Can someone explain thesis vs dissertation like i'm five years old?

[ElisaMartins]

I'm gonna be totally honest here—I've been in college for two years now, and I still have no idea what the difference is between these two things.

Everyone throws around the words "thesis" and "dissertation" like they're common knowledge, but every time I try to google it, I get these super academic explanations that just confuse me more. Like, one website says a thesis is for Master's and a dissertation is for PhD, but then my friend's sister is doing a "senior thesis" for her Bachelor's. Make it make sense! I'm a CS major, so my brain thinks in code, not in complicated academic definitions. Can someone please explain the whole thesis vs dissertation thing in simple terms? Like, if I were to write one, what would I actually be doing? Is a thesis just a really long research paper? And a dissertation is like... a whole book?

I also hear people talking about "defending" them. Defending how? Are professors gonna attack my paper with swords or something? Jokes aside, I'm trying to plan out my future—like whether I want to go to grad school—and I feel like I need to understand this basic stuff first. Does a Master's program always require a thesis? Can you graduate without one? And if I do a PhD, do I have to write both? That sounds like actual torture.

If anyone has a simple breakdown, maybe with an analogy or something, I would be forever grateful. Like, is a thesis a tree and a dissertation a forest?

 

[PeterBar]

Okay here's my best analogy:

Thesis: You're given a recipe and you follow it, but you might add your own little twist. You're proving you can bake a cake that actually tastes good.

Dissertation: You're inventing a whole new recipe that no one has ever made before. You have to prove it's edible, explain why the world needed this cake, and defend why you used certain ingredients.

Defending: You stand in front of professors and explain your recipe choices. They ask questions like "why butter instead of oil?" and "have you considered adding more salt?" No swords, just very intense baking questions.