Scheduling can seem like a tangle of contradictions, but you can figure it out - if you don't lose patience.  Here are some helpful bits of information.


        Ask your advisor and committee members what classes they would recommend you take in any given term.  They are willing to help but probably won't volunteer information.  If you have a particularly thorny problem, like two required courses scheduled at the same time, or required courses that are suddenly canceled, don't panic.  The department wants you to succeed and hopes you do it in a timely fashion.  Talk to the professors and administrators and see what accomodations they offer.  They probably won't volunteer a solution, but if your fix makes sense and doesn't compromise the quality of your degree, they might let you use it.

        One class, 534R Score Preparation and Direction: Jazz, is only offered during the day, during the school year.  That's the bad news.  The good news is that it's taught by Ray Smith. He's an amazing musician, performer, and pedagog, but more importantly, one of the sweetest and most mellow music teachers I've ever known, and he will accomodate your need.  Ask him when you can take the class and he'll line you up with another part time student or two.  I'm pretty sure he takes on the extra teaching time outside his normal contract hours.   It ends up being a very small lab class with one of the great jazz educators of our time.  Expect to learn a lot. 

        Repeat this experience with other professors - tell them you really want their class but it's not offered at night - and have a good reason to want them to offer it.  Pleasant things will come your way, if not every time, often enough to be worth the effort of asking.

Begin With The End In Mind

        This element of Covey's Seven Habits is particularly relevant to the creation of the project.  Since the project represents the end of the master's degree process, keep it in mind as you complete your program coursework in each class.  Because of what the project needs to be, some courses are more important than others.  Here are three things I learned.

1. In 698a you should mold your writing into a style that is acceptable to your chair and committee members.  Read the projects on the shelf in the conference room and capture that style. Your project won't be finished until it's written in that style, so you might as well start writing like that at the beginning of the program.  If your personal writing style is different, that's OK.  Many writers prefer short declarative sentences.  This project, however, must meet the cultural expecations of the institution.  Don't buck it.
2. The BYU Music Department follows Turabian formating and prefers Times New Roman size 12 font.  Follow that format in every paper you write, even if the professor doesn't require it.  I asked every professor in every class if I needed to follow Turabian, and every one of them said  it didn't matter to them.  But it did matter to the department for the final project.  The project won't be finished until it's in the Turabian format, so you might as well use that format from the beginning.  (If you've noticed that this page isn't in strict Turabian, plus 2 for knowledge and application.  HTML and Turabian don't get along very well.)  There's more on Turabian, further down that should be helpful. 
   
3. Because you have to write a piece of scholarly research literature, you should become acquainted with the genre. It's like learning a performance practice by listening to great recordings - but not nearly as enjoyable or satisfying.  The research methods class and the music psychology class have important knowledge sets that will help you prepare your project.  To learn a new kind of music you have to immerse yourself in it.  Writing is the same.  Read JRME and deconstruct each article to find its framework.  Don't just read for content.  The coursework demands content reading, but you also need to learn how to write a 50+ page research paper.  Dig past the content and find the bones of each article.  There is more on structure further down.
   

        If you don't own the most recent Turabian Manual, go buy it.  You'll save countless hours as well as untold headaches and heartaches.  Turabian is more than formatting your references.  It's also the number of spaces in a correct indentation, the number of inches from the end of one section to another, the correct placement and format for page numbers, an important practice known as "widows and orphans" and on and on and on. Your project won't be complete until it's in exact Turabian format, so learn the format early on.  The book store sells a handy program called "End Note" that will format your notes in Turabian, IF you enter them into a template.  The program costs one dollar at the desk in the computer section of the book store.  Buy it and use it.  All your papers will be easier and if you go on to a career in higher education, you'll have learned the use of a well valued technology. 

        One of the best things about the Turabian format is the headings.  They follow the "outline" format that most people learn in the fourth or fifth grade.  As you build the outline for your paper, the "Turabian Headings" will preserve those structures and help clarify your logic. Examples of the format are on the shelf in the conference room, but here's an overview.

Figure 1. An Example of Turabian Headings
More Thoughts on the Structure of the Project

        There is a structure that your project needs to follow in order to be acceptable to the institution.  That structure has four basic parts. This structure is pretty much uniform in research literature. (NOTE - for the purpose of this outline I am using rhythm excercises as a spurious example.  In my opinion, that area of exploration has been over-exploited.) 

1. A statement of problem and purpose.  This is usually a short section that outlines the problem your project means to solve, ie. "There is a lack of well structured intermediate level rhythm excercises.  The purpose of the project is to create, implement and measure the effectiveness of a set of excercises."
2. A review of relevant literature, ie. why rhythm reading is important, what methods have been shown to be successful, what methods constitute "best practice," etc.  You should review at least a couple of dozen scholarly sources, and the more the better, as long as they're directly relevant to the project.
3. An outline of the project implementation, ie. "Based on the review of the literature, I created the rhythm learning program and it looks like this, and I implemented it and it looked like that."
4. An assessment of the effectiveness of the project, ie. "I measured student improvement by assessing performance on the rhythm excercises and relevant passages from the ensemble repetoire.  I found that students learned X and I learned Y."
   

        You may notice that this format is EXACTLY the same format that you have to follow as when you answer the "essential questions" as part of the School Acreditation process:

1. What do the students know?
2. What do we want them to learn?
3. How will we teach them?
4. How do we know if and what the students have learned?

The difference is that this Professional Improvement Process is supposed to be a self-creating excercise as well.  The purpose is reminiscent of the lines from the poem to Shakespeare by Ben Johnston:


Choosing a Project

        So, now you know what the project needs to sound like, look like and be built like.  But that still doesn't tell you what it needs to be.  That's where the personal part comes in.  Here is a list of questions:


Answer these questions for yourself, then schedule a meeting with your advisor and discuss your options.  Ask for guidance and you will receive it, to the extent that your advisor deems wise.  Don't expect anyone to volunteer with directions.  It's up to you to choose a project, get it approved, make a preliminary outline, and start the lit review.  When the lit review is done, you'll know more about the project then you did before and you'll be better able to formulate a logical approach.  Next, outline the project, implement it, measure the results and start writing.

The Scope of the Project Document

        On the shelf in the conference room I found many projects and theses.  To get a better idea of the department's standard of acheivement, I found the least substantial example.  It is short - thirty-some-odd pages of actual writing (if I remember rightly) and is well padded with graphics and tables.  The author of that project passed his coursework and received his degree.  He will go unnamed here.  I also found the most substantial document - the thesis of Jay Beck, an analysis of the compositional processes of Charles Ives.  It's amazing and as long as five other projects put together.  Jay is that kind of guy.  I also had a look at the scope of the lit reviews and the depth of the analysis in several projects, mostly from people who  I know and admire as music educators.  I used the overall assessment to formulate personal benchmarks for my project. Most of the projects are between 75 and 150 pages. When it was all done, (I ended up trimming out some figures and appendices) my final page count was 113.  While the page count isn't the most important thing, it does provide a gauge with which to measure the expectations of the institution.

A Timeline for Completing the Project Document

        If you plan on finishing your program at the end of the winter semester, give the "first draft" of your project to your advisor and committee early during the preceding fall semester.  Be proactive about securing their revisions.  This "first draft" should be as finished as you can make it on you own.  You should, before you give it to your committee, have drafted it three or four times.  Plan on everything from major changes to the document format all the way down to revisions of your sentence structures and word choices.  And then plan on defending your ideas.  If your ideas aren't defensible, go back and work on them until they're something you can believe in and fight for.  This is how our profession moves forward.

        Find out in advance if your professors want your drafts in PDF format, printed but loose in a file, or spiral bound.  Different people have different work styles.

        Depending on your committee, they might keep the first draft for a month.  Periodic reminders are acceptable.  Pestering is not.  Serving on a graduate committee is usually extra duty, on top of the teaching and research load.  Meaningful editing takes time and effort.  Use your down time to review for the comprehensive final exam.  Subsequent drafts will probably take less time. 

Then, there comes a magical moment when everything sounds right, feels right and looks right. Your project is complete!

You want that moment to come early in your final semester, before mid-terms, so you have plenty of time for the exam and oral defense.  If you plan ahead for this kind of time line, life will be easier for everyone involved.



A bunch of little things came up while I was writing my document.   Knowing the problems and solutions should be helpful.  If anyone has additions to suggest, please send them along and I'll add them.