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I have been helping some friends in engineering

M

I graduated last year with a PhD in a humanities field of research. Last year, I was helping a friend from engineering to revise his thesis before resubmitting it after the viva. Then a friend of his also asked me for help, and so on. So I have been looking over a few theses from engineering, mostly from IT related topics. I just help with copyediting, making sure everything is in order, tables, figures, references, etc.

Now, coming form the humanities, I knew everything that was in my thesis. Every single line. So I was quite surprised to find out that my friends dont seem to know what's inside theirs. I ask them 'what did you mean here' and they dont know. Fair enough, they are not native speakers, but neither I am! Is this normal for sciences? There's so much data that maybe some of it doesen't make sense to you? I am not sure if I should think they simply copy-pasted stuff without giving it too much thought, or maybe science research is too complicated for somehone like me (not good with numbers and equations).

Also I wanted to say something to PhD candidates: I know its hard at the end, but make sure your thesis is in order before resubmitting it. The last guy I helped, his thesis didnt have page numbers. I wasnt sure why, so I asked him if in engineering its ok not to have page numbers, and he asked me to put them in. This is one day before the resubmission deadline. Crazy.

T

No it's not normal - a student should know what every line of their thesis means in the sciences too. I have also had to help many people with basic Word functions, so that doesn't surprise me, although it shouldn't be that way!

M

Thanks Treeoflife
I kind of suspected that. I just can't wrap my head around the fact that again and again, I asked question like 'do you mean this or do you mean that?' And I could not get a straight answer. Which kinda puts me in an awkward postion, because I feel like I am not doing a very good job! I guess in the future I am going to have to refuse doing these things so late.

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