on. We will show you the list we came up with later in this chapter.

Goals What does the research add to what is already known? Researchers love to publish and go to conferences to present new things. You will make them very happy by explicitly stating what ‘new things’ you are planning to discover. In other words, what is the not-yet-existing-knowledge that you are going to uncover in your research? Which knowledge-gap are you going to fill? Research question(s) What are questions that you want to answer with your research? There will be lesser and more significant questions, so draw up a hierarchy. Overall questions about fatigue in aircraft materials might involve auxiliary questions about specific material thickness, types of lap joints, types of rivets and so on. Research methodology How will you carry out the research? Are there parallels with existing research? Will you follow a certain school of thought? But also more

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concretely: do you plan to do interviews? Use testing machines? Online surveys? Reading texts and categorizing elements? Are you going to do social experiments in the lab? The last page… What will the final outcome of your research look like, more or less? Are you going to include recommendations? Will it be a table with numbers and interpretation? Will it be a numerical result of a calculation? Will it be a graph, a map, a categorization, a drawing, a design for a process, an outline of a supply chain? Project participants/team What people are needed to carry out the full research proposal? Who is already on board and what kind of people do you still need? Who do you suggest as experts? Who will be involved externally? Take this a step further, specifically for your supervisors. Don’t just tell them that you need them, but also what you expect from them. Weekly meetings? Specific expertise? Assessments at certain intervals during your project? Do you have a relationship with one of your supervisors such that you would dare to ask for help when you get stuck? Or is that a role for a fellow researcher or a friend? Or the role split: the supervisor helps you out on content, the fellow researcher on process and your friend socially? Planning What is your planning schedule? How long is it going to take? How uncertain is this? Will you be highly dependent on others or external factors? If you need materials whose delivery is often subject to delay, your planning should take account of that. If you can do desk research in a library that is open 365 days of the year uncertainty is a much less significant factor. Uncertainty could also relate to social factors. Do you have caring responsibilities for friend or family, or a newborn infant? Are you in a medical trajectory involving regular consultations? Perhaps

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Information sources What sources of knowledge are needed? Who are you going to interview? And what literature will you use? Monetary costs What will the project cost? Not only in terms of the time involved for the people on your team. But also in monetary terms if you need expensive materials or machinery, or costly tests in laboratories, or if you need to travel a lot to interview your experts. This list gives you a general idea of things you need to discuss and questions you need to answer in your research proposal. These are not only relevant for a graduation project, but for any project in general.

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you are studying abroad, your friends or family are coming over and you are expected to entertain them for two weeks in a row. Determine for yourself how personal you make your plan, as long as you are realistic.

4.4 Proposing research: the basics Research proposals come in different forms and sizes. But the basic idea is always the same. It is some sort of contract between people to work together in different individual roles on a research project. We are pretty sure your initial list about what you want to see in a project proposal has much in common with the list of items we subsequently presented. The same holds true for all these different ideas about proposals. People like to differ on formats, labels, length, but in the end it boils down to a very comparable and essential message. By now you have found out how graduation formally works in your institute. If your institute adheres to a rigid procedure about graduation proposals, you may already have found a format in which to present your

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research proposal. If not, it is not all that difficult to draw up an outline for addressing all the questions and issues we together identified in the previous section. Constantly keep in mind that you might be receiving this proposal from someone else wishing to convince you to spend time on it. Would you be convinced if that proposal looked like yours does now? Most of all we hope you have yet another of those ‘is that all?’ moments. If you can judge for yourself whether you would join another project based on a proposal, you have all the knowledge you need to make a good and practical proposal yourself. A first meeting Let’s start with something simple. Something you can present to a potential supervisor or other team member on a first meeting. Perhaps not yet a full proposal, but at least including every element so that others can form an opinion about your plans. That is what you want, an opinion from someone about your research What you don’t want is someone asking you a string of questions because he does not understand your project. Or worse, someone who does not understand what you want and consequently starts giving you hints, tips and ideas. Think back to what we wrote earlier about people giving advice. That person wants to help, but unfortunately you end up constructing a plan that is not yours! An initial proposal What does a proposal in essence look like, graphically? For a start we suggest your initial version for a first or second meeting with a supervisor should not be too long, say four A4 pages. Don’t worry if you end up needing three or five or even seven. Quality is much more important than quantity.

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Note that if a text is too long you risk people not reading the whole thing. Or they just give it a quick scan, with the result that they pose questions for which the answers are already in your text. OK, anyway. Here they are. Figure 4.2

What your research is about Where do you begin? Well, what is the first question you get when you tell others you are planning a graduation project? Probably something like ‘What are you graduating on?’. Apparently this is what people find the most interesting. So describing what your research is going to be about seems like a good place to start. What your research is about has several elements. First, describe something general that people recognize, for example climate change. This is of course not yet specific enough, but people immediately understand that it will address issues that are related to climate change. Now add a few lines on climate change and its effects, but in such a way that you bring the readers closer to an existing problem with climate change. A problem that happens to be the issue you are addressing in your graduation project.

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TIP Ask a friend to read the first couple of lines. These lines should evoke a reaction like ‘Yes, indeed!’ or ‘Really? Show me!’. What you need is to get people interested, either through an instantly accepted statement or by referring to controversial issues.

After writing something in general terms that people recognize, you introduce an issue that people also recognize and this time you refer to it as problematic. Like: ‘climate change means more extreme weather, including extreme wind speeds. The supports of power cables may therefore no longer be strong enough. That heightens the risk of breaking cables and thus potential fatal injuries on the ground.’ So that is now a problem that will motivate people who are interested in these things to continue reading. They hope to find out how you are going to research this problem, what the end product will be (a quantitative risk-analysis, a dynamic model or a redesigned cable support system?). They also consider whether they can and should join your project and if so, in what way. Therefore you now need to become a little more specific on what precisely you are going to research. Remember our earlier chapter on broad and much too general or abstract questions? Indeed, that is not what you want and is therefore not what we are going to do. We need a precise problem. Let’s take our earlier example of extreme wind conditions potentially causing lines to start vibrating, which has a very specific impact on their supports. As such, the supports will not be exposed to extreme forces, but they will be subject to sharply fluctuating forces caused by strong

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In order to avoid this problem of material fatigue you might need to redesign a certain component of the cable supports. Imagine that you have identified multiple potential designs for supports. You want to establish to what extent each of these options can withstand the fluctuations in wind force. However performance is not the only factor. The various designs also come at various prices. And that is your problem. You want fatigue resistance, but it must not cost too much. What could this look like on your four-pager?

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winds. That can cause metal fatigue, which means it will not fracture immediately but only after encountering a force multiple times. Bending it, bending it back. Repeating this time after time will cause the material to collapse. Compare it to a paperclip fracturing if you bend it multiple times.

Figure 4.3

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So you have now made clear what your topic is and what the problem is, and you have explained what you will focus on during your research. What next?

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Research question Research means finding an answer to a question. And although you have explained what your problem is, you have not yet described what kind of question you will answer with your research. For sure, you will not ‘solve’ the problem. The problem is far too wideranging for that. Nor will you discover the truth because – as we wrote earlier – it simply does not exist. What you will find is an answer to a question that is very likely to be asked if someone experiences your problem. You will also find a truth that holds up within the boundaries of your definition and delineation of subject and context. Often problems and research questions get mixed up when presented to a committee, external supervisor or client. In that case it becomes increasingly difficult for these people to judge whether or not they should invest their resources in your project. If your proposal has too strong a focus on the problem, people will somehow interpret this as you promising to solve the problem. We know that this is not going to happen, because it is impossible. If it were possible, it would already have been done on multiple occasions by companies and research institutes with much more research capacity, resources and experience than you on your own. Some curricula don’t focus on problems and their solutions. Instead their emphasis can also lie on gaining an understanding and knowledge about how things work. Doing research for its own sake is a good enough reason for many people. It is a good goal on its own, and results become a ground for more research. If this is the case, you may not have such a clear picture of a problem that needs to be solved. There will still be reason enough to dive into a certain topic. But again, promising that you are going to ‘learn everything there is’ about for instance an ancient language is far too big a promise. You could focus on finding a potential interpretation for a certain text in a certain language. That way you make

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Whether the problem is of social interest or of interest only to scientists does not matter. What does matter is that you must make very clear what kind of question you are going to answer in your research. That is the next element of your proposal. Page one of your four-pager is finished! Figure 4.4

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your research manageable, while at the same time not pledging to find the interpretation. That is just as impossible as finding the truth or the solution.

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Depending on the problem you need more elaboration Whether you can indeed fit this first page on one A4 is closely dependent on your problem. Some very explicit engineering problems may need even less than an A4, as what needs to be done can be far more obvious. But issues involving many people and third parties, like strategic research for companies or government organizations, might need a little more space. Let’s take another example. The step between a narrowed down sub-issue of interest and the problem description will requires a good

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description of the system that will be studied. Some engineering systems are so self-evident that this is obvious and hardly takes time. But some are not. Imagine you want to study the implementation of a new standard for working in engineering construction companies. This is an issue subject to a wide range of opinions, as it relates to both industry and government guidelines and is heavily influenced by the profit motives of commercial companies. This field of players is the system in which you do your research. Your system description somehow needs to show what all these players want, what their goals are, what power and resources they have. And dynamically, how they will act if changes in that system occur. You might want to introduce pay-off matrices and describe how these players may arrive at their choices. This will undoubtedly take you much more than only one A4. However it serves the same goal: getting the reader all the way down from a general topic, to a narrowed down sub-issue, to a problem and eventually to a research question. Method When meeting your supervisor for the first time, she now has an idea of the content of your research, she knows what problem you will focus on and she knows what research question you plan to answer. By now she may be convinced that the topic is interesting and eager to hear the answer to your question. So far, you have attracted her attention. However, if you were to ask her to join your project just on the basis of this information, she is unlikely to say yes. Too much critical information is still missing. You have written nothing yet about how you are going to do all this. The question you asked remains quite expansive. We know we have said this many times already, but unfortunately it is still true! It is difficult to explain in brief how you are going to answer that question. In fact, if you are going to answer the question, you basically have to do a few small research projects. If your research is on aircraft causing noise nuisance

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The good thing about these sub-questions is that it is much easier to explain how you will carry out the research for them. You can define noise by reading literature on aircraft noise, collecting existing definitions and choosing one that you will use in the course of the project. The second page of your four-page initial proposal could basically be one huge table containing all the sub questions you need to answer in order to answer your research question; and for each sub-question you specify how are going to answer it.

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near airports, you probably first need to find out what this noise actually is, but also establish the method used for measuring noise, what physical and psychological reactions people have when exposed to aircraft noise and so on. These small research projects are basically all sub- questions of your main research question.

Figure 4.5 Method Sub-question 1 Sub-question 2 Sub-question 3 Sub-question 4 Sub-question n

There are many methods used in answering questions: interviews, literature studies, experiments, conceptual modelling, qualitative modelling, quantitative modelling (like SPSS statistical models, Excel models or System Dynamics models), narrative comparison of quotes or text parts, observation, participative observation, and many, many more.

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In your proposal, you will more readily convince your reader to join your project if it is clear that applying your proposed method will indeed give an answer to the question. What can help here is not only to specify the method for each question, but also give an idea of what the answer looks like. What is the product? Product delivery and time estimate Methodology is now covered, but the table can be expanded a little further by adding useful information that might convince your committee. It is good to provide an estimate of the time needed for each part. That way your supervisor has an idea of when she can expect some initial research results. So two other columns can now be added to the table on page two of your initial research proposal. These are labelled ‘Product’ and ‘Required time’. Figure 4.6 Method

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If you interview people and ask them about the reasons they see for sick leave, then a list of reported reasons for sick leave originating from that specific group of people could be the product of that step. If you have read the literature in order to define aircraft noise nuisance, then the

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When it comes to time, everyone is always over optimistic. So, we advise you to at least double your initial estimate of time it takes to apply a method and come up with the product. You may even need to triple or quadruple it to arrive at a more realistic throughput time. What counts is not so much exactly how many hours you spend on answering this question, but rather the difference between the moment you start and the moment you finish. If you start on Monday by going to the library, you may spend four hours there. Tuesday you do the reading in six hours and Wednesday you make an overview in another six hours. Thursday you draw a conclusion in two hours. This is only 18 hours of work in total, but the throughput time is almost a week. Of course you will spend the other hours of this week on other things, but this particular task will still not be finished sooner than a week. That can be very important if you need this answer first before starting a following task.

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product could be the definition you will use in the remainder of your research project.

Sources of information and data The table for page 2 of your initial proposal is now almost complete. One thing can still be added. Your supervisor does not yet know whom you are going to interview and what literature you are going to read. In other words, she has no idea yet what sources of information you will use. This you can specify in a list. Simply list your interviewees (e.g. 25 HR managers of company X) and specify the literature you plan to read (e.g. what books, journal articles, internet sources etc.). You add these sources in another column, specified per sub-question, but they should also be included in a reference list on the last page of your four-page initial proposal. Those four pages now look something like this.

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Figure 4.7

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At this point we have answered all but two of the questions that could be asked by a potential supervisor. The first of the two concerns the final product of the project; the second is about your planning. You have already drawn up a table containing the columns product and time. So you have given an indication of what the answer looks like for all sub-questions and how long it should take to formulate the answer. If everything fits well together, the products of all your sub-questions can together form the basis of the answer to your overall research question. We suggest you should explain to your new supervisor, as clearly and explicitly as you can, how all the products add up to a comprehensive product of your research program on about half an A4. That will make it immediately clear what kind of answer can ultimately be expected and thus what the final product of your project will be. It will also be of benefit to you yourself, as you now have a clearer focus. It will look more or less like this.

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Planning The last thing you need to show is your planning. When do you expect the final product of your research to be complete? Planning is strongly related to money. It says something about the time that has to be invested. Here, the same principle applies as for your end product: summing up the estimated time needed for all your sub- questions is good input for your overall planning. In this overall planning you explain what you will do, when you will do it and how long it will take.

W h at d oe s it ta k e to get peop l e o n boa r d ?

Figure 4.8

Your project plan is also a perfect place to address what input you would need from your potential committee members and when you would need it. Because after all, in your bid to rouse people’s interest, one question still remains unanswered: What will be the role of the committee member? Or to repeat our earlier words, what do you ask your committee members? And why do you ask them? Students often come to their offices with the idea that committee members are going to tell them what is needed to graduate. Well by now we don’t have to remind you that this for sure does not put you in the role of project leader. You might graduate, yes, but not on your own

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conditions. In other words: you will do their research, reach their goals in their time window. Not in yours. So you can end up just anywhere. A role like this is definitely not what you need for your committee members. They have the experience in research. They know about the quality level of your work. And they have an idea about quality levels in general. So you want to know from time to time how well your research is progressing. Not by asking ‘what do you think of it?’ since that is asking for general feedback that can propel you in any direction. Be more specific, taking your defined research questions and your planning and asking to what extent they judge your answer to be worthwhile. Or to what extent you have addressed the question by applying your method. Finally, if you are planning to use expensive machinery or materials, you could also add a section on what resources you need and what they will cost. All of this goes on your four-pager. Figure 4.9 Co

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Remember that we began on the issue of a research proposal because you want to convince potential committee members to become part of your team. You want them to work with you, so you can carry out your graduation project. Everyone who is invited to join a project has questions to ask. With these four pages you have already answered many of these. You have incorporated the content of the project, the goals, methods, planning and costs. You have furthermore explained what you need from your team, that is to say what role you want them to take. By now your initial four-pager for your project proposal looks something like this. Figure 4.10 t?

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Are you perhaps now having one of those ‘is this all?’ moments? Proposing a research project is actually fairly simple. It is logical and simply serves a purpose, providing just the right amount information to convince certain people to take part. By giving your potential committee members precise information about of your plans, you show them what is in it for them. Now you are ready to make a deal with them.

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In this section we have assumed that the people you approach are academics. However the same ideas are applicable if you are proposing a project to a potential external committee member in the event you plan to conduct your project through a company. They too simply want to know what they will gain in exchange for any time or money they spend on your project. Whether they are academics or business executives, their commitment will depend on the outcome of a simple cost-benefit analysis they draw up. The clearer you are in your initial proposal, the lower the uncertainty and thus the ‘risk’ they might face.

The professor Bert van Wee For me, an important goal of academic education is to facilitate students such that they can be more independent in thinking for themselves. In many parts of society problems are nowadays growing more complex. More people are involved with an ever-expanding range of ideas about what these problems are, and in particular how they should be solved. There are scarcely any standard recipes left for dealing with today’s problems. This needs ever more work from independently thinking students. One aspect of being independent is to think about what you want from a team of people around you during your graduation project. I very often participate in graduation committees, and very much appreciate students who know what they want from the committee, when they ‘own’ their project as it were. As if they are the manager. In my opinion this can not only lead to more of the independent thinkers we need so much, but also to faster graduation.

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This chapter deals with forming your team and the following chapter deals with leading that team. That is a great thing. I admire students for it and give it an explicitly positive value in my grading of their work. Forming your graduation team and leading it will differ from culture to culture. To me it is of utmost importance that a student identifies the boundaries of his or her playing field, and optimizes his or her graduation process within those boundaries.

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There is a trend nowadays that counteracts this idea of independence. There is an increasing tendency to allow students less and less freedom for efficiency reasons, for instance in their choice of graduation topics and/or methodology. Students can more often pick up some prestructured topics from a collection provided by their professors. This might in some cases lead to a reduction in total graduation project time, and is certainly in the interests of the staff because Masters students contribute to staff members’ research. But it is not always in the interest of Masters students.

One boundary condition is time. Students have access to only a limited number of supervisors and experts, and the time available for these supervisors and experts to meet and interact with students is also limited. My personal boundaries are also time related. For instance I cannot attend meetings with my students on a weekly basis and cannot continually confirm that the work they are doing is okay. They have to deal with that issue with other people, either within or outside their committee. My boundary is also that I need clear, straightforward communication. I cannot spend hours reading elaborate emails with proposals and requests. I need a clear and concise formulation of what a student wants from me. Most of the time I don’t need lots of elaborate explanations just to determine whether or not I can grant a request.

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I believe students can be both overly dependent as well as overly independent in forming and leading a team for their graduation process. Too much dependency leads to followers who are not of much use for solving today’s problems in society, and consequently of less use to organizations. Too much independence however leads to research products that can be highly impractical or even completely useless. Students generally lack the skill to determine the usefulness of their research. They need their committee to do that. For me an important aspect of being the manager of your own project is not only finding out what people you need in your research, but also to what extent you need them. When it comes to choosing the people in your team, that is to say not only your committee, but also the whole team of people around you during your graduation project, I believe too much attention is paid to discussing content. Students need more than just content expertise. And they need other things as time passes. They may need help or supervision to boost their creativity or to find ways of applying their creativity on a research topic. Trust, reassurance and confirmation are other common needs of students that in many cases are not met. What can happen is that students need supervision with the choice of a good topic at the start, then coaching and confirmation during the first couple of weeks of their graduation process and after that, content specific expertise. I can perhaps sum my ideas up with three questions for students: • which dimensions and characteristics are relevant when doing research? • which of those dimensions can I deal with on my own? • for which of these dimensions do I need help from my committee or others?

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The student Kobus Du Toit

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In conclusion: not all supervisors can handle students taking the lead in their graduation process, simply because they may not be accustomed to it. The system of graduation research projects is becoming increasingly lean, rigid and structured in terms of how it should be approached by the student. Whether professors and supervisors are simply directors or can also play other roles depends greatly on the individuals concerned. However all these issues are part of being the leader of your graduation project. You can be aware of them and make how you deal with them part of your plan.

I have been lucky to have had a student life filled with diverse and interesting experiences. Not really knowing what I want to do with my life, I decided to follow my curiosity when deciding on my courses in the belief that one day it would all come together and I would find the clarity and focus I was longing for. To mention a few: my nerdy debugging and optimizing days at aerospace, my mini-United Nations days during my Masters, and my exchange to South Korea, which really opened up my cultural horizons and made me aware of the tremendous opportunities available to young people these days. Even if some choices proved not to be the right ones, knowing that every experience is valuable and will bring you one step closer to what you want is a comforting belief to adopt if you find yourself in a similar position. Trust in your natural gifts and you will figure it out. Ok, so what are you going to do? In my search for that focus and clarity, I wanted to somehow combine all these experiences into a melting pot, also known as my graduation project. I wanted to push myself outside my comfort zone. I believe

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that if you stick to what you know, your thinking and life become stagnant and boring. Dare to dream. That means you must give yourself permission to fail and be open to the lessons learnt, however hard it is to swallow your pride, and be persistent until the failure starts turning into success (on your own terms). But success does not happen on your own. I needed to be very deliberate about the people I decided to recruit on my graduation team. What I needed most for instance was a person with an entrepreneurial spirit, someone who shared my energy and values about learning. Stepping out of your comfort zone is an act of vulnerability, so having people around you who are willing to reserve a safe space for you to explore and learn is a must. Without this, little innovation will come from your efforts. It was with just such a person (the first in my team), that I first began to discuss my graduation project. With regard to the content of my graduation research I initially had a very abstract idea of ‘doing something with business models and policy making’. So I went searching for a professor who was an expert in the application of business models in the public sector. Such a person helped me define a project out of the ideas I had and draw some feasible boundaries around my ambition. In terms of content this allowed me to make a start. Who is your support group? At first I did not know very much about combining business models and policy making, so I started reading as many academic articles as I could. Not smart. I quickly fell into the trap of reading too much and suffering from information overload. In response to this paralysis, I found it a real help to set up an informal graduation research group with some friends who shared a spirit for design and innovation. We had met on a course we took together on creative facilitation and it seemed like the perfect support group. We met from time to time to exchange new perspectives

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on each other’s research topics. In working together like this we made each other’s work more concrete and put it into context. Our research topics were all completely different, but that did not matter in the least. Making regular appointments with these friends and talking about our projects over coffee in the town center was a great way to keep going and get out of the library. It kept us motivated to continue working on our projects. I remember beautiful, sunny summer days sitting outside, sharing some inspiring and uplifting conversations. In addition, from a more personal point of view, my girlfriend kept me motivated. She knows me very well, and picks up signals no one else sees, but that do make a difference in continuing and enjoying your graduation project or not. It was not that I asked her, it just happened. Stress will likely haunt you throughout your graduation research, so having a way to unwind will really help bring a level of mindfulness and concentration back into your work. For me it was making music. With friends, we often came together to play, make and create music. Besides just having fun with no real agenda, music is also about creating something new, which helped me exercise these skills that for sure also my graduation project benefitted from it. Making music helped me stay calm and fresh in a more general sense. Biggest takeaway One of the biggest takeaways from my graduation was discovering that I learn best when talking to people. In that way I structure my thoughts. I learn by interacting with others. This awareness has been crucial for the success of my graduation project and will definitely be very crucial for all projects to come. I need to have people in my team with whom I can seriously interact and engage.

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After some reflection, I realized that I simply have to communicate my ideas to others, most of whom speak different languages and have different perspectives, in order to get creative results. One person’s blind spot is the other person’s vision. Let’s wrap it up To sum up, my team of people consisted of a supervisor having entrepreneurial spirit, a content expert professor, a group of creative friends to view each other’s projects from different perspectives, a group of friends to talk to and have coffee with just for fun and to stay happy, a group of people helping relieve my stress by creating music, my girlfriend and a committee that was willing to listen to me so I could talk to them to structure my ideas. I find this book on student professionalism and student leadership when it comes to graduation appealing. So often graduation projects are more and more pre-structured from the start. The words ‘factory line’ are written all over it. Students are all different. Everyone else needs something unique to learn, but for sure they all need to be in the driving seat to really learn what they need to. You enhance your own learning if you have power over the process. If you stay on the factory line, you keep on fulfilling the requirements of others. If I had relied purely on others for my motivation, I would have stopped my graduation project within three months. If you cultivate your intrinsic motivation, you can become very powerful and all the more interesting for companies to hire. Companies want people who know themselves and use that knowledge to bring their best selves to the table time after time.

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The essence at this stage of your graduation program is to get everyone around you on your team, and to get the team up and running. To achieve this, you need to make everyone an offer they can’t refuse. The easiest way is to stay close to what people like to do and what they are good at. Before you start, check whether your institute has formal rules applying to how you make your proposal. If they ask for an eight-pager, make an eight-pager. If the rules require you to formulate questions first, followed by method and planning, work accordingly. But whatever the rules are, all committees in the world are eventually convinced by answers to the general questions we have introduced. Even if the format in which they are presented may differ from place to place.

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4.5 Time for action

If there are no specific rules for proposals in your institute, remember to keep it short, so people will actually read it. And don’t forget that the more feedback you get the better. It means they have read it. It also means they understand it and have something to say about it. If you get a lot of feedback it means they are interested in your project. They want to make an effort to get the most out of your proposal and your project. If you get hardly any feedback you should be concerned. A lack of feedback does not necessarily mean your proposal is perfect. Unfortunately it usually means that people didn’t read it, or that they are not that interested and they don’t want to make too much of an effort. It could also mean that they didn’t understand it, which leads to suggestions with a very high abstraction level, for example ‘make things clearer’.

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When the time comes to discuss your proposal, make sure you communicate clearly what you want from each person. Everyone has a picture in their mind about what you might need, what you like, how a graduation project works and so on. Often these pictures are not very accurate (remember the myths from an earlier chapter?). Therefore it is important to be clear and precise, and not to hesitate in asking for what you need, when you need it and why. It will make things easier and more efficient, and you will avoid misunderstandings that could become problematic later on. In essence you construct a table like this. Figure 4.11

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Rewarding people for their input is a good thing. Rewards that are close to what people really like work best. Committee members love research, finding new things, publishing about it and going to conferences. Make sure your reward for them is somehow related to that and make your proposal in such a way that they simply can’t refuse to join.

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5 WHO IS IN CHARGE OF YOUR GRADUATION PROJECT? Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower. Steve Jobs Remember that bullying headmaster or teacher at high school? Who tried to impress us all by raising his voice, giving you a scolding and threatening with detention and mandatory early appearances at school for the next month or so? This person is the boss at that point. There can be no doubt that he decides what’s to happen and when. The same holds true for the coach of a sports team who is yelling from the boundary of the playing field, all fired up, threatening to replace you in the team for someone sitting on the bench. This coach is also the boss at that moment. Why are these people angry, or pretending to be so? Probably and most likely because they are reacting to situations they would like to see differently. But does whatever makes them the boss, also make them the leader? Are they leading if they are not acting, but reacting? What happens if they no longer have any power? Will people keep listening to what they’re saying? Will they follow them as leaders?

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5.1 Introduction Probably everyone grows up with the idea that there is somebody around who knows how the world works, someone who knows what is right, what is wrong and who always knows what to do. That’s a good thing. Otherwise many of us would not have made it past the first few years of being a kid who is not yet aware that fast approaching four wheeled boxes are to be avoided at all times, however cute that dog on the other side of the road may look. At these times in our lives the decision makers, the people who raise you, are also the leaders. However, from a certain age onwards you become perfectly capable of making most of your own decisions and that leading role changes; the influence of the people raising you changes to giving direction or just advising if you ask them. That is not only ‘how it goes’, but also the only way you can really learn. Pleasing teachers in school Why then is our school system so fundamentally different? For some reason there is very often a teacher who seems to know the answer, at least until you are 18 years old, but very often also after that at colleges and universities. Whether this is true or not, students at most high schools and universities develop the habit of doing things in such a way as to satisfy the teacher. We can even go as far as stating that some students end up completely missing the goal of a course or project because they only aim at satisfying the teacher by handing in ‘exactly what the teacher wants us to hand in’. The result, whether or not desirable, is that high school kids or students who are labelled by the system as ‘very good’ are at least capable of doing what the teacher thinks is right. But after being part of this educational system for years, it is tempting to continue this way of thinking until you have graduated. And even after

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By now, whether or not because of this book, you have (hopefully) defined your graduation goals, set out a project plan and formed and activated your team. You are ready to actually start working on your project. Why would you suddenly now relinquish the lead and start following others? Why not keep the lead instead and work towards your desired results the way you want to get there? You lead your graduation project team The committee members in your graduation team, or at least the professor, have a signing and decision making mandate. They are the ‘boss’ in that sense. A natural reaction on your part is to also give them the role of leader. And as long as you, as their student, do not show them otherwise, or even worse, are not even convinced that it is you who should take the lead, well, then it is pretty much inevitable. Someone else will lead your project. It will be dependent on your committee, and it will be something that ‘happens to you’ or even ‘happen upon you’. No idea when it ends, what the end result will be or when ‘they’ will be satisfied. And, no idea whether the project will be something you will like or will be proud of in the end.

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that, ‘pleasing the teacher’ is easily rephrased into ‘pleasing the boss’ by the time you start your career. That is tempting because we have become so used to it. Giving the lead to others, doing what makes them happy (or not too unhappy), sometimes even at the expense of what makes you happy yourself.

If this is not what you want, then who is to blame here? Only one person. You can let this happen. Or you can prevent it from happening. It is a choice and it is your choice. It is your choice to either be ‘the leader of the pack’ yourself, or to completely relinquish the control over your own graduation project. You yourself can be the manager of the project, the project leader. The

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person with the vision of where to go and how to get there. Alternatively, you can put yourself in the dependent worker position, getting assignments and tasks from others. Doing work. Nice work, probably. But leading to where others want you to go.

5.2 Boss versus leader Let’s go back to the bullying headmaster at high school. Is he a leader or a boss? Well, for sure he is a boss. He can make decisions that influence you. He has the power to make you stay late at school, clean classrooms or do an extra assignment. He can even expel you or make you repeat a year if he and other teachers deem it necessary. In short, he can make your life pretty miserable if he wants to. But does the fact that he is the boss also make him a leader? He may be, but that is not necessarily the case. Being a leader and being a boss are not as directly linked as they might seem. Leader, follower and boss Consider a situation in which you are being expelled for using your phone in class, when you had been explicitly told that was forbidden. You could blame the teacher with his or her stupid rules and complain about it to your friends. However this would make your teacher both the boss and leader in the situation. But did he or she make you use your phone? Probably not. So another option is to accept being expelled because you apparently were set on using your phone in class. This makes you the leader, while leaving your teacher in the boss role. You decided to do something, did it, and now you accept the consequences. Now that is quite powerful!

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Most people are followers by nature. We are almost genetically programmed to follow others, and a good thing too. Imagine a world full of leaders. That would become very complicated with big fights and a huge mess. You may occasionally have experienced something like this to a lesser extent during your work or studies. A group of people who are all outgoing and strong-willed, taking the initiative and all with their own ideas of what should be done. During a meeting all kinds of ideas come up and are argued just for the sake of not giving in. By the end of the meeting or day nothing has really been done or decided and you can look back on yet another unproductive day.

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Within groups, there are some simple rules that are almost universally applicable. One is that if you remain passive, somebody else will become active. Another is that if you remain silent, someone else will speak up. Someone who becomes active or speaks up, who takes the initiative, instantly begins to lead the situation. If you do not want this to happen, or if you do not agree with the person currently active, you too have to become active.

Every group needs somebody who is able to prevent this kind of chaos. They need a leader. And in order to fulfill this need, people tend to appoint some sort of boss, manager or head of department based on such criteria as hierarchy, formality or age. This formal boss is expected to take the lead. However the majority of these bosses and managers are followers by nature. You and your project You too are most likely a follower. So unless you decide otherwise, that headmaster or yelling coach will remain both boss and leader. But if you take the initiative, you create opportunities to influence the situation wherever possible. Sure, there are rules and guidelines that direct parts of your behavior, and people who enforce these rules. But within these boundaries, you are free to do things the way you want to do them.

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The rules basically determine the size of the playing field within which you can decide on which games to play and the way you want to play them. For you to become a leader, you have to make sure that things happen because you want them to happen. Because you have decided that they are going to happen. Not because you let somebody else tell you it is good for you, or because other people are doing it. Or have been doing it for 100 years, and it is just the way it works. These are all signs that you are indeed a follower, and all offer opportunities for you to change the situation into one in which you are more likely to reach your own goals. What happens is that most students tend to wait for someone else to take action and then happily follow. Or they follow because they think their committee members know what to do, or because they think that is ‘just the way it goes’. While actually, your professor is only active and taking the lead because someone has to. Why not decide that you are going to be active first, take the initiative, take the lead and become the leader of your project? So it is quite simple. You can either let your professor be both boss and leader and risk ending up somewhere he or she wants to end up (and you do not), or you decide to take the lead and steer your project to where you want it to go.

5.3 Being the manager of your project The answer to the question whether or not you can be the manager or leader of your own graduation project is short: yes! Of course you may already have guessed that, based on the chapters you have already read. So the question remaining is how to become and remain the leader of

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Meeting your committee members Instead of waiting until someone proposes a meeting, propose one yourself. Or if your institution works the other way around, ask when the meeting is to take place. Don’t wait around to see when the information finds you, but start looking for it. Take the initiative! When you go to this meeting, enter the room with a clear picture in mind of what you want from it. Do you want answers to some specific questions? Or do you want your work signed so you can enter the next stage of your project? Either way, think of it! By envisaging yourself walking out of the room with the signature in hand, you will enter the room with the energy of someone who has already received that signature. Your committee members will pick up that energy, most likely unconsciously. And most likely they will reciprocate that energy. Getting the signature is not a done deal yet, but it has got closer.

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the project. Again the answer’s quite easy: you just have to step up and use every chance you get to take the initiative.

Once you are in the room, be active! If in your culture the professor should sit down first, invite her to do so. Or ask where you can sit. Look around the table and see if everyone has the necessary papers in front of them. If not, hand out copies. Does everyone have coffee? If not, offer to get it for them right now. Don’t wait for them to ask you. Next step is the start of the meeting. Ideally you should open the meeting. Sometimes this is difficult, as the professor sees himself as the chairman. Then at least thank everybody for being there, for helping you, for reading your texts, for the willingness to give their opinions and answer your questions. You may also want to hand out the agenda. Your agenda.

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Once the substantial part of the meeting has started, take the lead in the conversation instead of just waiting for feedback. Make sure that you first indicate the things you want to discuss. Of course tell your committee that you are very, very interested in what they think of your work and in any feedback they may have. But asking general questions like ‘what do you think of it’ is a perfect opening for them to start talking about what they want to talk about, instead of about the things you want to talk about. If the meeting is merely to give an update on where you are in the process, present your work as a fact. Tell them what you have done and what your next steps are, instead of asking them what they think of your work and what you should do next. Of course, they are the experts, and you should ask them for input if you want it. But let it happen only if you actually want it, not because they think that you want it. If you have specific questions, be prepared to ask them as such. Make sure you have them in writing before the meeting starts, and that you have pen and paper to note the key point of the answer. Make sure all issues that come to the table are really discussed and addressed well. If you don’t understand, ask them to clarify. Make notes, summarize your notes aloud, and ask whether everyone thinks you have understood things correctly. If appropriate, send around an email afterwards summarizing the points discussed and the agreements made about these points. Invite people to react to this email. Don’t forget to compare the planning (your planning!) to the current state of your work. You have set out to graduate within a certain time frame. So make sure it happens. There is no problem in adapting a planning schedule. In a sense a plan is there to be changed. A plan is there to compare your plans with reality and give you an idea of where you are in the process every time again. If you change it, fine, you know

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Your scope and planning Committee members, whether they are professors or external advisors, invest time and effort in supervising you. It is thus not strange that they want to make the most of their investment. It often happens that they introduce new things for that reason. They are researchers. They are always curious and always looking for ways to learn more. They are also, as we discussed earlier, the hockey coaches who love to work with you to make you a better hockey player. No problem with that as long as you keep an eye on the scope and planning of your project, and as long as you discuss it! ‘Very nice suggestion professor. Let’s have a look at the original research questions and planning, shall we? We can see where it elaborates or fits into the scope. How do you think this will affect the planning?’

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the consequences in terms of time. But make sure you suggest the changes, discuss them and get an agreement from your committee.

Everything comes down to this: make sure things happen in that room because you initiate them. And if your influence is smaller, then make sure you are active just before things happen. People can make decisions about you; they can be your bosses. But make sure they are only the boss because you have made them the boss, because you ask them to make a decision. Let them be the boss, but make sure you remain the leader.

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The professor Jan Anne Annema When launching into a graduation project I truly understand there is a certain amount of tension for students. They meet experts related to their thesis topic and try to merge their expertise into a complete graduation project. But they are simply new to those fields of expertise, while the experts have been there for years and know all the ins and outs. I appreciate that this can be very intimidating, as the experts will always start broadcasting their knowledge as soon as the student comes up with an idea. The experts have seen so many ideas, read so many papers in their field, that they immediately know that 15 years ago in a paper by ‘whosoever et al.’ an attempt had been made to do such a thing and what the result was. And the student thinks: ‘who, what, when…I did not find this paper, oh stupid me…?’ The experts are not trying to be mean, not at all, they want to help. But the student may feel like an amateur playing soccer with professionals from FC Barcelona. Do not be afraid, dear students! Just go for it. We teachers have no wish to make you afraid. We have lots of ideas, and we start associating as soon as you talk about your plans. But we never, ever, want you to do what we want, or want you to copy our ideas or ideas of others in the field. It is your work, you should plan, lead and implement it. As a student you combine different areas of expertise into your work. That is added value; that is where you become the expert in the end. But even if you wanted to graduate on a project plumb in the middle of the field of an expert, you make still make a serious contribution and have new and fresh ideas. The old guys can quickly react to plans with remarks like ‘this is not how we do things’, or ‘this will not work’. But if you, as a student, take that too seriously, who in the world will come

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I admit this requires you to have clear ideas on what you want, a well worked out plan and a strong personality. However, it is a choice and a possibility. And if you don’t want to do it, that is also no problem. You can follow the ideas of your supervisors, no problem with that, as long as the ideas don’t suffocate you. Your work is still your work, not your supervisor’s work. Imagine that the whole world were full of people constantly challenging all ideas and coming up with new things. It would be a mess. Having 11 Johan Cruyffs in one soccer team would not work either. As a teacher I really appreciate students who take the lead. I always tell them they have to manage me. They should take the initiative, they will have to steer me in their process, tell me what they want from me and when. Do they want me to read every sentence? Can be done! Or do they want to be creative with me to generate some new ideas. They should determine what they need and make sure they get it from me.

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with the new ideas? Where would the innovation start if everyone took the experts too seriously and followed only their line of thinking?

Cooperating with one student is easier than with another. That has something to do with personalities. You, as student, have to find a team that fits you. There has to be a good click, some chemistry. You don’t need the same kind of people in your team as you yourself, perhaps even the opposite. But make it a team you can work with. And most important of all, please do something you really like! Something that makes you enthusiastic and happy. I see students choosing topics because they think that it will give them a good opportunity to get a high-paying job with status. The specific topic is far less important for job opportunities than people think. Graduation shows you can successfully do research independently, showing you can finish a curriculum. That’s all, nothing more. The topic does not matter

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so much. Just make sure you like it and you have an interesting and pleasant time! Sometimes I wonder whether students work together and help each other. I often read drafts that I am pretty sure nobody else read before. I read draft research questions and I am the first to see them as I don’t understand anything of it. It is such an easy step to ask a fellow student to read your work and vice versa. If he or she does not understand you are obliged to explain and you will notice by doing so that you will start thinking things like: ‘hmm, yes, rather unclear indeed, I need to improve…’. That makes a big difference in the efficiency of the process. Dear students, why don’t you put together your own team? Not only your official supervisors, but seek your supervisors also in your personal private life. Help each other.

The student Kalliopi Diliou When it comes to a graduation project there are no rules that tell you the one and only correct way to do it. This is true in almost every aspect of life. We don’t know what the right answer is, we don’t know how we arrive at the right answer. However people in general seem to think they do know, as they tend to forget thinking about what the problem is and immediately focus on immediately. Projects would be so much more efficient if we were to first seriously ask ourselves what the problem precisely is. Jumping immediately to solutions takes you to answers, but answers to the wrong problem.

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I did not want to create something my supervisors had in mind from the start. I wanted to steer my project into the direction where I wanted it to go. I wanted to create something myself, to be proud about what I created. I am happy to have graduated in a company where they gave me the freedom to find my own way. Sometimes I hit walls and they knew that in advance, but I also discovered paths nobody had thought of before. The company I graduated in was focusing on a certain outcome. They had some rough sketch of a solution already in mind. I decided to spend my time first on finding out what the problem behind it was. You can never know in advance what the product will be, you have to go and find out what the problem is, then, through your research process you eventually come to a product. There is no way to know that in advance. You investigate, you analyze and in the end this product comes out, whether it is the correct product we don’t know, however, we do know whether it’s useful.

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I therefore wanted a supervisor who motivated me to think about my graduation process, go into the details of the problem and only after that start to think about what my graduation product could look like.

Content experts might force you to deliver something, especially when you graduate in a company. I wanted something else. I surprised them in the end by delivering what I had in mind, without disappointing them. I have high standards for myself, but they are my own standards. The company wanted numbers. I gave them something else, something worthwhile too, although different to what they expected. To get to the point I wanted to end up I involved the people I needed for that. If I had not done that, people might have tried to force me off my track.

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I have a mechanical engineering background with a particular interest in aerospace. My graduation topic was an engineering related topic for my company. However the context of the problem was not engineering at all, but social. The process I needed to arrive at an answer was not an engineering process. The company expected an engineering approach and to see numbers as a result, but I did not think numbers were the answer here. If I had not decided to do it my own way I would never have reached my goals. When you are doing an internship in a company for your graduation project you encounter a tension between the company and the university. The company focuses on the product, while the university has academic criteria against which to judge your work. Companies tend to give more concrete information for you to work with than universities do. However this information is very much product-related, rather than graduation process related information. While that is the last thing you need to find out what the problem is and to make a start with your research and analysis. Both in my graduation and in my current work I want supervisors or managers who give me more freedom to manage my projects. If I don’t get the leadership, I will find out where the boundaries of my freedom are and make my plan accordingly. The more freedom I get, the more I can do, and the more I can grow. If I don’t fully take all the space I can get, I only prove that I can do what somebody else wants. This is far less interesting, you hardly learn. For me the goal of a graduation project is to be creative and find out things yourself. I want to be proud of my product. That does not happen if it is someone else’s product or thoughts. For me to step out of my engineering comfort zone during my graduation project was the best thing I could do. It kept me very motivated. I am proud of myself.

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So how are we going to put all of this into practice? In a nutshell, it is about finding out what your playing field is in any situation. And taking action within that playing field, before someone else does it for you, action that will get you closer to the goals you want to reach. Determine your formal playing field That means that first you have to pick up your work from the last chapter about how the formal conditions for graduation in your institute. How many supervisors do you have? What is the role of each? Who has decision-making power of what decisions? What are the deadlines for handing in stuff, what forms do you need to fill in at what times and to whom, what signatures are needed, and so on. All this determines your playing field. Make explicit what you want to get out of a meeting The next step is to determine, before every meeting, what you want to get out of it. Try to make that as explicit as possible. Write it all down, and bring it with you to the meeting. This way you make sure you get a chance to discuss everything you want to discuss.

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5.4 Time for action

Think about the way you are going to present an issue or question. A ‘just want to know what they think of what I did’, gives a lot of room for the committee to start discussing their own topics, focus on their own things and steer you in the direction that, in their opinion, you should go. You will end up reaching their goals instead of your own. Already better is a ‘want to know whether my argumentation for choosing my methodology is convincing, as on these‑and‑these issues I still have some doubts’.

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In addition to thinking about explicit questions, it is equally important to think beforehand about what kind of answers you want to get. Otherwise you will have no idea whether you reached your goals for that meeting. All this is actually easier than it might seem at first glance. It is your project, so you know best what you need in order to continue. You can imagine that if you ask for feedback and get a ‘yeah, it is more or less okay’, you will not become very confident about that particular issue. So that is not what you want. But what do you want? A clear ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on a question? Then make sure you get it. If your committee is unable to give you a clear ‘yes’ or ‘no’, ask why it cannot be given and perhaps what kind of information they need in order to give it to you. Or perhaps, instead of an answer, you need some advice on what to do regarding a certain issue. Then make sure you get that advice. Summarize your committee’s reaction with ‘so you advise me to do the following …’, and see whether you have understood what they said and whether you have missed anything. It’s useful to fill in the next table before every meeting, just to support you in your leader role during the meeting. Figure 5.1 Issue to discuss

Explicit question for committee

Desired kind of answer

1 2 ...

Mind your attitude (and practice it!) Some say attitude is everything. And although we would not go that far, we do want to emphasize the importance of how you communicate

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EXERCISE Envisioning what you want to reach and acting upon that in such a way that others notice it, takes some practice. So if you dare, try this little exercise. A day or two before your meeting, write down what you want to achieve with that meeting. Then picture it in your head as detailed as possible, and as strong and colorful as you can. Imagine whom you are going to ask, how he or she might respond and what you could do with that response.

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during a meeting. When you meet with your committee, you can already determine a part of your role through the way you enter the room, for example. If you very clearly envision what you want to get out of this meeting beforehand, that will influence the way you enter that meeting. It will also influence the committee members’ perception of you, and their attitude towards you. If your attitude is that you know exactly what you want and need, they will be less likely to suggest any deviation from that.

If you are doing this for the first time, consider asking a friend to help you. After painting the mental picture very vividly, ask him or her the question you envisioned. See how they respond, and if that in any way corresponds to what you predicted. A second thing is your change in attitude. Ask that friend to tell you whether and how your attitude changes when you are picturing yourself leaving the meeting with that muchdesired signature. Just a description of what (s)he sees is enough. Make the pictures in your mind clearer if you don’t get the desired effect.

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6 HOW TO DEAL WITH THE UNAVOIDABLE SETBACKS? If a […] project works the first time, it was in your nightly dreams. Time to wake up and get to work. Cornelius Fitchner Sometimes things are in flow. You look at the world with joy and everything seems to go completely smoothly. Irritations are far away. When things occur that are not so nice, you simple get over them quickly. You find a solution and move on. Your bicycle has a flat tire? You simply walk to the university. On your way you feel the warm sun and enjoy the birds. Why did you never stop at this coffee place? Because you always rush by, but now you take the time to pick up a good latte macchiato. However, at other times, you look at the world in despair. Things go horribly slowly. Whatever you do, nothing seems to make a difference. You can’t get yourself started with anything. You blame your car if it does not start. But, to be honest, your anger started already earlier in the morning when you couldn’t find what you had in mind to wear that day. No cereals in the house, the milk well over its use-by date and bread only in the freezer. You couldn’t find your keys. There was a traffic jam on your way to the office. By the time you arrived the adrenaline levels in your body were so pumped up you could run 100 meters in less than 10 seconds.

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There does not appear to be any reason for one state or the other, for flow or despair. They simply seem to strike you. It is also not a matter of trying to avoid them, as they will hit you from time to time anyhow. What matters is how you deal with them. And how you can prepare yourself.

6.1 Introduction Over the years we have worked with over 200 students who were working towards graduating in one way or another; Bachelor of Science (BSc), Master of Science (MSc), Master of Arts (MA), Master of Business Administration (MBA) and scientific doctorates (PhD). As far as we can tell, of those 200 only two students finished their projects apparently perfectly smooth, perfectly as planned, without encountering even the smallest, problems along the way. Nothing seemed to strike them off course and everything went according to their initial ideas. No delays, no issues, no nothing. When we asked one of those two students if she could tell us what made her different, she answered: ‘I have been lucky, I did not experience any crises during my graduation project.’ So, luck is the reason, she thinks. If that were true, luck would presumably be the key to a smooth research project. And since many people believe that luck ‘happens’ or that ‘you either have it or you don’t’, we better all start hoping that by the time we start our graduation project we turn into Gladstone Gander instead of Donald Duck. Do you believe in ‘being lucky’? As you may have guessed, we don’t believe in luck. Or at least not in a way that you have no influence on what happens at all. We would not be writing this book if we thought you had no control whatsoever over how

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For a start, what do you think happens when you look for the cause of something outside yourself? What is the result of blaming someone (a difficult teacher, a lazy teammate, the noisy neighbor), something or the absence of that something (luck) when things don’t go as planned? Indeed, you not only place the blame and responsibility somewhere else, but with that also any chance of taking charge of a situation and thus any opportunity to fix or even prevent it! So, does the concept of luck help you here at all? No, it does not. It is actually nothing more than a vague and inexplicit argument or excuse for becoming passive and accepting that things are not going the way you want them to.

How to d ea l wit h t h e u n a v oi d ab l e s etbac k s ?

you are going to experience your graduation project. By now, having read our various chapters on being the leader, being the project manager, and taking the initiative, you probably will already begin to think we may have a slightly different take on this. Well, you are right.

Of course there is such a thing as force majeure, and something just happens. You can get seriously ill, get hit by a bus or slip on a banana skin. You have very limited options to influence these kind of things, and other than living healthy and looking left and right when you cross the street there is not much you can do. Disaster can strike at any time and in such cases ‘total control’ is unfortunately only a fantasy. In a sense you can consider yourself truly lucky when these things don’t happen to you. But that kind of luck is not the kind that the student we spoke to was referring to. It is also not the kind of luck that people mean when they use it to explain why something is not working out as planned. What is luck? What does ‘being lucky’ mean? From our point of view, it is a combination of two things: 1. Being prepared, and, 2. Recognizing and (!) taking the opportunities that come by.

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Fact is, opportunity knocks on the door more often than you think. Possibilities just come by, you just have to be able to recognize them and react to them when they do. Recognizing them is something you can learn. Reacting in time and in such a way that it benefits you depends largely on preparation. Take for example the striker of a soccer team, who is standing in front of a goal in a messy situation. Suddenly the ball lands right in front of his feet. Without hesitation he turns, he looks, he shoots, and he scores! Lucky you say? Of course not! That ball ending where it did, that was the opportunity. He might have predicted it would end there, because he knows his teammate’s shooting range. This and his ability to react accordingly is merely a result of hours of training and preparation. He knew what to do if that ball ever ended in front of his feet. Maybe he already pictured scoring that goal a hundred times in his mind. He knew how to react. Saying he was just lucky is selling him short. Amateurs have luck. A professional on the other hand, is prepared and able to take the sometimes very small and rare opportunities that come by. Who can make you act? When you are a student working on a graduation project and things are not going the way you want them to, it is all too easy to put the blame on something or someone else. Your supervisor who never has time and keeps coming up with new things. Your topic, because it is just too difficult and way more complicated than other projects. The library, that just never seems to have the books you need and that closes just when you started getting in a good writing flow. Or maybe your roommates, who constantly keep you up at night because they make too much noise. All these things might very well be true. Noisy roommates, busy professors, they surely don’t make things easier. But does blaming them

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How to d ea l wit h t h e u n a v oi d ab l e s etbac k s ?

or the library help you? If it does in any way, we won’t stop you from doing it. However, we bet it does not help you at all! It only gives you a dozen arguments to convince yourself that you should not even try, as it won’t make a difference anyway. And, since you are the only person in your team that has a true incentive to graduate, you will find yourself standing still without anything happening. No change, no progress, no getting closer to your ultimate goal: graduation. The only one who can make you act is you. Nobody else will keep your project going, and nobody else is going to graduate for you. So get yourself together and start doing something! ‘How,’ you wonder? Start by accepting that those so‑called ‘downs’ or ‘crises’ will come, despite your best efforts. Unexpected things will happen. The key is knowing how to deal with them. If you do, if you are prepared for them and aren’t taken aback by them, then you can truly think yourself lucky.

6.2 Accepting the challenge It might very well be the hardest step of all: accepting that things will happen to you, things you don’t want to happen. Accepting that plans change, even when you think you had thought of every little detail. It happens. To you just like everyone else. Not because you are doing something wrong. It might even be because somebody else did something you did not plan for. But realize that the moment you start becoming frustrated and start blaming other people or other things you are putting energy into something you will never be able to change. So why waste the energy? Just accept that you’re going to have to accept it. Earlier we discussed a research project about crack growth in aircraft materials. The testing materials you need could happen to be packed in a securely locked box that no one is allowed to open except the manager

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of the laboratory. But he keeps saying that he does not have the time and that it will have to wait. What is going through your mind? Probably it will be something like: ‘I really need the materials in that box, otherwise I cannot set up my experiments. And I need to set up my experiments right now, because I can only get a slot next week to use the machines I need. But without the materials, those machines are useless and then I am going to have to wait another month! My whole project will be delayed, and I’m going to have to pay extra tuition. I don’t have the money for that, so I’ll have to work more, but I don’t have time for that either, so I’ll be even more delayed. All because of that stupid manager who does not want to take the time to unpack the stuff I need. This is going to take weeks, and then I’m going to get blamed by my committee that my project is delayed and they will give me a lower grade.’ Does this sound like something you would tell yourself? And like what you would tell your friends or roommates when you get home from another day being frustrated? You might even tell them a slightly different story, about how your faculty and the people who work there always try to delay graduation projects, and why would you even bother to make a plan? And what’s more it’s a stupid project. Or that’s at least what you tell your friends. Here we have another horror like the story about graduation finding its way into the minds of students, just as we wrote in an earlier chapter. A story that makes people who still have to start with their graduation project even more scared and hesitant to start. By now you have spent so much time and effort in convincing yourself that your project will be delayed, that it is not your fault and that there is nothing you can do about it. In addition, you have wasted a lot of energy by getting frustrated. And all of this did not get you any closer to your goal of graduating. In fact, you can be quite certain it did the exact opposite.

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When you catch yourself becoming frustrated or catch yourself telling stories like this to yourself or others, ask yourself whether it’s doing you any good. If you decide it doesn’t, tell yourself: ‘I am in frustration mode. I am blaming others.’ Recognize this! And find a way to accept that whatever is happening will happen anyhow, and that by deciding how you are going to respond to it you can influence how the whole thing will eventually affect you. Accepting that things will happen does not mean passively allowing them to happen. Nor does it mean you should wait till other people start doing something so that you can continue with your work. On the contrary, accepting means not getting frustrated and not wasting your energy on being angry about something you cannot control anyway. It also means not talking yourself into some dramatic scenario (my project’s being delayed, I’ll have to pay extra, I’ll have to take on a job and lose even more time, I’ll get a lower grade and so on). Accepting also means realizing that things in life will not always go the way you want, for no particular reason. But definitely not for the purpose of making your life more difficult.

How to d ea l wit h t h e u n a v oi d ab l e s etbac k s ?

So, we ask again: does this help you? It certainly does not. You only end up frustrated, not doing anything and not making any progress. Does it help anybody else? Again, it does not. Instead, you spread a lot of negative energy about graduation that will in no way make others more excited to start on a graduation project themselves.

Putting things into perspective Besides keeping you from wasting valuable energy, putting aside your frustration also clears the way for finding and responding to opportunities to keep your project going. We don’t mean things you can do to persuade the laboratory manager to unpack the materials. By now you probably have given that your best shot, and it is just not going to happen. But you can’t do nothing, because in this case standing still

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really does mean falling behind. So what else can you do to avoid such a standstill? The key is to look beyond the issue at hand. At any point during your graduation project it is almost impossible that there is nothing else to do than the thing that is currently holding you up. Taking the box of materials and the laboratory manager as an example again, you could perhaps already do some test runs with other materials that are available, so you get to know the machinery before the real experiments start. You can also make some dummy data and test run your statistical analysis, so that when you finally have the real data you will know what to do and that it will work. Or maybe you are able to make a start or continue with your thesis report. Work on your chapter structure, do some editing, design some figures or write your introduction or preface. Is there a bunch of literature you still need to read before your next phase? Do it. All of this will lead to saving time later on, so this way you will have already made up for (a part of) the delay you are worried about. There will be hundreds of things you can do that have to be done anyhow before your project gets finished. Taking a step back from the issue you have been focusing on enables you to get a sense of perspective and it opens your mind to possibilities to continue with your project. When then – finally – your lab manager opens that box you need, you will have put all that waiting time to good use. Moreover, you will feel like you have made progress during that time which is always a good feeling. Surely it is better than the frustration you would be feeling about and taking out on that already overworked lab manager. Okay, so we have accepted that things happen that you can’t plan or prepare for, and we know that we should look for ways to deal with them as we go. But what about things we can prepare for? That is what we discuss in the next section.

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Minor setbacks or issues can lead to minor delays and require some flexibility to minimize the damage. If you are able to recognize such a ‘down’ and have prepared yourself to accept it, there will be lots of things you yourself can implement quite quickly. However, most likely there will also be certain steps and elements that can have a potentially serious impact on your project if they somehow fail or turn out different from what you intended. What about that data set that you were supposed to get, but suddenly didn’t? Or some specific testing equipment that is suddenly unavailable for the next few months? Supervisors fall ill, impossible‑to‑find literature, key experts who are unavailable and so on. There are many variables during your project that have the potential to derail it.

How to d ea l wit h t h e u n a v oi d ab l e s etbac k s ?

6.3 Well prepared is half delivered

ASSIGNMENT – RISK ASSESSMENT Take the plan you have drawn up, and go over every step in it. For each entry, ask yourself ‘what if…?’. Determine what things could happen that would seriously influence your project and/or planning, what are the chances (small, medium, large) that they actually happen, and what the impact would be if they did. Develop some scenarios for these issues (this need not be in great detail) where you incorporate solutions to problems if they ever arise. These solutions can range from a backup expert, another laboratory where the equipment is available, to a change in your research questions.

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A fine example of good preparation is the Anglo-Dutch oil company Shell that carried out such an ‘exercise’ extensively in the 1960s. They sat around a table for days on end drawing up strategic plans for many possible future scenarios. What happens if electric cars become popular? What will the role of Shell be then? Drafting these plans can already be quite helpful and can save an organization a great deal of time or money if such a scenario actually ensues. If it does, all Shell has to do is adhere to the plans and not panic (or get frustrated!). And sure, it actually happened. During the 1960s oil was very cheap and widely available. No one in the industry ever imagined that crude oil prices would suddenly double, triple or become tenfold of what they had been before. Except for Shell. One of their many scenarios described this exact eventuality, and a strategic action plan had already been drawn up to deal with it. When Shell was taking these steps, other people and organizations were probably laughing and wondering why on earth they were spending so much time on things that would never happen anyway? But things did happen, in the shape of the oil crisis that hit the world in the early 1970s. And Shell, with its many scenarios and corresponding strategic plans, only had to select the right one and roll it out. No panic, no sweat, no problem. It gave them a massive competitive edge over other companies that had to come up with a strategy from scratch. Who’s laughing now? The same principle applies to your graduation project. You can decide not to do this assessment, and just see what happens and deal with it along the way. Everything may go as planned, or maybe not. Or you can spend an hour or two on assessing where the critical points in your project are and preparing some action plans and solutions. We opt for the second option, as you will save yourself a whole lot of wasted energy, frustration and delays if some unexpected problem does indeed transpire.

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Zofia Lukszo When I studied mathematics, all my exams in the first year were oral exams, as the group of mathematics students was very small. During my first course exam, I was very nervous. My professor asked me why. He said ‘it does not help when you are nervous, you are not becoming a better student now and it makes our communication more difficult, too. So why don’t you just stop being nervous?’. From that moment onwards, I have never been nervous again. I realized it was not the exam I was nervous about, but just not knowing what an exam situation really is. Everything was new and unexpected. That made me nervous, not the exam itself.

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The professor

When students tell me they are nervous because they are afraid of a certain supervisor or professor, I always doubt whether this isn’t the same mechanism I experienced. It is probably the unknown, the unexpected, not so much the supervisor. Students have to learn to deal with the unknown and the unexpected. That is part of becoming a true professional. I want students to think for themselves. Many students come to me and ask what they have to do to pass a course or to graduate. I want them to find out, I want them to develop self-esteem so that they can handle situations like this where things are unknown in advance. It should not be us, the supervisors and professors, who tell them something is good or not. They should find out for themselves and find ways to convince themselves.

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During a graduation project there is some sort of high-level format that all research processes have in common. I ask every student what (s)he wants to reach, what his or her goals are. This goal we divide into many different smaller pieces and ask ourselves how to deal with each piece and combine the answers into a coherent whole. The basic principles of doing research are the same, for all supervisors, all professors, all faculties, all topics and all universities. This high level structure gives you good guidance, whether you are supervisor or student. Before every meeting I want my students to know why they come to me. What questions do they have? What do they want to discuss? What is their goal for the meeting? If they don’t have a picture of this, a meeting is useless. Students, in the end, should always chair the meeting. I do cancel meetings from time to time when students don’t have a clear reason for that meeting, don’t have questions, or don’t have a goal. If these cancellations happen a lot, we end up in a crisis, as the student is clearly not yet a good manager of his or her own project. I emphasize not yet, as it is our responsibility, as supervisors and professors, to help our students develop themselves into adult professionals, into professional managers of their own projects. When things do not go to plan, it is not easy to find out how to solve that. We supervisors still have a substantial responsibility here, as we have to find out, together with the student, what the causes are. These can be anything: sickness, serious problems with friends or within the family, a lack of knowledge, but also simply something like laziness. Graduation project ‘downs’ are common, but student and supervisor should work closely together to find a solution for what causes these. Students can need anything from a directive approach and deadlines, blowing off some steam, talking about something other than their project, reading a new book or article that shines a new light on their

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Our supervisors’ responsibility to help students develop themselves personally as well as academically means we have to help them observe themselves and find out what they need. A graduation project is a challenging process. You cannot complete it overnight and, as in other types of research, cooperation with others is essential. You have to take many small steps to graduate in the end. Students need to get to know themselves in order to make these steps and indeed eventually graduate. Some students need a pat on the shoulder and a compliment. Others need to publish an article with you. Or to be involved in your education. Everybody needs something. And finding out what that is useful but not easy. Finally, students don’t need something from us as supervisors. Ultimately they need something from themselves. They have to become convinced that they can handle situations like this. We, as supervisors, can help them discover precisely what they need to handle crisis situations. We can discuss things and try things out. But only the student can discover for him or herself what (s)he really needs. Intrapersonal intelligence and self-reflective capabilities should be developed during the study period, too. Only then does a research student become a true professional.

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thesis, to simply creating some new and fresh ideas to restore their motivation.

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The student Martine Schmidt-Poolman When I started my graduation project, my supervisor asked me ‘what are you going to do when things turn out to be very different from what you expected?’. At the time I was slightly surprised with such a question but indeed, a graduation project involves uncertainty. As soon as you get out there with your research ideas, things do turn out to be very different from what you expected. If I hadn’t had a back-up plan and hadn’t built in some flexibility for changes, I would have gotten stuck. Building in flexibility, but making sure that the original project ideas don’t completely change, isn’t easy. It helped me a lot to talk with other people, who shed light on the project ideas at an early stage. Often students stay close to their personal circle of friends and family when discussing their research ideas. These people are within their comfort zone and so it’s easier to talk with them than with ‘experts’ on the topic. However, I have found it extremely useful to talk to experts (other students, PhD students, professors) from parallel, or similar research fields. These experts assess the ideas from another angle, suggesting new ideas and perhaps helping you to see new options. Their experiences with other situations and projects can help give shape to your own. Straying from your comfort zone also means opening up to criticism and pinpointing of weak spots in your research ideas. While some friends and family may do this too, I have found that some experts have the foundational background to provide contextual critique and feedback. You have to look for people who can find the weak spots and show them to you. With this approach you can prevent a crisis from occurring.

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1. formulating your ideas as concretely as possible as soon as possible, while simultaneously maintaining flexibility in your ideas; 2. remaining open-minded about comments, positive and negative, while you are still working out your ideas; 3. making sure to stay close to your own ideals, while making sure your research also fulfills the set requirements. First of all, if you formulate concisely others can imagine your plans in their heads and give you very concrete feedback. But if you’ve just started your project how do you choose what direction to go? The natural tendency is to stay vague. There is always more literature you feel you need read first, ideas you still need to work out, and so on. However, building in moments in which you ‘need’ to present an idea (to a group, to an expert, at a conference, etc.), helps make sure you don’t carry on alone for too long. Because before you know it, you’ll be halfway the project before you find out about its weak spots. At that point, yes, a crisis is imminent.

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Looking for experts to talk with can be daunting. Asking experts for their time and feedback, however, poses three important dilemmas, all of which I faced:

Secondly, presenting your ideas means you openly ask for a reaction: suggestions, comments and opinions. Sometimes responses are friendly and supportive, other times they are harsh and negative. I have always tried to see every response as one that makes my work better. Doing that has admittedly not always been easy. It’s difficult not to feel personally attacked and to defend your ideas strongly. I’ve learned that a lot can be learned, especially from the negative responses, and have asked my responders to help me understand why they responded in such a manner. Perhaps my presentation was not clear enough, perhaps my assumptions were not correct, perhaps my conclusions were too abrupt, maybe I was missing something I should have been aware of, and so on.

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This has helped me improve my work. And sometimes you realize also that it’s not you or your presentation, but that the response emerges from something else (related or not) they themselves are dealing with. Lastly, it’s easy to lose your own ideals when faced with having to fulfill a set of requirements. During my MSc and PhD work the discussions with people who could help with the content AND help with giving the work a place in the rest of life were invaluable. I have heard students say that if you find such people, you’re very lucky. But my impression is that it’s because of your own efforts that you find such people. Things don’t ‘happen’ to you. You allow things to happen to you. So I would advise everyone to go search for the people you need, look everywhere, even in places you don’t expect to find them. You will be surprised who you meet.

6.4 Time for action First thing for you to figure out is how you yourself can recognize when you are entering frustration mode. Are there specific things you do (nail-biting, door-slamming)? And are there people around you who can recognize this and can point it out to you? Once you find yourself frustrated, give yourself some time to get out of that mode. Kick a door, yell, shout, run around the house five times or go dancing, drinking or do whatever you need. But after that, get yourself together. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Instead, ask yourself: what can I do, rather than continuously telling yourself (and others!) all the things you cannot, for whatever reason.

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• Choose the font and font size for your final thesis. • Work on the invitations for your graduation party. • Set up the skeleton of your report with chapter headings, table and figure outlines. • Have a list of literature available that you still need or want to read. • Work on the introduction of your work. • Work on the appropriate words to thank people in your acknowledgements. • Clean up your desk. • Categorize materials. • Make overviews. • Get yourself in better shape by running around the block. • Get yourself in better shape by taking the time to cook better food. • Talk to other graduates to find out what they do and offer some help. • Reward yourself for not getting frustrated (buy a present, have dinner with friends, go out for a movie and some drinks).

How to d ea l wit h t h e u n a v oi d ab l e s etbac k s ?

It helps to make a list of larger and smaller things you need to do. So make such a list. Make it as long as possible and call it ‘list of things to do in lost hours’ or something. A few examples of possible entries on that list:

Secondly, do some scenario analyses. If it works for Shell, it can work for you. Somewhere near the beginning of your project, go over your research plan and ask the ‘what if?’ question at some vital point. Here a few examples could be: • What if my experts are suddenly not available for interviews anymore? • What if I don’t get access to materials, machinery or software? • What if my supervisor suddenly disappears or is not available anymore?

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If the experts for your interview session are no longer available, what other sources of information do you have? Can you replace it with a literature study? It might not be the optimal solution, but would it work? Can you do an experiment to replace their input? Would one expert less still be sufficient? Are other people available who are not so much expert on the topic, but have a serious track record and can make educated guesses or estimates for you? If the materials you need are not available, could you make do with other materials? Could you use data from other experiments that have already been carried out? Can you build a simulation tool and analyze millions of potential situations rather than do a limited number of experiments? If your supervisor falls ill, where can you go with your questions? Whom can you ask for motivational support? Is it easy to get another supervisor? Who might that be? Do you have a list of preferences? When can you ask for another supervisor? What story do you tell? Again, none of these things may be what you intended to do in the first place, but that does not mean they can’t be a good plan B, C or even Z. It is quite possible that this project is one of the first projects you do pretty much on your own. If so, it will also be the first time you will have to do the crisis management by yourself. But that does not mean you are completely alone in this. You can make things much easier if you have people you can meet up with and talk about your project and any problem you may encounter. So don’t only be prepared practically, be socially prepared too. Find answers for instance to the following questions: • Whom in your team can you talk to when you hit a roadblock? • Whom outside of your team can you talk to when you hit a roadblock?

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And last but absolutely not least: • How do you reward yourself for even small successes during your project? You will, for sure, encounter one or more dips or setbacks in the course of your project. That’s just how it goes. But whatever happens, you determine how you deal with them. So the only things that matter in this respect are whether you accept that they will happen, and the extent to which you are prepared for them. If you master this, that doesn’t mean your project will run smoothly. Or that you will be one of the lucky few who encounter no problems at all. What it does mean is that you can keep your project running at all times. Only when your project is moving forward, with small or with big steps, will you get closer to finalizing your graduation project. And that is what we will discuss in the following chapter.

How to d ea l wit h t h e u n a v oi d ab l e s etbac k s ?

• To whom can you go, weeping, yelling and frustrated when you can no longer see the wood for the trees? • Who can help you gain some perspective and rationalize a situation? • Who can give you an energy boost when you need one after a frustrating day of trying to get something done or convincing your version of the laboratory manager?

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FINISH

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7 HOW DO YOU ENVISION THE FINAL STEPS? Projects progress quickly until they become 90% complete; then remain at 90% complete forever. Edwards, Butler, Hill and Russell Completing a project is a project all in itself! It’s an art, a skill you can learn and train for. Professional athletes train months on end to improve those final steps or seconds of a competition or race. Sprinters train to bend forward, and professional ice skaters learn to stretch their leg when they are only a few inches away from the finishing line, all to be that nano-second faster. A tiny bit that could mean the difference between Olympic gold and a disappointing no-medal fourth place. In cycling finishing is even more profound. Every cycle team has its own finishing specialists: sprinters, who are trained to shine in those final moments of a race. When everybody else is worn out, these competitors have to perform at their best. They are literally trained to win the race. If you aren’t a sports fan, you might prefer to think about a band. When the band members are jamming a blues line, a point comes when the bass player, the drummer or the singer gives a signal to the others letting them know that ‘this is the last round’. Somehow all the players know when to prelude their final chords, and smoothly finish the song exactly when they need to. To the audience it sounds like a song with a clear ending. But it was a jam session, so there aren’t any clear endings. Nothing is predetermined. How did they do it then? Completing, indeed, is an art.

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7.1 Introduction Suddenly it strikes you; you are almost done. You have worked well with your team, have taken the initiative where you could and you have dealt with the unavoidable crises. But now it is time to enter the final stage of your project and actually graduate. Here again, you have two options: you can either wait till your committee tells you what, when and where, or you can stay in charge. You are – after all – the one who is graduating. The finalization of a graduation project is different at every institution. Some institutions only have the formality of ‘being spoken to by the professor’. You are standing in the middle of the room, surrounded by friends, family and flowers. Meanwhile, your professor is talking to you and your audience, while discussing your work. Your role in this theatrelike setting is nothing more than smiling politely and silently waiting until the show is over. Other institutions want you to give a final presentation about your project. That is very similar to what happens when you complete a project in any other type of organization. The audience may vary (just academics or open to anyone who is interested) and your formal defense can be before, during or after your presentation. But regardless of the format or schedule at your institution, you have yet again a choice to make: you can either let it happen, or make it happen. You may not have the decision making power and you may not be able to control the questions your committee or audience is going to fire at you. But that does not mean you can’t remain the leader of your own project. In this chapter we address how you can maintain that leadership role during the final steps of your project, after which we discuss Q&A sessions, defenses and final presentations.

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Finalizing is a joint decision

One of the myths we discussed earlier is the idea that ‘graduation takes forever’, stories you may have heard about committees who are never satisfied and about supervisors who ‘just want you to add this little thing’, over and over again. As we have seen, and as you (hopefully) have experienced so far is that showing leadership can be the key to avoiding such situations. By constantly comparing your original scope, planning and proposal to the current situation (and to suggested changes by your committee) you stay in charge of your project. Maintaining this attitude will help you to remain in charge during the finalization of it. A project will only be completed if somebody initiates its finalization. You can wait for your committee to do so. But as with the hockey example we discussed earlier, there’s every chance that you, as trainer or coach, will never be satisfied with any of your trainees. There will always be room for improvement. There are always weaker points, there is always potential to make things better. Whatever your ideas about training, one thing sure is that you are never done. In fact, the better you become, the more you train and practice. Just look at the training schedules of some professional athletes.

How d o y o u e n v i s io n t h e fi n a l   s tep s ?

7.2

You may not be a professional athlete and your supervisors are not really your trainers. But they do however think the same. They are academics who are interested in research. They want to find out new things, new methods. They are never satisfied, since there will always be more to explore, to learn and to publish about. And it is these researchers, in their role as your supervisors, who want to make you a better academic researcher. Just like the hockey coach, they always see something you can improve in your research, some weak link in your arguments or some knowledge gap you haven’t yet explored.

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There is thus a very practical argument for you to take the lead in finalizing your project: it will simply otherwise never end. If you leave it up to your supervisors, you will end up where they want you to end up. Which can be a thousand steps and months away from where you wanted to be. So you are going to have to do it yourself. Using your planning and proposal In the end, finalizing a project is nothing more than someone deciding that enough is enough. It is true that your professor has the decisionmaking power, and he or she will eventually decide whether your work is good enough. But remember that from the start you have been using your research scope and planning, which you have discussed at length with your committee every time a new suggestion was made by one of its members. You have repeatedly shown the effects of the suggested work on the original plan. And you have discussed whether or not it was worth the time and effort to somehow incorporate those suggestions in your work. You have led your team towards the point of finalization of the project using your continuously updated plans and good communication. So that is what you will keep doing. When your planning schedule indicates your project is due for finalization within a fairly short time (like a few months), discuss this with your supervisor. ‘We are moving towards the end of the plan, and my idea is to do this-and-that. Then, in that week, I would like to present a draft of my thesis and discuss with you my doubts and questions and your feedback so I can improve and edit the report into a final version.’ Whatever the reaction, remember to stay the leader. Don’t give away your power here, even if one of your supervisors says ‘there is still lots of work to do before you are really done’. Listen to what they have to say, and discuss what they have in mind. Compare their new plans to your latest plan and planning. Ask them to explain why they believe the work they are talking about is what needs to be done to complete your

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Inexperienced insecure supervisors In some situations, especially when you work with an inexperienced supervisor, the reason for all the extra suggestions is not so much that your work is not good enough, but that the supervisor is insecure. (S) he does not have a lot of work to compare your work to, so (s)he has no precise knowledge of quality standards. (S)he may be afraid to present you and your work to the professor and be blamed by the professor for your work not being up to standard. A very practical thing to do then is to include another supervisor in your team for a second opinion. You will be surprised what happens if you suggest this. Instead of a reaction like ‘hey, I am your supervisor, I make the decisions’, you can expect to see great relief, as that supervisor can now pass the burden of responsibility for the quality of your work on to more experienced shoulders.

How d o y o u e n v i s io n t h e fi n a l   s tep s ?

project. Decide for yourself whether or not their suggestion deviates too much from your plan. Make rough estimates of how much work these suggestions really involve for you and whether they fit in with your planning. Then decide for yourself whether you want to do the additional work and draw up a final schedule. Present this to your committee so everybody agrees that this is the final plan for the completion of your project.

Before you know it, you will find yourself walking into the professor’s office with a nicely edited and freshly printed final thesis in your hands. You have just taken a big step towards the finalization of your project. In fact, this may well be your biggest and most important step. All that is left is getting on the stage with your work. Becoming the star of your own graduation. That is the fun part!

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7.3

The floor is yours

If graduation at your institution is just a formality in which you stand in the middle of a room full of people listening to your professor or supervisor giving a speech about you, well, then that’s it. Thanks for having joined us and reading the book. We hope you had a nice journey! We hope you enjoy the moment of your graduation and hereby congratulate you on being a Bachelor of Science, an MBA, a Master of Arts, a Master of Science or whatever! The rest of this chapter will probably not be very relevant to you, but you may find some useful afterthoughts in the final chapter of the book. At other institutions the actual graduation procedure is a little more intense. You graduate by giving a presentation and, most often, by having a Q&A session with your committee and an audience. This might not be the easiest way, but we do believe it’s the most fun way, not to mention the most rewarding. After all, you have spent so much time working on your project, you really deserve a chance to show the world what you have been doing for the past few months and let them know you are proud of it! It’s not only the presentation that matters Some people are a little nervous about this. They have the idea (here’s another myth!) that everything depends on their presentation and on their ability to answer any question they get. And although being a little bit nervous is good for your performance, keeping you sharp and making you look more active, too many nerves will do neither you or your performance any good. What may help in this case is to see your presentation and defense as if you are giving a theatre performance. And your role goes way beyond just saying your piece. For an hour or so you are the star of the room, a star with an audience that needs to feel welcome and needs to be entertained.

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Making a picture We are well aware that this is all theoretical book-wisdom and that reading this will hardly calm your nerves. But what can you actually do about it? It all comes down to making sure you have a positive picture in your head about your presentation and defense. Realistically considering and understanding what ‘defending and presenting your thesis’ really is, why it is done.

How d o y o u e n v i s io n t h e fi n a l   s tep s ?

The most important thing to remember is that your defense is not the only place you can show your expertise. You have done this already during the entire the process you have gone through, by the report you have written, by the way you communicated, and so on. A smooth process and a strong and well written report will make it very unlikely you get a bad grade just because your presentation and defense did not go equally smoothly. Your defense is only a small part of your performance. It may influence your final result a little, but it will certainly not completely determine it.

We start by painting that picture. The first important thing to remember is that, whatever happens during the day, at the end of it you will have graduated. You will be finished with your project. Nothing will change that. Nothing you or anyone can do about it. And having finished after months of hard work is more than enough reason to celebrate! So why not consider your defense as some sort of preliminary to your actual graduation party that you will undoubtedly be having that same evening or a few days later? That may sound weird, because defending a thesis is generally considered to be a very serious affair. But what most people forget is that it is also something to enjoy. You are the only reason that defense is even taking place. It is not an opportunity for your professor to show her knowledge, or for a supervisor to demonstrate that he can ask such interesting questions. No, it is all about you. It is your day. A day when things are happening solely because you are making them happen. It is an opportunity for you to shine, and, not entirely unimportantly,

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an opportunity to show everyone in the audience that you haven’t been incommunicado for the past weeks without reason. As we wrote earlier, today you are the star of your show. There are only a few other somewhat important characters: the committee; your professor; your supervisors and perhaps a few experts. But they only play a small role. They may not even be mentioned in the announcement. They are the people about whom your friends will ask ‘who was that?. They wouldn’t even be there if it wasn’t for you, the person at center stage today. You have worked very hard to get here. You can even be considered an expert on the subject of your research. It is time to tell the world what you have discovered. And trust us, they will listen. The theatre of defense Presenting and defending is theatre, a serious one of course, but still a theatre. We do not mean to trivialize your research or your presentation, but you should not make it a bigger deal than it actually is. It is an interesting and substantial story about your research and all the effort you have put into it over a significant amount of time. But the hard work is over, and it is time for the last act. The stage is set, your audience in place. You are performing and the whole thing follows some kind of preconceived script. The professor generally welcomes everybody, introduces you and the committee members and explains what the rest of the morning/afternoon will more or less look like. She gives you the floor and you start your presentation. Afterwards, there will be questions from your committee and, probably, questions from the audience. Directly thereafter, or after a brief secluded discussion with the other committee members, your professor will announce your result. You might get a short speech by the professor, a supervisor or someone else. You may also take a moment to say something yourself and thank your committee. Finally, there will be applause and an abundance of flowers, congratulations and hugging by your family and friends.

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This means that during your defense you ‘only’ have to show and explain the steps you have made in your research and what, at that time, the reasoning was for the things you did. How did you get from a problem to a research question? How did you answer those questions? What happened when you started doing that? And what did you find? You interpreted these findings and answered your original research questions. Then you took a step back and looked at your entire project from a distance. Would you, knowing the results of all the choices you made, do things differently if you had to start all over again? Sure you would. Do the assumptions you made months ago still hold up? And if not, how would changing those assumptions influence the results of your research and the answers to your initial questions? You are simply reflecting on the process of getting to where you are now.

How d o y o u e n v i s io n t h e fi n a l   s tep s ?

What does defending your thesis mean? Defending your thesis basically means explaining what choices you made along the way and, more importantly, why you made them. Nobody can tell you whether or not those choices were the right ones at that time. Perhaps, in hindsight, you would have made them differently. That is entirely possible. But that is just information after the fact. Knowing what you know now about where those choices brought you, you might have used a different research method or changed the scope of your research. But could you have known this in advance? No, you could not. Neither could your supervisors, or the experts you consulted.

This makes sense, doesn’t it? Now try to look at it from a different perspective: the audience. This might help you prepare for your presentation and defense even further. Giving a presentation You will likely present to an audience consisting largely of friends and family. They will be there because of you. However you still act as if you

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are presenting to a client who has hired you. You present the results of your work. So what you would like to hear if you were in the audience listening to a presentation about someone’s project? Probably you would like first to know the topic of the presentation. Then you would like to know whether the content of the presentation is something you want to know or not. What product are you getting? Or, in other words, what problem has been researched and what kind of answer can you expect? If the promised results or product are something you are interested in, you will want to know how the research and the product came about. How was the research carried out? What did the researcher find, and how did (s)he interpret this? And what can be done with this new information? Why is it relevant, scientifically and socially? Can any conclusions that are drawn be generalized, and could the results be implemented? Or to put it simply: are you presenting a solution to a problem experienced by the virtual client in the audience? The art of answering questions A final element of your actual graduation is answering questions, whether from your committee or the audience. Generally the questions you get will be about the content of your work, or about something you said (or didn’t say) in your presentation. If you know this, you can prepare for at least some of the questions that may be put to you. This way you will still remain in charge of your project even at its final stage. Of course you can’t predict the future and it is impossible to know what questions you will face. You can, however, improve your answers by (there it is again) accepting that there will be questions. And, more importantly, by not interpreting those inevitable questions as ‘attacks’ on your work. Some people respond to questions with reactions like ‘but I really did do my interviews well’ or ‘I couldn’t help that the instruments weren’t

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So instead of feeling attacked by the questions, you can also see them as interesting suggestions you can discuss in the moment. Here you can prepare a little, like practicing beforehand what your initial response to such questions will be. Something like ‘thank you for raising that issue, you indeed have an interesting point there’. That way you will not only come across as if you have already thought deeply about that specific issue (which may not be true at all), it will also give you some time to think about the elements of the rest of your response. You can then use the question to discuss elements of your work.

How d o y o u e n v i s io n t h e fi n a l   s tep s ?

well calibrated. Even though that might all be true, these answers have no practical value and will not help you in any way. You might end up in some endless yes-no discussion, which you can either lose or win. But either way, neither your committee nor the audience will be any wiser at the end of it.

Realize that questions generally stem from something you said or did, and that you have apparently motivated somebody to want to know more. You probably said something interesting that they either did not fully understand or want to know more about. So if someone asks you a question, take it as a compliment. They have obviously paid attention and are making an effort to find out more. Nobody will do this unless they are interested in what you have been doing or saying. Your answers to the questions or the discussion of issues raised can vary. You may want to seize the moment to show more of your work than you were able to in the time you had for your presentation. You can also the questions to further clarify certain steps you took, choices you made or assumptions you stated. Or you can use a question as a way of putting your work into context and come up with ways to improve your research, make suggestions for further research on the topic or ideas on how to use your research in other related fields. Just try to stay within the area, field or topic suggested by the person who initially asked the question.

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Answering questions is one thing, but asking them another. Not everyone knows how to ask a question without making it sound like a remark or comment on your work. You might get formulations like ‘this is wrong, you should have done it in this-and-this way’. Questions that are not really questions, with different underlying motivations. Sometimes people are genuinely interested in what you think, but just have trouble formulating it nicely. Others are not interested at all and just want you (and the rest of the world) to know that they know better. It actually doesn’t matter what these persons’ motivations are, as long as you know how to deal with such a ‘question’. A suggestion on a suitable approach: 1. Thank the questioner: ‘Thank you for your interesting suggestion to do some elements of my research in a different way. 2. Directly turn the situation back to your own research and your field of knowledge: ‘As I have not carried out your suggestion I cannot give you research based answers. However I can speculate about what it would have entailed …’. 3. Discuss pros and cons of your work: ‘I chose my method on the basis of the information I had at that time and of some advantages and disadvantages such as …’. Also restate what your method did bring you, what things you did find thanks to your approach. 4. Go back to the suggestion: ‘I would be very interested in implementing your suggestion to see in detail what it would lead to. Indeed, as you suggest, this and this could be the advantages. Together with the approach I took it will definitely throw a more complete light on the matter.’ And then you are done.

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How d o y o u e n v i s io n t h e fi n a l   s tep s ?

At every Q&A session we have witnessed the student starts out slightly nervous, but quite quickly relaxes. This is something you actually can prepare for. In most cases, the audience will be invited to ask the first questions. Just make sure that you ask some people beforehand to ask certain questions. You can of course prepare the answers to these questions. You will then start out on familiar ground, giving you some time to get more at ease with the whole Q&A session. After that, when you are more into an answering mode, you can much more easily address unknown questions from the audience and your committee.

The professor Paulien Herder When a student approaches me to be his or her graduation project professor, there are two things I always ask them before anything else: • ‘what do you need from me?’, and • ‘why do you want me to be your professor?’. For me, the start of a graduation project is the most important moment of the entire project. Therefore I always make sure that a student knows what (s)he is going to do. If I am confident of that and I have confidence in the project itself, well then great, let’s start! From the moment you start your graduation project, you are telling a research story. And when I read the report, I want to know the complete story. The student needs to take me through the whole journey of the project. Is there an interesting question at the start? Does it tell me how answering this question is approached? Does it really answer the question posed at the beginning? Does the work also contain a solution for the organization in which the research is carried out? What do

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we learn from the research in more general sense? I want to see an application of the theory, but also a contribution to the theory. When meeting students who are about to finish their project, most of the time it means talking about taking a step back from the project work itself. Students generally don’t realize that it’s often better to leave the report for what it is for a while and look at it from a little distance. Instead, they are so focused on working very hard and producing results that they hardly ever take the time to reflect on what it actually is that they are working so hard for. More concretely, this reflective part for me simply means backing up the choices that have been made and discussing the assumptions. And it may sound strange, but I actually don’t even care that much about the actual choice itself. It is far more interesting to know whether there is a logical coherence in the work and whether someone shows me the choices and assumptions have been thought through and are well founded. It all comes down to this: can the student explain and convince me that the conclusions that have been drawn make sense? That is, are the conclusions somehow traceable in the report? Simply stating that ’37 interviews led to the conclusion that ...’ is not enough. Far more relevant is elaboration on why you chose to use interviews in the first place. Often enough, students come to me and say, ‘Paulien, here is my report, I want to graduate’. Some add ‘I want to graduate soon, as I want to make a trip around the world’. Others add ‘I want to graduate cum laude’. My reaction is always the same; ‘Good that you want to graduate, now let’s see where I think the added value in your work is and where I think there are still opportunities to make it better’. Whether they take this advice is up to them. Personally I always hope students get the best out of themselves and their projects. But as long as the work meets the standards for graduating, I have no problem with a student who wants to graduate as soon as possible so (s)he can go on a trip around the

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Students are responsible for their own graduation. They are the ones graduating, not the committee. However, I do think that committees also have to make it possible for the student and also facilitate the process if things get a little tough. But in the end, a student should never blame the committee for both the process and the results of the project. Students who feel mistreated should stand up and say ‘Hey, here I draw the line. This is the project plan we both agreed on at the start of the project, so why do you continually want me to do other things?’. It might sound a bit strong, but I really think that the responsibility for a good graduation project lies fully with the student. Not only because it is their project, but also because I want them to become independent workers, independent project managers. In the end I am extremely proud if they are able to say: ‘This is my project, and this is how I did it.’

How d o y o u e n v i s io n t h e fi n a l   s tep s ?

world or start working. Sure, it’s a pity in my opinion. But it’s a choice the student has to make.

The student Ezra Schüssler My graduation project was something I could not oversee when I started. Different to what I was used to; no study guide lines, no book, no long hours in the library studying for an exam. Graduating is an open process, however, you don’t know how open. Or you don’t even know what open actually means. It felt to me like I had to build a house without having an engineering drawing. Graduation to me was a process of finding out how graduation works, without knowing any of it in advance. Learning on the fly.

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I saw my graduation project as a combination of everything I had done previously in the curriculum. It drew a picture in my head that was very big, overwhelming, something to be scared about. The problem for me with a big project like this was the start, or even how to start? How to define the right angle? How to avoid starting all over after a while? I started just as I had started working on ordinary courses. Making intermediate reports, defining intermediate steps, that sort of thing. I really wanted to graduate, only I simply did not know how it worked. I would have loved to have had a blueprint. An external company was easy to find: a political party. The topic was also easy, as it was a hot issue at that time within the party. This made it very appealing to me. The idea that I was working on something that would really be used, that could make a difference, that could steer the ideas of some of the people within a real political party participating in the political process of my country. Particularly in the early stages I experienced ups and downs. Sometimes you are lucky, sometimes you aren’t. But ambition grew dramatically over time. The more I got to know about the topic, the more I wanted to know. Motivation to finish increased significantly over time. I wanted to make something very beautiful. During my graduation I realized I should take the lead and produce my own engineering drawings. I had to find out what a graduation project really was. It is not something that, like ordinary courses, flows from the teacher to the student. Here is the format, here is what you have to do, here is the deadline and here are the assessment criteria. None of this, it was now my project, totally my own. And, let’s be honest, it would be very strange if teachers had to motivate me to do my own project.

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With the realization that you are actually really going to carry out your own project according to your plan, the plan becomes the red line running through the project. The more you do, the more you move to the right in your GANTT chart, the more can be marked as ‘done’. This gives you wings to fly even faster and higher. The planning shows you the goal is getting closer, that the big scary picture of graduation is actually becoming smaller and smaller. The more things are marked as ‘done’, the fewer possibilities there are for you to draw scary pictures about graduation.

How d o y o u e n v i s io n t h e fi n a l   s tep s ?

You make your own graduation team with all the people you need. Some have expert knowledge, some are there only to chat with every week, others to blow off some steam. Suddenly you realize you are making a plan. Meeting people, consulting experts, made the planning real. Involving others in my project made me want to demonstrate my progress, to say: ‘Hey, this is what we discussed last time, now I have made these improvements. Can you help me with a couple of questions for the next phase?’

In the final stages I turned out to be a perfectionist. So it took me a few weeks longer than my original planning. However, the graduation goal was within arm’s reach. No time for doubt, no time for distraction. Every day brought me a step closer to the finish. Then came the deadline I had set myself to hand in my report. No more final changes, no more reviews. It was done. Over. It was strange to realize nothing could be done about it anymore. But I took comfort in the feeling that this was what I was worth at that moment, I had done everything I could. Now it was time for others to think something about it. The next day I woke up, but there was no reason to go to the library or sit at my laptop and write. This was it. I had done everything I could. I was

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proud of it. The only thing was just waiting for the grade, which, in the end, was very satisfactory. Having finished a project like this is very energizing. It gives a lot of confidence too. Both give me the opportunity to keep on doing things, to pick up new projects and make them work. Every time I start a project I look for the best team to work with so I get in the end what I want and reach the project goals I defined. Graduating taught me managerial skills. I now have the engineering drawings in my head to build the house.

7.4

Time for action

Whether or not you need to take action here depends somewhat on the way your institution organizes graduation. If you are not expected to present or defend your work, then that is it. Clean and iron your clothes, polish your shoes and comb your hair. Do whatever you think is needed to make you appear at your best when you are the center of attention, however briefly. And don’t forget to enjoy every minute of it. If, however, you have to deal with more than that and your institution expects you to present and/or defend your work, you have three important things to do: 1. Write down what you would want to know if you were interested in the research topic and were questioning whether you wanted to attend the presentation. Make sure this is part of the invitation (this is ‘managing the expectations’). It should be part of the start of your defense. In more detail: when would you be satisfied if you were in the audience? If that is difficult, think about the following:

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• •

• •

What is the question that is going to be answered? What kind of product can I expect at the end of the presentation? How was the research carried out? What sources of information (experiment, experts, literature) were used? How were the results of the research interpreted to answer the question? Do I agree with the steps taken, the assumptions stated and the logic of the reasoning behind the answer to the research question? What are the next steps and is there something in it I can use? Don’t forget: what would make a presentation interesting? What will keep the audience entertained and focused throughout your whole presentation?

How d o y o u e n v i s io n t h e fi n a l   s tep s ?

• • • •

2. Remember that presenting and defending is like performing in a theatre. You are the star of the show. And every actor performs better when they are able to influence their mental as well as their physical attitude. Put your feet firmly on the ground, stand up straight, look everyone in the eye. You are going to do this! You are undoubtedly going to leave this room feeling great, graduation certificate in hand, to big applause and a lot of flowers. Practice this attitude in front of the mirror, or in front of a friend. Ask yourself and them how your looks change. You will be surprised! 3. Identify people in the audience or committee who want to help you make a good start with your Q&A session. You will be surprised how many supervisors are very pleased if they know beforehand that they are going to ask a good and interesting question. Sometimes they are just as nervous as you. If not your supervisors, at least make sure you have a few friends in the audience with whom you have prepared a few questions. Make sure they do not hesitate for a single moment when the

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professor invites the audience to ask questions. They have to be the first! That way you won’t be caught by surprise and will put yourself at ease. Moreover you can show a bit more of your work and make a good impression on the rest of the audience and committee with your amazing question-answering skills. It usually helps a lot to practice a full presentation and defense with a friend who is familiar with the topic and with a friend who is not familiar with the topic at all. In the end it all comes down to one thing: you are the leader of your own graduation, from start to finish. During the final stage, the committee and the audience are your team. Make sure that that team is of as much help to you as possible! When the show is over and you have been awarded your degree, don’t forget to reward yourself. You did it! It wasn’t luck that got you here and it surely wasn’t your supervisors who made you graduate. It has only been due to your hard work, preparation and attitude that you have successfully completed your graduation project. Well, that’s it then. You have graduated. We hope you experienced many of our promised ‘is this all’ moments. And, especially, that you have enjoyed it! What we have discussed in this book is not so much about graduation, but about all kinds of projects you may encounter. Many of our former graduates who gave suggestions for this book asked us to write another one, but then on ‘project management’, instead of ‘graduation project management’.

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So we leave you with a few more thoughts for your next projects in the next and final chapter.

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‘After graduation, all future projects are just like managing a graduation project. We are glad we have learned that already’. We have heard this so many times. Perhaps we will write a book on that too…

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8 GRADUATED: WHAT’S NEXT? Although the world is demanding that you act in a certain way, don’t be afraid to follow your own path. If you pursue something unique to you, and you do it really well, people will come knocking on your door. Rodney Smith Graduating has been a dream for you for a very long time. You had envisaged it for so long. During your years of study you had thought of it as very distant, very difficult perhaps. You have heard stories about it. Bad stories, the myths we busted together earlier in the book. But also beautiful stories about all the possibilities after graduation. And then, suddenly, and above all before you expect it, you are a graduate. You are a fresh BSc, a new MSc, an MA, an MBW or a PhD. Everyone around you is happy for you. You celebrate. What comes after the celebrations? That is probably the most frequently asked question when you are completing your graduation project. And if not, it’s for sure the most frequent question at your graduation party, whether that’s a large scale affair with bands and beer or very modest, maybe a candlelit dinner with friends or relatives. What are you going to do now?

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Most times this question is answered with very concrete things. Fresh MBA graduates often ‘get back to work to get done what has been left behind’. Lots of fresh BSc graduates go to the market to find a job or start looking for an interesting Masters to continue their studies. Some MSc and MA graduates save some money and go on a trip around the world, unplanned, or very planned, a year in a distant country to work in a bar, to be a ski-instructor in the mountains or to work in a windsurfing school on a tropical location. Most others go looking for jobs or start their own companies. Many graduates cannot answer the question. They simply really don’t know. They are tempted by many things. They can’t make decisions. There are too many options and they are afraid to lose a good opportunity. You want to know our opinion? We think it does not matter at all. Just follow where your heart goes and it will be OK. However, we do have something to discuss with you here. What is the essence of this book? Leadership. Taking the lead of your project. Taking the lead so you influence the process of reaching your goals. Steering in such a way that you end up where you want to be, at a time you want to be there. Being in the driver’s seat at all times. The essence of this book is that life does not simply happen to you. There is always room for choice. Room to make decisions about what you want in your given circumstances. And room for action. Action by you! One student told us how strange she thought it was to do such complex research, calculations and analyses during the curriculum and her final graduation project.

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Do you want to manipulate Excel sheets for the first two years of your life after your graduation? ‘But that is what they want from me,’ she said. OK, but who decides to work there?

G r a d u ate d : w h at ’ s n e x t ?

‘I will be editing Excel sheets for the first two years of my job anyhow,’ she said.

‘Do I have a choice?’ she said. Yes, you always have a choice, whatever the circumstances. There is always room for choice. Even if life is very tough for you, you can always find a little room for choice. Your choice. It can be very difficult from time to time, especially when life hits hard with illness, loved ones passing away, difficult economic times, being fired from a job, reorganizations, great uncertainty and so on. Taken together, all we have done so far in this book has been to make you lead your graduation project such that you end up where you wanted to end up. For us the question ‘what are you going to do after your graduation?’ is a question whether you want to stay in charge of your own projects in the future, or not. And that is a choice. You can return to the previous situation in which you could blame the world (the system, the professor, the institute, your colleagues, your

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boss, your management, your director, the economic system, free market, democracy) for every bad thing that happens to you. In that situation life just happens to you. In that situation you will create mythical stories about all future projects you will be part of. About your new jobs, all of them. About your new colleagues, all of them. About the new manager of your department. About the new local or national government. And, since in that old situation you will be very good at blaming everybody but yourself when things don’t go the way you want, you will be unhappy. A potential burnout casualty too. And probably also not the nicest friend and partner. Do you want to remain in charge from now on, or do you prefer to become submissive again? Are you going to hope someone hires you? Are you going to do what other people tell you to do? Are you going to help other people reach their goals? Or are you going to use what you practiced with this book after you have graduated? Stay in charge. Be the leader. Reach your goals. At the time you want. That is a choice. Your choice. Have fun!

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WHO ARE WE? Throughout this book we have repeatedly referred to ‘we’, and you may have begun to wonder who the people behind the book actually are. And perhaps more importantly: why ‘we’ think that our take on the importance of leadership in graduation projects may be of help to you. Who are ‘we’? We are two people who have already been working well together in various educational settings for quite some years. One of ‘us’ has already graduated once and is now working on her final master’s degree project (MSc engineering) while writing this book. The other half of ‘us’ has graduated more than once himself (MSc, MA, PhD), and has supervised well over 200 degree projects and is still doing so daily, including BSc, MSc, PhD and MBA projects. But why have we written this book? And why now? First of all, we enjoy working together. We are a team. But there is more. Right now, ‘we’ have experience from both sides of the table. Now, and only now, do we have an opportunity to shine a unique light on graduation projects from the perspective of someone who, just like you, still has to go through the process and has heard just about every story there is about it (maybe even told a few along the way), and who already knows what it’s really all about. And, at the same time, from the perspective of someone who has seen many graduation projects from both sides of the table, whether as student or supervisor. Someone who sees the potential lying in every student who aims to graduate, and also sees the many mechanisms students of all ages develop to make graduation harder, more difficult and less fun. That is only because, somehow, they themselves have

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the idea that graduation is hard, difficult and not, by its very nature, something to enjoy. We think that should change. And it can, as long as you want it to change. And we think we can help you with that. Why have we written this book right now? Well, only in this short window of time have we been able to give you insights that we will no longer be able to give you a few years ahead. Because by then we will both be sitting at the same side of the table with no student in our team anymore, only supervisors. That is why we have produced this book, and why we have chosen to do that now. We hope you have enjoyed it. Please let us know. Alexander & Elianne

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FURTHER READING Here are some suggestions for interesting books that you may want to apply and work with during and after your graduation project. There will also be a lots of material available on writing proposals and research reports within your own institute, This book has never been intended as a substitute for that literature, but only to give you a grip on it, so you can use it. Getting a grip on complexity, analytical tools to make situations explicit: • Haan, A.R.C. de & Pauline de Heer (2012); Solving Complex Problems. The Hague: Eleven International Publishing. Planning and organizing: • Allen, D. (2001); Getting things done, the art of stress free productivity. Penguin Books. Many reprints and formats available. • Gleeson, K. (1994); Personal Efficiency Program. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Many reprints and formats available. Communicating: • Roam, D. (2009); The back of the napkin, solving problems and selling ideas with pictures. London: Penguin Books Ltd. Making you act: • Robbins, Anthony (1986); Unlimited Power: The New Science Of Personal Achievement. Many reprints and formats available.

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Attitude: • Covey, S.C. (1989); The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Many reprints and formats available.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Two writers and their ideas, ideas that originated from the people we have worked with, our students, colleagues and friends. We also had our team, a group of smart and inspiring people, without whom we – literally – could not have completed the task. We therefore want to explicitly thank: Anna Campert, Els van Daalen, Heleen Vreugdenhil, Iris Golob, Pieter Bots, Suzan de Haan, Vincent de Gooyert, Martine Schmidt-Poolman, Joris Bekkers (one of our publishers) and Darinde Gijzel. You have all in various ways influenced the content of this book. Thank you so much for the time and effort you have spent in talking to us and discussing your opinions and ideas. Carlijn Remmelzwaal, Susan Lagerweij, Kobus Du Toit, Kalliopi Diliou, Martine Schmidt-Poolman, Ezra Schüssler, Ernst ten Heuvelhof, Wil Thissen, Bert van Wee, Jan Anne Annema, Zofia Lukszo and Paulien Herder. Thank you for sharing your stories and experiences with us. Your indepth and personal stories give more substance and meaning to the message we have tried to deliver. Bert Enserink, Tineke Ruigh-Van der Ploeg, Jan Anna Annema, Koen van Schijndel, Suzan de Haan, Astrid van der Schee (our other

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publisher), Andrea Claassen, Sophia van Bakel (thanks for the title!) and Mark de Bruijne. Thank you so much for reviewing an earlier version of this book. Your critical views and useful tips have helped us create a much better text. Renata Renema, Jane Fain and Menno Yap. A special thanks to the three of you for commenting on our earlier work and letting us continually pick your minds. You three have spent a lot of time helping us create a much more readable and convincing story, without ever telling us to shut up. Your contribution really made a substantial difference. The Hague/Rotterdam, July 2014 Alexander & Elianne

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Professional Group Decision-Making Support in Highly Complex Situations

Solving Complex Problems Alexander de Haan and Pauline de Heer

ISBN 978-94-90947-71-2

Everybody is solving problems every day. But especially when problems become highly complex, how do you know you are solving the problem you or your client are actually experiencing? What needs to be done to reach a desired future, rather than a future you fear or dislike? People are best motivated to act upon complex problems when the essence of the problem is captured in a simple way. This book presents basic techniques to do so. Applying these techniques will help you and your client to understand and oversee the problem and, eventually, to make decisions and act in situations in which it is not at all obvious what to do.

178 pages

The techniques in Solving Complex Problems cover: – rational problem analysis – creative idea generation – dealing with uncertainty – comparing different possible solutions We live in an ever-changing world, where people with different interests and goals have to deal with an unpredictable future. If you love working on the complex problems this world brings: read Solving Complex Problems to learn new and practical ways of dealing with them.

A SECOND EDITION (ISBN 978-94-6236-504-9) WILL BE PUBLISHED EARLY 2015.

order now at www.elevenpub.com

P.O.Box 85576 I 2508 CG The Hague I The Netherlands telephone +31 70 330 70 33 I fax +31 70 330 70 30 I e-mail [email protected] I www.elevenpub.com

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