Towards a Pattern Language for the Masters Student

Every year, thousands of new students begin their Masters in STEM related topics. Despite being regarded as a common occurrence by the faculty, it represents the culmination of years of studying and preparation for their professional life. Notwithstanding, these students face well-known recurrent problems: how to choose a topic, how to choose an advisor, how to start researching, and how to deal with all the unknowns associated with academic research. Although there are several books on how to write a thesis, most of them avoid prescriptive recommendations on topics beyond research per se or focus on doctoral students, for which the duration and motivation are significantly different. In this paper, we draft a pattern language comprised of thirty patterns that we have observed from supervising over a hundred masters students within the last decade.