Wei, who is writing his thesis about the correlation between poverty and poor health in immigrant women, adds that organization is the key to lowering the risk of thesis trauma. He color codes all his materials--during his first reading, he highlights or uses adhesive page markers in one color; when he reevaluates it for a specific chapter, he uses a different color to distinguish between interesting and pertinent information.

Wei also recommends including ideas that seem irrelevant to the thesis during initial drafts because they could be pertinent if the writer unexpectedly reformulates the paper.

To maintain a train of thought, he says thesis writers should leave themselves notes when they want to refer to an article, instead of stopping their writing to look back through dozens of volumes.

Then again, it's not just diligent note taking and precise highlighting that lead a thesis writer to success. More unconventional tactics can calm a senior's mind in the face of pressure and make the process run more smoothly.

Wei says he has tested the benefits of combining alcohol and academics, writing his thesis while drinking a beer. Anna M. Harr '99, a women's studies concentrator, bought children's flip sunglasses with fish-shaped lenses, which she dons when she works on her thesis.

"It's hard to be too stressed out when I'm wearing something that silly," Harr wrote in an e-mail message. "It's hard to retain much of a sense of humor when you spend a good portion of the day staring at a laptop."

And thesis writers say it's not just stacks of books, interviews, experiments and pages and pages of writing that they learn from while writing a thesis.

Seniors complement their learning about their thesis topics with other benefits, citing camaraderie among thesis writers, the pride of completing a thesis, and knowledge about how to work efficiently as additional advantages to their research and writing.