This tutorial could also be called things I wish I had known when I was writing my diploma thesis. This guideline is intended to ease writing your master's thesis (and hopefully, to produce better theses and successful defenses, as a result) and what better way is there than provide you with a spectrum of information I gained being on both sides of the trench. I'm going to navigate you through the process of your master's thesis assignment, writing and defense. The guideline is mostly fitted to a typical experimental NLP master's thesis but I'm sure you can tweak it to other situation once you get the general idea.

Below is an expected timeline for your thesis development. I don't think I can stress this enough: start EARLY. Seriously. You will make your life much easier if you start programming, measuring and writing (that especially!) in good time. Most opponents can recognize hasty writing hurriedly finished over the last week before deadline. As for the question what is the minimum time in which I can write a thesis, let's pretend I never heard that.

The exact dates of everything that happens at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, such as beginnings and ends of semesters, deadlines for courses and exams enrollments, deadlines for theses submissions and theses exams, is strictly bound by an official Academic Calendar of the faculty. Look for the exact deadlines of the required actions in the current academic year issue of the calendar.

With that in mind, let's say that a typical master's curriculum takes two academic years (four semesters). Master's thesis writing is officially a three-semester course, consisting of three subsequent (!) semesters each of which you must subscribe to in the study information system (SIS), in the appointed deadline.

That generates roughly the following course of action:

• minus 4 academic semesters: Starting your first semester as a master's student. Before the end of this semester, start looking around for a possible topic of your thesis. There are two ways to select your topic:
  1. The majority of people go to the module Thesis (Selection of subject) in the study information system (SIS) which lists an offer of yet unsubscribed theses. If any of them catches your eye, contact the supervisor by e-mail.
  2. If you have a cool topic in mind, you can also approach a prospective supervisor with your idea and ask if they would be willing to supervise you.

Funnily enough, there is even an official deadline for Recommended period for deciding master's thesis topics in the oh-so-important Academic Calendar. As of 2021, it was Feb 11, just three days before the official start of the summer semester. It is only recommended, though, but gives the idea about the expected timing.

• minus 3 academic semesters: Having agreed with you supervisor, enrol to the first of the three master's thesis courses in the study information system (SIS). Most of the communication with your supervisor is conveyed via email, with preferably regular, but sometimes occassional meetings in person (replace person by zoom in covid times). In this semester, you will likely get acquainted with the topic: You will be assigned some scientific papers to read, probably learn new technologies, get access to computation grid, etc. At the end of this semester, your supervisor will grant you credit for the first master's thesis course.
• minus 2 academic semesters: Again, don't forget to enrol for the second of the master's thesis courses. In this semester, some serious coding usually happens. If you haven't started in the previous semester, you will probably design experiments, guided by your supervisor. You will implement code for these experiments, run it on the computational grid. If your thesis is more practical one, you may implement an application. This semester is very busy and if your topic was chosen well, it is usually (at least mildly) fun :) At the end of semester, you will be granted credit for the course.
• minus 1 academic semester: Finishing the experiments, polishing your application. But mostly, the writing. I will say more about the actual writing later in the following sections. Again, hopefully, you will be credited and will pass the third and last of the master's thesis courses at the end of this semester.

When planning, allow sufficient time for (at the very least) one, but preferably two corrections from your supervisor. Ideally, you'll write the thesis and send it to your supervisor, allowing several days (or smaller number of weeks if they are very busy) for reading. Unless you are already experienced academic writer, at least one reading is critical for the thesis to pass because your supervisor will spot the obvious problems and tell you what to fix. Don't despair if there are many (many, many) comments, that's absolutely normal. Just keep calm and deal with them one by one.

- Typical number of pages
- Chapters (Introduction, Related Work, Methodology, Results, Discussion, Conclusions, Appendices)
- Referencing
- Tables, Figures, Graphs

Don't fall in the PDF/A trap! The electronic system requires all submitted PDF in PDF/A format and there is an automatic check for PDF/A. Allow yourself enough time to find out how to convert your PDF into PDF/A (like, not in the last two hours before deadline midnight).