I hope that our hour talking about the thesis last week tallied more on the helpful rather than the overwhelming side (though I'm sure there was inevitably some of the latter). Kaitlynn, Mark, and Jeremy obviously had a lot of great advice to share, although it may be the type of situation where you appreciate it most a little further on down the road. For now, there are the demands of the semester's endgame to deal with, of course! One would hope, looking ahead, that you'll start to formulate some manner of a thesis idea by the midpoint of the Spring semester. If you can move towards finding a Chair by the end of the year and then do some meaningful work during the summer (which could involve writing some material for a chapter, but it could just as plausibly mean lots of research, consolidating a lot of notes and fragments of text, drafting an outline, etc.), all with an eye towards completing a chapter by this time next year, you'll be well on your way!
When I did my thesis back in '95-96, I didn't quite finish in time for the Spring deadline, but I simply registered for a summer credit and defended in June. That still left me well positioned to move to Oregon and start my PhD work that Fall. Incidentally, I still have a piece of paper my thesis adviser (Virginia Carmichael, a postcolonialist) gave me at the outset, a quote by Isak Dinesen: "When you have a great and difficult task, something perhaps almost impossible, if you only work a little at a time, every day a little, suddenly the work will finish itself."
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