The thought of a 50-page research paper would discourage most people from writing a thesis. Lexington junior Ashley Wirfel definitely wasn’t interested.

She’s writing a 400-page novel instead.

“I wasn’t planning on going the thesis route,” she said. “I talked to Amy Chester, and somehow I brought up that I was writing a novel. She said I should do it for my CE/T.”

Wirfel said before she talked to Chester, academic adviser for the Honors College, she didn’t realize she had options besides the traditional research paper.

Audra Jennings, the capstone experience/thesis adviser, said she encourages students to take on something big.

“With this kind of project, the students are working independently,” she said. “They can be creative and make a real contribution to their field.”

Wirfel, an art and graphic design major, said she never planned to write a novel.

“It was one of those things that was sort of an epiphany,” she said. “I was in my car, and I had just gotten off work and was completely dazed. I just had this moment, where I knew the entire story. It scared the crap out of me.”

Wirfel said she went home and filled up a journal with all her ideas.

“I didn’t really know what to do with it,” she said. “This doesn’t happen to me — I don’t think of stories like this. But I couldn’t get away from it. So I started writing, and I didn’t stop.”

The novel is titled “Ashes,” and Wirfel is currently 125 pages into writing it. She said it’s a supernatural fiction, but has real-world elements.

“It is all metaphorical for someone who has depression,” she said. “It deals with a girl who is actually in hell, so it takes kind of a literal sense. The subject is dark, but the way it is written is light-hearted.”

Jennings said there has been a huge range of CE/T projects in the past. Projects this year include a student who is building a supercomputer and Rachel McCubbins, a Bowling Green senior, who is designing costumes.

“For each character, I pull images that inspire me,” she said. “Hopefully, this is something I can hand a future employer and they can see my entire thought process…it can give me a little edge over someone else.”

McCubbins, a set and costume design major, and a dancer, is designing costumes for a show and physically making one for her portfolio.

McCubbins said she values her project because it allows her to have creative control. And though designing and making costumes is fun, she said, it has a solid benefit.

Jennings agreed.

“One reason students do these projects is for real-world experience in their field,” Jennings said. “It is connected to what will be useful for their future.”

She said the average student takes at least 135 hours to complete their CE/T project.

Courtney Aldrich, a senior from Franklin, Tenn., has already put more than 80 hours into her project on homelessness in Bowling Green and other cities with similar demographics.

“To be honest, I was scared of the idea of research,” she said. “And now I’m excited about it. It’s important to me to get out and get my hands dirty, but now I know that research can help me do that better.”

Wirfel said she would love to see her book published, and already has a six-book series planned out.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever get it done,” she said. “But the characters mean a whole lot to me now that it’s like my whole life. I really want to finish their story.”

She said when she first began, she could only write at night, sitting in her bed.

“Writing is new to me,” she said. “Now I can write pretty much anywhere, but I still have to be in the zone. I have to get lost in the world.”