<p>I cannot decide whether or not to do an honors thesis.
I plan on attending law school after graduation, and I just don't know if spending so much time on a thesis would be worth my while.
I won't be finished with the thesis when I apply to law school, so can't really boost my applications. But then again, if I don't write the thesis, I will not be able to graduate with summa cum laude or magna cum laude.<br>
Should I do the honors thesis?</p>
<p>I think this depends on your own personality. If you are the kind of person that would look back at some point and really wish you had done it, then I would say make the effort. If, on the other hand, you pretty much never look back, then stay focused on your goals. I know if it were me, I would have to do the thesis. I would just always feel I never completed what I started out to do. Actually I did do a thesis my senior year at Tulane, but the system was much different then. There was no honors program per se, although there were honors courses. And you graduated with Latin Honors based solely on GPA back then. But I can also tell you all these years later that the 3 publications in the top chemistry journals that we got from the work is still a great source of pride to me. Those papers have been cited by other researchers hundreds of times. I have this sense of pride despite (or maybe enhanced by) the fact that I didn’t stay with laboratory work in chemistry for my career choice (hence the name fallenchemist). What field is your major?</p>
<p>Also, while it might not make a lot of difference compared to which law school you attended and how you placed in your graduating class there, it will still look very good on your resume to be able to claim magna cum laude or summa cum laude, and put the title of your thesis on there as well. It can potentially be a conversation point in an interview, and maybe give you a chance to elaborate that to accomplish the thesis you had to be organized, disciplined and diligent in your research. Also having that on your resume might help with getting internships while you are a 1L or 2L, before you really have a class rank. Given the stiff competition for those jobs, any edge could help.</p>
<p>Obviously I have biased this towards the reasons to do it, which is not what I intended at first. I still think the main consideration is to balance these considerations against your likely feelings in the future and your time constraints. Talk to whichever professor you are thinking of having as an advisor. I am sure they can give you guidance here as well.</p>
<p>I have wondered about the origin of your name for a while, fallenchemist. Now we know!</p>
<p>Ah yes. I have explained it once or twice, but of course the readership on here is constantly turning over. Love chemistry as a subject, found the day-to-day lab work as a grad student after Tulane incredibly tedious and a bit too isolated. It was so different than doing research in the lab as an undergrad. At Tulane it was just a lot of fun (my research prof was an extremely great guy which helps a lot) while in grad school doing it 10+ hours a day is basically a job, and not one I found suited me as well as I thought it would.</p>
<p>Got my MBA after that, and have spent almost my entire career on the business end of chemistry. Got to stay very involved with people doing research and to stay aware of all the cool advances. It all works for the best eventually.</p>