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		previously, you will be amazed at what a painful and time-consuming process it is. You are likely to need a total of 3 months to write the thesis, on a relatively full-time basis. You will not have full time, however, nor can you count on the ready availability of your thesis advisor. Allow 6 months at a minimum.

		Certainly, the publishable portions of your research work should be written as papers and submitted if at all possible before you leave the institution. It will be difficult to do this after you leave the institution, and it will get more difficult with each passing month.

		Relationship to the Outside World

		Remember, your thesis will bear only your name. Theses are normally copyrighted in the name of the author. Your early reputation and perhaps your job prospects may relate to the quality of your thesis and of the related publications that may appear in the primary literature. (As stated in Chapter 3, you may not have any "related publications" if you allow your thesis to be posted on a Web site.) A tightly written, coherent thesis will get you off to a good start. An overblown encyclopedia of minutiae will do you no credit. The writers of good theses try hard to avoid the verbose, the tedious, and the trivial.

		Be particularly careful in writing the Abstract of your thesis. The Abstracts of theses from most institutions are published in Dissertation Abstracts, thus being made available to the larger scientific community.

		If your interest in this book at this time centers on how to write a thesis, I suggest that you now carefully read Chapter 25 ("How to Write a Review Paper"), because in many respects a thesis is indeed a review paper.