When it comes to writing a thesis, you should be able to take what you can, because there are too many books to read because of the information explosion, so you must build your own knowledge tree.

2. Form your knowledge tree

However, you can't just read those important books, but those five or six books will gradually form the backbone of your knowledge tree. After that, you can refer to this framework and temporarily put aside irrelevant things.

Master tools

At this stage, we must master the language and appropriate tools. If you want to have a foreign language that you can read fluently, if you want to have another language that you can at least understand the title of the article, it is better to learn more, but at least one language, whether it is English, Japanese or French. You must be able to read relevant books fluently, which is the minimum prerequisite. Once this tool is gone, your vision will be greatly limited, because Chinese is like a skylight, without which your room will be closed.

4. Break through the boundaries between disciplines

Interdisciplinary learning should be regarded as a very important thing, but what is involved in interdisciplinary must be helpful to your knowledge tree. You should learn to steal a few shots from other fields, absorb some concepts from other fields, and have a different kind of inspiration for the problems you care about, but don't be a disaster.

5. The theme of the paper should be malleable.

For a master student or doctoral student, if you choose the wrong topic, it is a failure. If you choose the right topic, you still have a 70% chance of winning. This problem is worth thinking about by the students of Yanyi and Boyi. Your first year was actually spent on it. You should keep discussing with the teacher to find a meaningful and extensible problem, and it should not be too difficult.

6. Develop the habit of writing according to academic format.

There is also a basic training, that is, whether you usually write 10,000 words, 30,000 words or 50,000 words, you should develop the habit of following academic norms and let nature take its course. That is to say, at the beginning of the postgraduate stage, you should cultivate the footnotes and formats of your papers into a part of your life. If we don't form this habit, people will feel that this paper is not rigorous, and it will take a lot of time to revise it later, because we are writing a paper instead of writing a short article. There are certain rules about where to put commas, where to put titles, where to put quotation marks and what punctuation marks to use. Chinese writing is ok, and English has a lot of abbreviations.

7. Make good use of the library

The library should be the most important place for graduate students. You don't have to read every book, but you should know which books can be read. I remember when I was a student, all the new books were posted on the wall of the library. The most important thing for a student is to have a look at the title. To some extent, knowing the book cover is enough, but it is still different from playing computer. In fact, you should be familiar with this book, touch it and look at the table of contents.

8. Set aside time and think carefully

Remember to give yourself some time to think. Whether a paper can be superb and fascinating, it is very important to think conceptually about the phenomenon, but I am not talking about taking a theoretical route, but reminding everyone to improve two or three steps on the general level and conceptualize what they see. I really get it. What do you see? What is the overall meaning? What is the outline of the whole? Don't be overwhelmed by tiny details. Although small details are your most important start, you should always leave some time to think and settle down slowly.