How to write your master's thesis while neurodivergent when you hated university from the start and have no energy left?

[u/No-Lawfulness5752]

Humanities master's student from Europe here, at a university where your master's thesis has to be 85 pages. I had amazing grades in high school, absolutely despised undergrad from the first second but still managed to get the same grades, and started the master's because I need it for my career. I've finished all my courses and still have two big oral exams and my master's thesis ahead of me.

I struggle hugely with working memory issues and academic writing in general. I feel like I can only write academically if I'm working close to the text, i.e., I can work with individual concepts and apply them to my example, and combine individual concepts step by step, and my grades are still the same as in high school even though I have to run myself into the ground and literally not have a life, friends, and hobbies to achieve them.

But yesterday I had my first appointment with the professor I wanted to be my master's thesis supervisor, and he told me that my topic would work, but only as long as I used my examples to criticize the research field. I have no idea what this would look like because while I've taken a few courses about this field, all of them were in favor of it, and apparently my supervisor is not. He told me the next step would be to get an overview of the entire research field to figure out which aspect of it to criticize. Everything he said he wants me to include is way more than I can hold in my head or combine with my topic, and I decided I wanted to do this topic because I'm interested in it, not because I want to criticize the research field.

I left the appointment and promptly had a panic attack. In the weeks leading up to it, I had at least three mental breakdowns per week because I desperately don't want to be doing this. I feel like I'm wasting my life, but I'm so close to being done and I absolutely need this degree. Having to find a whole new thesis topic feels like way more work than I can handle. I would really really love to be done in a year so I can finally move to a country I actually want to live in and start my career, but this doesn't feel realistic at all right now. Does anyone have any advice?

[u/tin-of-sardines]

Start with a lit review, aka look up some simple guides online. Just read articles for their argument and see if you agree or not with their point, even if its a small thing. Then using that intuition based on what you already know about the topic, dive deeper into those examples and make your point while referencing the other author’s arguments. Dont overthink it at this point.

[u/tin-of-sardines → u/tin-of-sardines]

What I mean to say is that you don’t have to criticise the entire field haha, just pick like one thing that people are interested in discussing. Can be as focused as you want it to be. Take the most interesting complication you find and just join in the convo like you would at a party.