Expectation management

The department of economics allocates a specific number of hours of supervision to each student, more for a master’s thesis than a bachelor’s thesis. The total time allocated (and this includes for the defense and reading/assessing the thesis) is:

• Bachelor: 10 hours
• Master: 25 hours

Typically, it makes sense to meet every 2-3 weeks, but this changes somewhat with the distance to the deadline. (Of course, you don’t have to worry about keeping track of hours, I will do that. And nobody gets left behind if there is a need for extra supervision.)

Your responsibility: Contact me when you need supervision and we arrange a date. Important: You must send a calendar invite to my outlook calendar and make sure I accept the invitation so that we are sure we have the same date and time in our calendars. This may be the first time you send an outlook calendar invitation so read up online, there are simple guides Apple, Gmail, Microsoft, etc.

Before a meeting: Before each meeting, send me

• A brief agenda with what you want to cover at that meeting.
• An up-to-date bullet list version of your thesis (see below).
• Send all your questions to an AI (ChatGPT, Copilot, etc.) and use it as a sparring partner first. E.g. write a prompt like: “You are a professor in economics and my supervisor in writing my bachelor’s/master’s thesis. Here are my questions for the stage I’m at: …”
  • Sometimes, your questions may have obvious answers, so using an AI as a sparring partner can help you get past the obvious parts and then get more out of the supervision meeting.

Feedback on written work: You are entitled to feedbakc on your written work. I am not allowed to read more than 50% at most of the written thesis, and for most about 30-40% is suitable. It is up to you to prioritize which parts you want feedback on. You should send me some written text earlier than you think, ideally already 2 months before handing in. I will typically have a lot to say about the style of writing etc. that will save you time later.

• Waiting time: I will typically be able to read and give feedback within a week. However, in the last week before a deadline, there can be a lot of groups panicking and asking for feedback, so I may get completely swamped.
• Use an AI: Economics is not a literature study, so you should definitely use an AI to help with the writing. Try writing down a bullet list of the contents you want in a paragraph and ask an AI to flesh it out in full writing. Make sure to ask for a “scientific, brief, clear and concise style, suitable for a bachelor’s/master’s thesis in economics.” This will ensure that my feedback can focus on the content of your text and not the writing style itself. If you focus on the list of arguments/points you are making, it should make the process of transforming to finished text much more dynamic and flexible, and make it less painful to restructure the text later.