The bachelor’s project required at all Iranian universities can be a blessing in disguise.  Here’s some advice to help you enjoy and benefit from your last days at college.  It’s given as a list of important points to consider.  Read on.

Advanced Course

If you plan to work on a more research intensive project, I’d suggest taking an advanced course with your project supervisor.  This will give you some ideas and motivation to work on the topic.

Project Scope

Your main goal is a complete and edited report that is ready and printed before the deadline.  Don’t get over-excited, over-enthusiastic, or over-confident in choosing the project topic and scope.  Remember, you’re only in the learning phase of your research career and will have enough time to work on really cool problems later.  When time allows only one step, a small step to a local optimum is favored over a giant step to nowhere.

Clear statements

Make sure both you and your supervisor have mutual understanding on the project specifications, deliverables, and timeline.  Remember, s/he’s probably used to a special vocabulary when speaking with her/his grad students and colleagues everyday and may forget that you may not be familiar with the jargon.  I was lost for days trying to figure out what my supervisor was talking about, asking grad students, searching the Internet — all to no avail. It’s best to keep asking questions until the problem is “crystal clear” for you.

Having stood at this end of the chain, you’ll be able to see why writing well is valuable.  A good scientific writing has to be able to tell the most using the least number of sentences.  You don’t want to waste your reader’s time with redundant sentences, and you don’t want to be ambiguous.  Be clear, and take responsibility for the correctness of each statement.  One of the graduate theses that I was reading for my project was ambiguous in many respects and contained technical inaccuracies.  It was not only time-consuming but irritating to read, let alone build upon. Your bachelor’s project report can be a very useful document for other undergrads who might want to work in the same area, so keep that in mind when writing.  Based on experience, I can tell you that papers with higher citations are also easier to understand.  No wonder, right?

After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.
~Frederick Chopin

Weekly meetings

In my opinion, this is the most important thing to ask of your supervisor.  A weekly meeting, for as little as 10 – 15 minutes, same time every week, is necessary to ensure moving on the right track and getting results by the deadline.  You’ll need this kind of feedback on your work, especially because it’s (probably) your first real research experience.

Writing process

Have a written version of your report ready before each of the meetings.  The iterative process in software engineering works.  Learn from its lessons.  This will keep you at bay from having to go through worried, sleepless nights!

First things should come first.  Review the literature, and write your literature review as far ahead in time as you can.  Not only will you better understand the status of your work with respect to the existing research in the area, it will also take a big load off of your shoulders.  You can spend the rest of your time focusing on the main work, implementing the ideas, and giving references when necessary.

I had quite a journey working on my project.  I hope the advice is useful for you.

I want to dedicate this song to projects, exams, and deadlines …

The song reminds me of a quote from David Brooks.  It’s hard to agree with completely, but here it is,

Institutions do all the things that are supposed to be bad. They impede personal exploration. They enforce conformity.  But they often save us from our weaknesses and give meaning to life.

I hate to end on that note.  Here’s a nice document from Richard Hamming about the research process.  It’s enjoyable to read, but if it’s too long for you, you can look at a summary of that talk presented as 10 simple rules for research.