Writing a thesis is a very difficult and important task in a student’s life. Now, if that is already challenging when you write it in your own language and home country, imagine doing it abroad! Not only will the international student face the academic obstacles common to everybody, but also deal with the cultural differences, different ways of writing and formulating research questions, among others. Then, how to address those issues without getting too stressed out?

Well, I would say that the first and biggest challenge is to formulate your research question. It has to be relevant, new(ish), interesting. However, one very important thing is that you actually like the subject you will be dealing with, because you will read about it over and over and over and over – I am already tired just by writing this – again. Moving from choosing a topic that is dear to you, how to actually decide on your question? I believe that, in the beginning, for every 10 questions you brainstorm only about half a question is actually worth it. It’s funny to notice how, at times, you will think that victory is upon you and that you finally have your question, only to realise a couple of hours later that your question was already exhaustively dealt with by someone or by a lot of people in the fancy academia. But you’ve got to laugh about it! Never give up on humour when dealing with your own micro-academic-disasters and keep it up!

After dealing with your research question you get to start writing your thesis. And that is the moment when the language problems slap you straight in the face. It could be the case that in your own language you explain things in a different way, with more words or more formally. However, you have to adapt to the format even though you haven’t got a clue on how to do it. It’s really weird when you want to talk bananas but the reader actually understands oranges. And inside you are like: come on, in my head is so clearly bananas, how come you don’t see it! Despite the fact it can be funny to remember this afterwards, it feels so frustrating to try and overcome these obstacles! Looking for guidance from your supervisor and help of native speakers can be a hell of a help though.

With that being said, it is clearly not an easy task to write your thesis, but it does not mean you have to go through hell and back to do so. You can also understand that is a harder task for you and therefore you will need more time or guidance to do it. You will be stressed and disappointed every now and then, but try to spend more time learning from it instead of feeling bad. At the end you can have a very good story on how you overcame more than a few bumps to get it done and you did it!

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