Thesis Proposal

As I'm now entering my third year as a Ph.D. student with the qualifying exams already behind me, it's now time for me to start working on my thesis proposal. I must say that since I originally entered as a master's student (and switched to directly getting a Ph.D. after my first semester), I didn't exactly get oriented properly to what exactly is involved in doing a Ph.D. thesis. It's partly my fault for not reading all the information available to me, but most of the important things I seem to have learned from labmates as new things came up or from administrators who suddenly told me that I had to do something. Furthermore, since my dad is professor himself, you'd think that I would have learned some of these things second-hand; afterall, random graduate students have been visiting my parent's house ever since I was a kid to discuss their research with my dad or drop off manuscripts. However, despite this, even after being told I had to do a 'thesis proposal', I had little idea as to what was actually involved in this. Writing was involved, I was sure--but how much? Well, it turns out that it doesn't have to be that long (10-20 pages is likely to be fine), but, it does involve an hour-long presentation and finding people to be on my thesis committee, including someone outside the department (and/or university). Presenting in front of a group of professors sounds a bit scary, but I'll probably be ok. However, what I do need to now before that is much more slipperly: find an original problem to research...

Well, given all the time and energy that has been invested into managing my ever-growing personal photo collection, I have finally gotten permission to do my thesis on personal image mangement after 6 graduate class projects and 4 years of developing and maintaining my site. However, it may end up going in some very new and different directions after I complete this soul-(& literature-) searching process.