The Aim of my Master's Thesis

I have to make it clear what I propose to do by this work so that I can focus my mind a little. I have a tendency to throw in other people who I don't really know as a way of "comparing" with Aquinas. I was thinking about extensive "bibliography". But I am not doing sorrow as a conceptual problem or the passions as a conceptual stance. I don't have enough experience for that and I certainly won't do it in the next eight months. I want to expose this text and my implications for it - I want to do a summary, commentary, and reconfiguration of the same elements. I think that I thought my emphases were Aquinas', and this is not the case. Aristotle will certainly be helpful. This master's thesis is much more for me than for anyone else. I wanted to point out something startlingly original. Something that would make people say, "Aha! that is brilliant of Aquinas and I never would have seen that before unless it had been presented to me in that way." But I must adjust my aims with reality. This is more for me, as a student, than for anybody else. I do not need to "perform" in an original sense, but to "perform" in the painstaking plodding sense. And if I take this pressure off it will be easier to focus. Here is the distinction between a master's thesis and a doctoral thesis as presented by our handbook: "The MA thesis consists of a scholarly study of some one hundred (or slightly more) pages. It may analyze a philosophical problem or be exegetical and expository. Carefully annotated translations may sometimes be accepted as a master's thesis." "The doctoral thesis is a substantial scholarly work that shows mastery of a specific field and makes an original contributio to knowledge. It must be more than expository or exegetical. Students are advised to do research and write on a distinct and limited prolem. A length of 250 pages is recommended." What I subconsciously desire to do, but have not the learning and experience for, is a doctoral thesis. What I can do and am expected to do is a "scholarly study". I don't have to be interesting or startling or original. Or I can save that for the last few pages. Now I am learning and showing that I have the capacity to learn on my own. Neither the room, the necessity, nor the capacity for brilliance here.