dissertation the night before

The “15-minute rule” is one of my favorite motivation and productivity strategies. Bolker (1998) recommended that students begin by writing for an absolute minimum of 10 minutes everyday and then expand to 15 minutes and then to longer periods of time. Bolker suggested that students make a commitment that no matter what, they will absolutely write for 10 minutes a day. Bolker said, “anyone can write for 10 minutes a day, particularly if one is freewriting” (p. 41). I usually recommend that students work for a minimum of 15 minutes but the number is somewhat arbitrary so long as it is enough time to help you get warmed up to working on your dissertation.

Making the transition on a daily basis from not being engaged in dissertation work to actually sitting down and putting words on a page, analyzing data, reading, etc. can be very tough. Many people find that committing to dissertation work for a relatively short amount of time such as 15 minutes makes it easier to make the transition to a meaningful work session. The 15-minute rule means that you commit every day (at least the days you plan to work) to work for at least 15 minutes no matter what. Here is how it works. You commit to working on any relevant part of your dissertation for an absolute minimum of 15 minutes. I recommend setting a timer if possible. Some of my clients actually buy an egg timer at the supermarket or use a sports watch as their 15-minute rule dissertation timer. You set the timer and then start working. If you are writing, write with abandon, letting go of concerns about sentence structure, flow, spelling, or grammar. You just write your ideas as they come out of your head. If negative critical voices pop in your head you can write down what they have to say. If you extraneous thoughts pop into your head, write them down too with the aim of getting back to your dissertation and staying on task as much as possible. When the 15 minutes is over, you can stop and highlight what you want to keep and the rest you will ignore. Or you can keep going if you are so inspired. Often, my clients tell me that once the 15 minutes are over, they feel “warmed up” to writing and it is easier to continue. A short period of forced writing, where you commit to writing no matter how much you do not feel like working, can often get you over the motivational hump and lead to a productive writing session. Sometimes, students need several planned 15-minute periods in a day to help them stay on course as motivation and energy because writing ebbs and flows throughout the day for most writers.

The 15-minute rule can be a great way to deal with the basic fact that warming up dissertation work can be unpleasant. No matter how detailed your action plan and timelines or how inspired you felt the night before, when you wake up in the morning you may feel like a thick fog of apathy rolled in during your sleep. The next thing you know, hours, even days go by and you have completed little or no meaningful work. Inspiration and motivation rarely come from inaction. Every day you intend to work but do nothing puts you at risk of becoming disengaged from your dissertation and makes it that much harder to get started in your next work session. It is often the act of writing, making discoveries, articulating and connecting ideas, or analyzing data or sources that will inspire and motivate you.

Am I saying that you need to work first before you are motivated and inspired? Yes. Sure there are times when you are rearing to go first thing in the morning. But if you wait for those days to just happen to you, your dissertation may to take a long time to complete. I suggest that you commit to working a minimum of 15 minutes two to three times a day as a way to get your intellectual juices flowing and to motivate yourself when you are struggling to work consistently. Staying connected to your dissertation, outlines, ideas, argument, intellectual quandaries, data, what you have written, and what you hope to write on a regular basis are important ways to keep the fires of motivation and inspiration alive. Do your best to write or do other dissertation work for at least 15 minutes. When the 15 minutes is over, push yourself to go for 5, 10, or 15 more. Stretch out the work for as long as you can. Then plan another 15-minute session later in the day and repeat your efforts to stretch the work session longer. If you consistently engage in the 15-minute rule, you will likely be able to work for longer periods of time on a regular basis.

References:

Bolker. J. (1998). Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day. New York, NY: Henry Holt

This article was written by Alison Miller, PhD, owner of The Dissertation Coach, a business dedicated to helping doctoral and master’s students successfully earn their graduate degrees.

Copyright August 2007 by Alison Miller, Ph.D., The Dissertation Coach

How To Be A Productive & Motivated Graduate Student

• 910.250.8767
• Write Beginner Drafts to Make Writing Happen
• Learn to Let Go of Perfectionism
• Maintain a Rational, Positive Outlook
• Learn to Better Tolerate Ambiguity
• Stop Competing with Others
• Make Your Dissertation Your Priority
• Use the 15-Minute Rule to Progress Your Dissertation or Thesis – It Works!
• Plan Small Actions to Start the Day
• Make the Transition Into Your Work
• Get Set Up For Each Work Day
• Manage Your Work Environment
• Minimize Distractions
• Increase Your Sense of Accountability
• Read Other Dissertations
• Conduct an “Email Intervention”
• Push Through
• Seek Support
• Revise With A Strategy
• Back Up Your Work
• Take Good Care of Yourself
• Acknowlede Yourself & Your Accomplishments Along the Way

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• Write Your PhD Thesis In One Month Or Less

Thesis/dissertation writing need not be a multi-month ordeal that makes you pull your hair out and roll up into a fetal position. The trick is to get a head start , set goals and deadlines, and work steadily—not feverishly—toward that ultimate satisfaction of handing your magnum opus to the graduate school. The first three sections of this article are devoted to ways that you can get way ahead of the curve from the very beginning of your graduate program—BEFORE push comes to shove.

1.) GET STARTED RIGHT AWAY— YES, REALLY .

NEWS FLASH: you can start working on your thesis or dissertation almost from the moment you decide on a lab/advisor .

In the beginning, there were papers …

The starting point for any newbie graduate student is to read boatloads of relevant papers so that you can learn your advisor’s repertoire of experimental techniques or areas of interest, what has been done so far in the field, what questions remain to be answered, and where your research will contribute.

Keep in mind that these seminal papers will be heavily integrated into your thesis or dissertation:

a) The introduction, in which you give all the pertinent background to set the stage for your research and make everyone on your committee (and beyond!) understand why it’s important

b) Data chapters, where previously published data lend validity to your findings, or are at least taken into consideration as you interpret your data

Let’s back up. How do you find these papers? Hopefully, your advisor will provide you with a few of the original papers that got the ball rolling. Find out what papers cite them . You can perform Boolean searches in Pubmed and Google Scholar (great tips explaining how to do this can be found at Boolean.pdf ).

Note that in Pubmed, you will need to go to “Advanced Search,” where the builder constructs the Boolean search for you (Figure 1). Pubmed offers another great strategy: you can set up citation alerts that notify you via e-mail every time one of these pivotal articles is cited. Pubmed has a tutorial on how to do this here: myncbi.html . You can control how often you receive these alerts, or adjust later based on how inundated your inbox becomes.

FIGURE 1.  PubMed’s Boolean Search builder.

Google scholar offers a similar citation alert service. Go to Google Scholar, http://scholar.google.com/ , and click on “Alerts” (see Figure 2). From the next screen, click “Create Alert” (Figure 3). You can set up alerts based on Boolean searches (Figure 4), or by author . Also, since many principal authors have varied interests, you can customize by using a combination Boolean/search-by-author approach (Figure 5). Enter your e-mail address, and you’re good to go.

FIGURE 2.  Setting up alerts in Google Scholar. First, click “Alerts.”

FIGURE 3.  Setting up alerts in Google Scholar, part 2. Next, click “Create Alert.”

FIGURE 4.  Setting up alerts in Google Scholar, part 3. Setting up your search criteria using Boolean operators.

FIGURE 5.  Setting up alerts in Google Scholar, part 4. The combined Author/Boolean operator search in Google Scholar.

ORGANIZING your boatloads of papers…

Let’s back up again. Realize that unless you are a genius, you will probably have to revisit these nuggets of wisdom several times during your graduate career, particularly when you have a better grasp on the research. Also, unless you are a genius, you will find yourself wondering, “What was that paper that explained________?” This is where being organized will save you TONS of time.

I am a big fan of saving paper and not printing out reams of articles to be read and then stuffed into filing cabinets . I highly recommend a citation management program, such as Endnote . Find out which program your advisor uses (see if he or she will let you install the program on your computer). Some departments even offer this software free of charge. Not only are all of the citations in your library searchable, but you can also file them into folders based on the subject matter (Figure 6).

FIGURE 6.  Filing papers in EndNote–beats a filing cabinet!

As you do your literature search, you download the citations into your citation manager. Most e-journals have a “download to citation manager” link. Google Scholar also recently added a very nice “Cite” function that lets you import citations directly into your citation manager (Figure 7).

FIGURE 7.  Google Scholar’s Cite function.

You can also search PubMed from within Endnote, which saves you several steps (Figure 8). In addition, the program has a lovely feature called Cite-While-You-Write that links with Microsoft Word. No more the parenthetical “ need citation !” statements in your text. With the CWYW feature, you can pull up all of the papers in your Endnote library that pertain to your text, and with the click of one button in Word—voilà! Citations inserted (Figure 9)! You can format the bibliography later, when your behemoth is completely written—yet another convenient, automatic feature.

FIGURE 8.  Searching for papers from within EndNote.

FIGURE 8.  EndNote’s Cite While You Write function.

2) Intermediate documents: the thesis/dissertation proposal and grant applications

Think of your thesis or dissertation proposal and any grant applications as being a big first step toward the first chapter of your final document: the introduction. Preparation of these documents entails a thorough review of pertinent literature to set the stage and explain the rationale for the research you are proposing. So by this logic, you should have taken a very large bite out of the first chapter of your thesis or dissertation by the time you take your preliminary exams.

3) Methods: you do them every day, why not take the time to write them up?

In the STEM fields, theses and dissertations require a chapter devoted to methods. You have your own set of experimental and/or statistical techniques that you presumably learn from your advisor, then troubleshoot and tweak based on your specific needs. You know how you write detailed notes on the conditions of each experiment every time you do them in your lab notebook? (RIGHT?!) This is all information that you can take even an hour per week to write up in your thesis document. Check out the previous papers from your advisor to get ideas on wording, and then re-work it so it’s your own (citing relevant papers, of course). By the time you actually for-real start writing your thesis or dissertation, your methods chapter can be practically done already!

4) After the greenlight…careful planning and sticking to a schedule!

You’ve received the greenlight to “start” writing your thesis or dissertation from your committee. Now what? Well, you have a good chunk of the intro done already, right? Your chapter 2 is practically done as well! Be sure to check out the deadlines not only for getting your document to your committee, but also for depositing it with the graduate school. Wouldn’t it stink to defend your thesis in April, but not graduate until December because you missed the deadline?

Now, I will tell you a huge time-saving tip . Before you start (well, continue) writing, find a colleague who has recently turned in their thesis or dissertation and still has their final word document kicking around . Ask your colleague for permission to use their document in the following way: you are not going to copy anything in that document… EXCEPT THE FORMATTING.

You know the part where the clerk at the grad school pulls out the ruler and measures your margins, page number position and other random stuff while you hold your breath? All of that will already be in your colleague’s word document. Why re-invent the wheel? Just use the document as a template—delete ALL of the text and leave the margins and other formatting alone. (Of course, check over everything carefully before you deposit your document!) Anything you’ve written up to this point can easily be pasted into the template.

Next, agree upon deadlines : “I’ll have chapter 1 to you by________.” If you have been working ahead on your document and your reference library as described above, it should take you about a week to finish up chapter 1 (your introduction) and chapter 2 (methods). Can you do a chapter per week for each of the remaining chapters? Put the deadline in your calendar, and stick to it. Then, based on how much time you are still expected to spend in the lab, decide a set number of hours per day that you will spend on nothing but writing.

I would suggest asking your advisor for blocks of time to hole up at the library, or wherever it is that you do your best work . Then do it. You will be working weekends, no doubt, but try to work steadily and avoid all-nighters. Adjust as necessary—you may need to have an additional meeting with your advisor to request more time away from lab.

Do have a colleague read your document installments before you give them to your advisor . Run spell check and do all the basics before you offer up your baby to the red pen of death. If you really struggle with writing, or if you are not a native English speaker, there are services out there that will clean up your document on a by-the-hour basis. Spare your advisor the frustration of correcting simple errors.

Now, a caveat.

Just because you have a deadline that you are sticking to like an embedded tick does not mean that your advisor will adhere to similar deadlines in getting you edits and feedback . Many advisors, bless their hearts, are procrastinators (erm…busy with grant deadlines, writing their own papers, editing, and other important stuff that advisors do). Don’t sweat it… the ball is now in your advisor’s court, and you will now move steadily on to the next installment.

Which is due by __________in your calendar.

3) BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP!

And this time I do mean “backup”—as in your document. There is NO excuse for losing your thesis or dissertation . You should have MULTIPLE copies saved: on your computer, in Dropbox, on an external hard drive, etc. These copies should be clearly marked with dates in case you have to revert back to a prior version. They should also be marked after being edited by your advisor or others.

4) The final weeks

This will be a stressful time unless you are extremely lucky. It usually goes something like this: “Move this section to page 89.” Then two days later: “Put it back where it was.” Your advisor is stressed too—so try to take everything in stride.

If at all possible, try to get your thesis printed off for your committee a day or two in advance . This allows a cushion for the inevitable printer meltdown or copier jam. In my case, I got my final edits at 11 pm the night before my dissertation was due. Luckily, there weren’t a lot of changes to make, and there were no printer fiascos. I finished the edits by midnight and had the whole thing printed off by about 2 in the morning. Although I won’t say that I wasn’t completely stressed out and about to melt down myself…

You want your dissertation to look nice for your committee and to be easy for them to handle and write in . I’m a fan of bindings—I used three ring binders with pockets so that I could also include a CD with a copy of the document. But that’s not for everybody. Spiral bindings are just as good, but again, require planning because you’ll have to take your stack of documents somewhere like FedEx Kinkos. Even though it can be like herding cats to track down all the members of your committee, try to personally deliver your documents to them—not only for security’s sake, but to remind them of who you are.

I kid. Sort of.

5) After the defense

You may have loads of changes to make to your thesis or dissertation based on your committee members’ comments . You feel elated and relieved to have your defense over with. After the effects of the all-night post-defense bender have worn off, try to work diligently on the edits so that you don’t run up against the grad school’s deposit deadline. Make an appointment for a pre-check of your document to catch any formatting errors well in advance of the deadline.

Once you have deposited your thesis or dissertation with the graduate school (congratulations!), investigate how many bound copies you need. Most departments require a bound copy, as will your advisor. Then you need one, of course, and then there’s your parents…

University towns usually have at least one book bindery in addition to services on campus. There are online services as well—but be careful to check their ratings. You generally have to figure up the number of color-copy and high-resolution pages you have versus regular black and white. You send this estimate along with a digital copy of your dissertation and your selections for binding color, lettering, etc. There is something deeply satisfying about finally holding that beautifully bound book—that YOU wrote—in your hands at last.

In summary, it is possible to write your thesis or dissertation in under a month with good preparation, organization, and planning . The end result makes it all worthwhile. Keep in mind that if you move on to a postdoc or any other position that requires writing papers and grants, these same strategies apply.

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How To Write A Dissertation Or Thesis

8 straightforward steps to craft an a-grade dissertation.

By: Derek Jansen (MBA) Expert Reviewed By: Dr Eunice Rautenbach | June 2020

Writing a dissertation or thesis is not a simple task. It takes time, energy and a lot of will power to get you across the finish line. It’s not easy – but it doesn’t necessarily need to be a painful process. If you understand the big-picture process of how to write a dissertation or thesis, your research journey will be a lot smoother.  

In this post, I’m going to outline the big-picture process of how to write a high-quality dissertation or thesis, without losing your mind along the way. If you’re just starting your research, this post is perfect for you. Alternatively, if you’ve already submitted your proposal, this article which covers how to structure a dissertation might be more helpful.

How To Write A Dissertation: 8 Steps

• Clearly understand what a dissertation (or thesis) is
• Find a unique and valuable research topic
• Craft a convincing research proposal
• Write up a strong introduction chapter
• Review the existing literature and compile a literature review
• Design a rigorous research strategy and undertake your own research
• Present the findings of your research
• Draw a conclusion and discuss the implications

Step 1: Understand exactly what a dissertation is

This probably sounds like a no-brainer, but all too often, students come to us for help with their research and the underlying issue is that they don’t fully understand what a dissertation (or thesis) actually is.

So, what is a dissertation?

At its simplest, a dissertation or thesis is a formal piece of research , reflecting the standard research process . But what is the standard research process, you ask? The research process involves 4 key steps:

• Ask a very specific, well-articulated question (s) (your research topic)
• See what other researchers have said about it (if they’ve already answered it)
• If they haven’t answered it adequately, undertake your own data collection and analysis in a scientifically rigorous fashion
• Answer your original question(s), based on your analysis findings

In short, the research process is simply about asking and answering questions in a systematic fashion . This probably sounds pretty obvious, but people often think they’ve done “research”, when in fact what they have done is:

• Started with a vague, poorly articulated question
• Not taken the time to see what research has already been done regarding the question
• Collected data and opinions that support their gut and undertaken a flimsy analysis
• Drawn a shaky conclusion, based on that analysis

If you want to see the perfect example of this in action, look out for the next Facebook post where someone claims they’ve done “research”… All too often, people consider reading a few blog posts to constitute research. Its no surprise then that what they end up with is an opinion piece, not research. Okay, okay – I’ll climb off my soapbox now.

The key takeaway here is that a dissertation (or thesis) is a formal piece of research, reflecting the research process. It’s not an opinion piece , nor a place to push your agenda or try to convince someone of your position. Writing a good dissertation involves asking a question and taking a systematic, rigorous approach to answering it.

If you understand this and are comfortable leaving your opinions or preconceived ideas at the door, you’re already off to a good start!

Step 2: Find a unique, valuable research topic

As we saw, the first step of the research process is to ask a specific, well-articulated question. In other words, you need to find a research topic that asks a specific question or set of questions (these are called research questions ). Sounds easy enough, right? All you’ve got to do is identify a question or two and you’ve got a winning research topic. Well, not quite…

A good dissertation or thesis topic has a few important attributes. Specifically, a solid research topic should be:

Let’s take a closer look at these:

Attribute #1: Clear

Your research topic needs to be crystal clear about what you’re planning to research, what you want to know, and within what context. There shouldn’t be any ambiguity or vagueness about what you’ll research.

Here’s an example of a clearly articulated research topic:

An analysis of consumer-based factors influencing organisational trust in British low-cost online equity brokerage firms.

As you can see in the example, its crystal clear what will be analysed (factors impacting organisational trust), amongst who (consumers) and in what context (British low-cost equity brokerage firms, based online).

Need a helping hand?

Attribute #2:   Unique

Your research should be asking a question(s) that hasn’t been asked before, or that hasn’t been asked in a specific context (for example, in a specific country or industry).

For example, sticking organisational trust topic above, it’s quite likely that organisational trust factors in the UK have been investigated before, but the context (online low-cost equity brokerages) could make this research unique. Therefore, the context makes this research original.

One caveat when using context as the basis for originality – you need to have a good reason to suspect that your findings in this context might be different from the existing research – otherwise, there’s no reason to warrant researching it.

Attribute #3: Important

Simply asking a unique or original question is not enough – the question needs to create value. In other words, successfully answering your research questions should provide some value to the field of research or the industry. You can’t research something just to satisfy your curiosity. It needs to make some form of contribution either to research or industry.

For example, researching the factors influencing consumer trust would create value by enabling businesses to tailor their operations and marketing to leverage factors that promote trust. In other words, it would have a clear benefit to industry.

So, how do you go about finding a unique and valuable research topic? We explain that in detail in this video post – How To Find A Research Topic . Yeah, we’ve got you covered 😊

Step 3: Write a convincing research proposal

Once you’ve pinned down a high-quality research topic, the next step is to convince your university to let you research it. No matter how awesome you think your topic is, it still needs to get the rubber stamp before you can move forward with your research. The research proposal is the tool you’ll use for this job.

So, what’s in a research proposal?

The main “job” of a research proposal is to convince your university, advisor or committee that your research topic is worthy of approval. But convince them of what? Well, this varies from university to university, but generally, they want to see that:

• You have a clearly articulated, unique and important topic (this might sound familiar…)
• You’ve done some initial reading of the existing literature relevant to your topic (i.e. a literature review)
• You have a provisional plan in terms of how you will collect data and analyse it (i.e. a methodology)

At the proposal stage, it’s (generally) not expected that you’ve extensively reviewed the existing literature , but you will need to show that you’ve done enough reading to identify a clear gap for original (unique) research. Similarly, they generally don’t expect that you have a rock-solid research methodology mapped out, but you should have an idea of whether you’ll be undertaking qualitative or quantitative analysis , and how you’ll collect your data (we’ll discuss this in more detail later).

Long story short – don’t stress about having every detail of your research meticulously thought out at the proposal stage – this will develop as you progress through your research. However, you do need to show that you’ve “done your homework” and that your research is worthy of approval .

So, how do you go about crafting a high-quality, convincing proposal? We cover that in detail in this video post – How To Write A Top-Class Research Proposal . We’ve also got a video walkthrough of two proposal examples here .

Step 4: Craft a strong introduction chapter

Once your proposal’s been approved, its time to get writing your actual dissertation or thesis! The good news is that if you put the time into crafting a high-quality proposal, you’ve already got a head start on your first three chapters – introduction, literature review and methodology – as you can use your proposal as the basis for these.

Handy sidenote – our free dissertation & thesis template is a great way to speed up your dissertation writing journey.

What’s the introduction chapter all about?

The purpose of the introduction chapter is to set the scene for your research (dare I say, to introduce it…) so that the reader understands what you’ll be researching and why it’s important. In other words, it covers the same ground as the research proposal in that it justifies your research topic.

What goes into the introduction chapter?

This can vary slightly between universities and degrees, but generally, the introduction chapter will include the following:

• A brief background to the study, explaining the overall area of research
• A problem statement , explaining what the problem is with the current state of research (in other words, where the knowledge gap exists)
• Your research questions – in other words, the specific questions your study will seek to answer (based on the knowledge gap)
• The significance of your study – in other words, why it’s important and how its findings will be useful in the world

As you can see, this all about explaining the “what” and the “why” of your research (as opposed to the “how”). So, your introduction chapter is basically the salesman of your study, “selling” your research to the first-time reader and (hopefully) getting them interested to read more.

How do I write the introduction chapter, you ask? We cover that in detail in this post .

Step 5: Undertake an in-depth literature review

As I mentioned earlier, you’ll need to do some initial review of the literature in Steps 2 and 3 to find your research gap and craft a convincing research proposal – but that’s just scratching the surface. Once you reach the literature review stage of your dissertation or thesis, you need to dig a lot deeper into the existing research and write up a comprehensive literature review chapter.

What’s the literature review all about?

There are two main stages in the literature review process:

Literature Review Step 1: Reading up

The first stage is for you to deep dive into the existing literature (journal articles, textbook chapters, industry reports, etc) to gain an in-depth understanding of the current state of research regarding your topic. While you don’t need to read every single article, you do need to ensure that you cover all literature that is related to your core research questions, and create a comprehensive catalogue of that literature , which you’ll use in the next step.

Reading and digesting all the relevant literature is a time consuming and intellectually demanding process. Many students underestimate just how much work goes into this step, so make sure that you allocate a good amount of time for this when planning out your research. Thankfully, there are ways to fast track the process – be sure to check out this article covering how to read journal articles quickly .

Literature Review Step 2: Writing up

Once you’ve worked through the literature and digested it all, you’ll need to write up your literature review chapter. Many students make the mistake of thinking that the literature review chapter is simply a summary of what other researchers have said. While this is partly true, a literature review is much more than just a summary. To pull off a good literature review chapter, you’ll need to achieve at least 3 things:

• You need to synthesise the existing research , not just summarise it. In other words, you need to show how different pieces of theory fit together, what’s agreed on by researchers, what’s not.
• You need to highlight a research gap that your research is going to fill. In other words, you’ve got to outline the problem so that your research topic can provide a solution.
• You need to use the existing research to inform your methodology and approach to your own research design. For example, you might use questions or Likert scales from previous studies in your your own survey design .

As you can see, a good literature review is more than just a summary of the published research. It’s the foundation on which your own research is built, so it deserves a lot of love and attention. Take the time to craft a comprehensive literature review with a suitable structure .

But, how do I actually write the literature review chapter, you ask? We cover that in detail in this video post .

Step 6: Carry out your own research

Once you’ve completed your literature review and have a sound understanding of the existing research, its time to develop your own research (finally!). You’ll design this research specifically so that you can find the answers to your unique research question.

There are two steps here – designing your research strategy and executing on it:

1 – Design your research strategy

The first step is to design your research strategy and craft a methodology chapter . I won’t get into the technicalities of the methodology chapter here, but in simple terms, this chapter is about explaining the “how” of your research. If you recall, the introduction and literature review chapters discussed the “what” and the “why”, so it makes sense that the next point to cover is the “how” –that’s what the methodology chapter is all about.

In this section, you’ll need to make firm decisions about your research design. This includes things like:

• Your research philosophy (e.g. positivism or interpretivism )
• Your overall methodology (e.g. qualitative , quantitative or mixed methods)
• Your data collection strategy (e.g. interviews , focus groups, surveys)
• Your data analysis strategy (e.g. content analysis , correlation analysis, regression)

If these words have got your head spinning, don’t worry! We’ll explain these in plain language in other posts. It’s not essential that you understand the intricacies of research design (yet!). The key takeaway here is that you’ll need to make decisions about how you’ll design your own research, and you’ll need to describe (and justify) your decisions in your methodology chapter.

2 – Execute: Collect and analyse your data

Once you’ve worked out your research design, you’ll put it into action and start collecting your data. This might mean undertaking interviews, hosting an online survey or any other data collection method. Data collection can take quite a bit of time (especially if you host in-person interviews), so be sure to factor sufficient time into your project plan for this. Oftentimes, things don’t go 100% to plan (for example, you don’t get as many survey responses as you hoped for), so bake a little extra time into your budget here.

Once you’ve collected your data, you’ll need to do some data preparation before you can sink your teeth into the analysis. For example:

• If you carry out interviews or focus groups, you’ll need to transcribe your audio data to text (i.e. a Word document).
• If you collect quantitative survey data, you’ll need to clean up your data and get it into the right format for whichever analysis software you use (for example, SPSS, R or STATA).

Once you’ve completed your data prep, you’ll undertake your analysis, using the techniques that you described in your methodology. Depending on what you find in your analysis, you might also do some additional forms of analysis that you hadn’t planned for. For example, you might see something in the data that raises new questions or that requires clarification with further analysis.

The type(s) of analysis that you’ll use depend entirely on the nature of your research and your research questions. For example:

• If your research if exploratory in nature, you’ll often use qualitative analysis techniques .
• If your research is confirmatory in nature, you’ll often use quantitative analysis techniques
• If your research involves a mix of both, you might use a mixed methods approach

Again, if these words have got your head spinning, don’t worry! We’ll explain these concepts and techniques in other posts. The key takeaway is simply that there’s no “one size fits all” for research design and methodology – it all depends on your topic, your research questions and your data. So, don’t be surprised if your study colleagues take a completely different approach to yours.

Step 7: Present your findings

Once you’ve completed your analysis, it’s time to present your findings (finally!). In a dissertation or thesis, you’ll typically present your findings in two chapters – the results chapter and the discussion chapter .

What’s the difference between the results chapter and the discussion chapter?

While these two chapters are similar, the results chapter generally just presents the processed data neatly and clearly without interpretation, while the discussion chapter explains the story the data are telling  – in other words, it provides your interpretation of the results.

For example, if you were researching the factors that influence consumer trust, you might have used a quantitative approach to identify the relationship between potential factors (e.g. perceived integrity and competence of the organisation) and consumer trust. In this case:

• Your results chapter would just present the results of the statistical tests. For example, correlation results or differences between groups. In other words, the processed numbers.
• Your discussion chapter would explain what the numbers mean in relation to your research question(s). For example, Factor 1 has a weak relationship with consumer trust, while Factor 2 has a strong relationship.

Depending on the university and degree, these two chapters (results and discussion) are sometimes merged into one , so be sure to check with your institution what their preference is. Regardless of the chapter structure, this section is about presenting the findings of your research in a clear, easy to understand fashion.

Importantly, your discussion here needs to link back to your research questions (which you outlined in the introduction or literature review chapter). In other words, it needs to answer the key questions you asked (or at least attempt to answer them).

For example, if we look at the sample research topic:

In this case, the discussion section would clearly outline which factors seem to have a noteworthy influence on organisational trust. By doing so, they are answering the overarching question and fulfilling the purpose of the research .

For more information about the results chapter , check out this post for qualitative studies and this post for quantitative studies .

Step 8: The Final Step Draw a conclusion and discuss the implications

Last but not least, you’ll need to wrap up your research with the conclusion chapter . In this chapter, you’ll bring your research full circle by highlighting the key findings of your study and explaining what the implications of these findings are.

What exactly are key findings? The key findings are those findings which directly relate to your original research questions and overall research objectives (which you discussed in your introduction chapter). The implications, on the other hand, explain what your findings mean for industry, or for research in your area.

Sticking with the consumer trust topic example, the conclusion might look something like this:

Key findings

This study set out to identify which factors influence consumer-based trust in British low-cost online equity brokerage firms. The results suggest that the following factors have a large impact on consumer trust:

While the following factors have a very limited impact on consumer trust:

Notably, within the 25-30 age groups, Factors E had a noticeably larger impact, which may be explained by…

Implications

The findings having noteworthy implications for British low-cost online equity brokers. Specifically:

The large impact of Factors X and Y implies that brokers need to consider….

The limited impact of Factor E implies that brokers need to…

As you can see, the conclusion chapter is basically explaining the “what” (what your study found) and the “so what?” (what the findings mean for the industry or research). This brings the study full circle and closes off the document.

Let’s recap – how to write a dissertation or thesis

You’re still with me? Impressive! I know that this post was a long one, but hopefully you’ve learnt a thing or two about how to write a dissertation or thesis, and are now better equipped to start your own research.

To recap, the 8 steps to writing a quality dissertation (or thesis) are as follows:

• Understand what a dissertation (or thesis) is – a research project that follows the research process.
• Find a unique (original) and important research topic
• Craft a convincing dissertation or thesis research proposal
• Write a clear, compelling introduction chapter
• Undertake a thorough review of the existing research and write up a literature review
• Undertake your own research
• Present and interpret your findings

Once you’ve wrapped up the core chapters, all that’s typically left is the abstract , reference list and appendices. As always, be sure to check with your university if they have any additional requirements in terms of structure or content.  

Psst... there’s more!

This post was based on one of our popular Research Bootcamps . If you're working on a research project, you'll definitely want to check this out ...

20 Comments

thankfull >>>this is very useful

Thank you, it was really helpful

unquestionably, this amazing simplified way of teaching. Really , I couldn’t find in the literature words that fully explicit my great thanks to you. However, I could only say thanks a-lot.

Great to hear that – thanks for the feedback. Good luck writing your dissertation/thesis.

This is the most comprehensive explanation of how to write a dissertation. Many thanks for sharing it free of charge.

Very rich presentation. Thank you

Thanks Derek Jansen|GRADCOACH, I find it very useful guide to arrange my activities and proceed to research!

Thank you so much for such a marvelous teaching .I am so convinced that am going to write a comprehensive and a distinct masters dissertation

It is an amazing comprehensive explanation

This was straightforward. Thank you!

I can say that your explanations are simple and enlightening – understanding what you have done here is easy for me. Could you write more about the different types of research methods specific to the three methodologies: quan, qual and MM. I look forward to interacting with this website more in the future.

Thanks for the feedback and suggestions 🙂

Hello, your write ups is quite educative. However, l have challenges in going about my research questions which is below; *Building the enablers of organisational growth through effective governance and purposeful leadership.*

Very educating.

Just listening to the name of the dissertation makes the student nervous. As writing a top-quality dissertation is a difficult task as it is a lengthy topic, requires a lot of research and understanding and is usually around 10,000 to 15000 words. Sometimes due to studies, unbalanced workload or lack of research and writing skill students look for dissertation submission from professional writers.

Thank you 💕😊 very much. I was confused but your comprehensive explanation has cleared my doubts of ever presenting a good thesis. Thank you.

thank you so much, that was so useful

Hi. Where is the excel spread sheet ark?

could you please help me look at your thesis paper to enable me to do the portion that has to do with the specification

my topic is “the impact of domestic revenue mobilization.

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• Bournemouth
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• University of East Anglia

This Durham grad wrote her dissertation in just EIGHT hours and still got a 2:1

She even made time to print it on pink paper

You might have heard disso horror stories of people leaving it to the night before, and you may have even heard about the Northumbria student who did it in 15 hours . Now imagine doing it in eight.

Philosophy student Imogen Noble, Durham grad and self proclaimed "queen procrastinator", wrote her 12,000 word dissertation entitled "Considering the Existence of God as an Intelligent World-Soul and its Role within Plato’s Virtuosity" in just one eight hour library sesh and still got a 2:1. Mad.

I couldn't even comprehend that title in eight hours, let alone write a whole 12,000 words on it.

Imogen graduated with a 2:1 in Philosophy

Why did she leave it so late, you ask? "Literally because I’m a queen procrastinator who would do anything other than take a stab at the 12,000, plus I knew based off of other essays I can bang out a few thousand words in a couple hours so I rested HARD on my laurels lol."

Imogen had done some reading beforehand, but she admits it was largely useless. "I’d done a lot of reading, mainly procrastination reading of stuff I didn’t need (and to build up my dire selection of references for my bibliography), but hadn’t written a word", she said.

She also admitted that every plan she presented to her supervisor was "demolished" so she was left with nothing, just days before the hand in date.

But despite waiting until the day before the hand in date, she still left time to be able to print out the diss on pink paper, à la Elle Woods.

Even fuelled by anxiety, eight hours straight in the library sounds like an actual nightmare. Imogen managed it though, mainly because she developed a patented method of pulling all nighters: "I pretty much do them for all my essays so I’ve got the routine down to a T.

"Arrive at 9pm after dinner so you're fuelled, energy drink (sugar free ofc) at 1-2am to stay awake then a plethora of Sainsbury’s three for £1 sweet bags just for fun, complete by sunrise so you don’t have to walk home in the dark." Easy.

But on top of everything, that good old fashioned third year dread got her through: "What really kept me going was the fact it was due and if I didn’t get it done I’m a mug who’s wasted three years lol." Words of wisdom.

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10 truths to help you write your dissertation (and actually finish it)

As you begin to write your dissertation, you begin to understand that not all of your thoughts are nearly as profound as you imagined. Dr. Michael Munger confirms that writing, editing, and responding to feedback is usually far from glamorous. As Dr. Munger says in the interview below:

“I think if you’re not a little bit confused, embittered, and angry, you’re not working hard enough on your writing.”

But he is quick to point out that dedication to consistency and hard work pay off. Here are a few of his thoughts on keeping the perfect from becoming the enemy of the good as you write, finishing your dissertation sooner rather than later, finishing graduate school (on time), and getting a job afterward. The podcast below contains the full interview with Dr. Munger.

Transcript: 10 Truths to Help You Write Your Dissertation

Jeanne hoffman.

Welcome to this Kosmos online podcast. I’m Jeanne Hoffman. Today our topic is dissertation writing and research agendas, and my guest is Mike Munger. Dr. Munger is a professor at Duke University in the political science and economics department and the School of Public Policy, as well as the director of the joint UNC Duke Philosophy Politics and Economics Program. Welcome, Dr. Munger.

Mike Munger

It’s a pleasure to be on.

It’s a pleasure to have you. Our interview today is based on your essay, “Writing your Dissertation and Creating your Research Agenda,” which was originally written for IHS’s guide for graduate students, Scaling the Ivory Tower . Where do you place the importance of these activities in relation to other graduate school responsibilities?

it seems to me that people, when they’re in graduate school, have to recognize that their chief job is to redirect their energies from where they were as an undergraduate to where they will be as a professional.

A graduate student is somewhere between an undergraduate and a professional. The people who succeed are those who make that transition faster. What’s disturbing about it is that faculty often don’t really tell you that. This is something that you have to pick up on your own.

The problem is faculty would like you, and I’m no different, faculty would like for you to validate their pathetic lives by taking their classes very, very seriously. You’re not going to get a job taking classes. You’re going to try to get a job as an independent researcher who has their own ideas. Who’s able to make his or her own ideas clear to someone in writing.

The sooner you start working on that, the sooner you’re going to be able to make that transition. And the easier it will be to write your dissertation.

I’ve noticed that in the second or third year of graduate school there’s something that’s approaching an inversion where the people who were the real stars in the first and second year, who managed to make the faculty smile and pat them on the head and say, “Good student. Here’s a biscuit.” These are the ones who, after their second or third year, are thinking, “You know, I’m going to take more classes.”

Whereas the other people, and frankly I was one of the other people, were thinking, “You know, classes are sort of boring. I’m going to try to write some stuff on my own.”

Those are the ones who end up succeeding.

The stars in the first and second year, a lot of them don’t finish a thesis and they don’t get a job. Be of good cheer, if you feel like an odd ball, if you’re someone who’s working on research and taking the classes. Getting through the classes is fine. But you’re not going to get a job taking classes. You’re going to get a job doing your research.

Start working on writing. Start working on your dissertation as soon as you can.

In your essay, you also listed 10 truths about writing. I just want it go through them all briefly because I think each of them is a great piece of advice for students to keep in mind when they’re writing. The first is writing is an exercise. What do you mean by that?

Mike Munger:

Suppose you were going to run a marathon six months from now. You wouldn’t wait until the night before the marathon and train all night. What you would do is run a little bit at a time. Now, some days you’d go slow. You wouldn’t feel like it, but you would recognize that your performance in this marathon is going to be based on having practiced in situations where you developed the lung capacity, the ability of your muscles in your legs to perform.

Writing is the same way.

If you write every day, some days it’s not going to be very good. You’re going to throw a lot of it away. But when it comes time to do the marathon, you’ll be ready to write the dissertation that you have to finish in order to leave graduate school.

And as I often tell graduate students, “How will be ever miss you if you won’t go away?”

The key to this is to treat it as an exercise. Writing is something that you do every day, and like training for a marathon you will get better. The fact that some of what you do is a waste isn’t the point.

The point is to develop the skills so when the dissertation comes up, you’ll be ready.

Jeanne Hoffman:

You also mentioned “set goals.” What type of goals should graduate students be setting?

So many people have this fetish about input based metrics. I worked for three hours today. Yeah, well you didn’t do a thing. You need output based metrics. I wrote three pages today. That’s a goal. Not I went to the office. Think of all the times that you as a graduate student said, “Well, I worked for six hours today. I read a book.”

No, what you have to do is set a goal of writing. Have an output based metric. Focus on that, and once you’ve done that, yes, then go do something else. But make sure you have an output that you produce every day. Not input.

Nobody cares about the labor pains. They just want to see the baby.

Now, this other one sounds really profound, but could you explain it to me? It says “write for the ages.” What does that mean?

This comes from an experience that I had that was pretty darned embarrassing.

I was interviewing in 1984 at George Mason University, and one of the people I was interviewing with was James Buchanan. Now, this was two years before he won the Nobel prize in economics. He won it in 1986. This was 1984, but he was pretty scary even without a Nobel prize. The first question he asked me in our interview … (Note that this was a job I really wanted. I so wanted to be at George Mason. This meant the world to me.) His first question was, “What are you working on? What are you writing that somebody might read 10 or 100 years from now?”

I had nothing. His point, and he says this pretty often, is you ought to be working on something that people are going to want to read years from now. Because if you know when you’re working on it that’s really of no consequence, why are you spending your time on it? How are you going to stay excited enough about it to be able to produce a decent quality piece of work if you already know that it’s trivial?

Now, a lot of the things that you think are interesting at first turn out to be not as important as you had hoped, but you have to have some aspiration to write on the kinds of questions that people care about and that might conceivably they would want to read in 10 or even 100 years.

Next you have, “give yourself time.” Do you mean time to write?

I certainly do mean time to write. We’re used to being patted on our heads for our prolixity–and the fact that even the night before a paper was due we could produce a decent quality paper.

Well, if you try to carry that over into graduate school or into your professional career, you’re going to fail. Look at something that Adam Smith wrote or that Ayn Rand wrote (or whatever writing that you care about), they didn’t sit down the night before it was due and write the whole thing. They wrote it then they went for a walk, had dinner, talked to someone. Then they wrote it again.

They worked on it over and over again.

In a way, this is the same thing as write for the ages. This is take your work seriously enough to treat it as something that’s worthy of your full attention over an extended period.

Not I work really well under pressure. The fact is nobody works really well under pressure. You’re just smart enough that you’ve been able to get away with it up until now.

Speaking of people leaving things to the last minute, you have as your fifth truth, “edit your work.” Which I know a lot of undergraduates don’t get to because they do their paper overnight. But what does this mean for graduate students who have an extended amount of time to work on their papers?

A lot of people don’t like the idea of editing their work, and I think there’s two reasons. (Maybe they’re related, but students always give two different reasons.)

• One is it’s boring to edit (especially as you write your dissertation), and it’s more interesting and fun to work on something new.
• The other is, you know, they hate to waste anything that they’ve written.

Once you get used to editing, it’s really quite liberating. Try to find out if you can shorten everything into something that’s better.

When you’re writing, often less is more.

The first paper that I published came out in the journal public choice in 1984. Started out as 22 pages of calculus and proofs. When it came out in the journal it was two-and-a-half pages, and it had two short equations. It bore no resemblance to the paper I started out with, but it was much better.

That first paper was unpublishable. If I had sent it to the journal it would have just been turned out, and then I would have thought, “Oh I was born under a dark star.” No, I was too lazy to edit the thing.

If you don’t like editing your own papers, find another graduate student and switch as you.

It’s often much easier to edit and find the mistakes or infelicities that other people have made. One of the things that we’re all good at is criticizing, so find a writing buddy and switch papers and edit each other’s stuff. There’s one other thing about editing that Deirdre McCloskey always says. Deirdre McCloskey’s claim is “Let editors edit.”

Which means that if someone, an editor or a friend who you’ve gotten to edit your paper, volunteers that there’s a problem with that sentence, there is. Nobody cares what you think. The fact is that when someone else looks at that and says, “You know, I don’t understand this.” Or, “I think you should reword it.” You should. Don’t get defensive. Just do it.

Let the editor edit.

Okay, now here you have, “pick a puzzle.” That is a puzzle to me. What do you mean by that?

There are a lot of ways of making a paper that you’re working on seem, and in fact be, more interesting.

One of the key ways to do that when you’re setting it up is to choose one of the classic kind of puzzle formulations. Some examples that I could give are, well, we start with the problem of, “there’s a lot of people that have noticed empirically X happens, but the theory says that Y should happen. Why is it that our theory implies something different from what we actually observe?”

Another famous and common kind of puzzle that’s quite useful is, “There’s this theory about phenomenon X, and there’s another theory about apparently very different phenomenon Y. It turns out that the same underlying explanation accounts for both of these apparently very different things.”

Well, there again, if you start with that, you have the readers interest. It’s a way of organizing your discussion. It’s a way of getting started. A lot of people have trouble writing the first page of their paper, so we sometimes jokingly say, “Okay start with the second page!” It’s hard to set the thing up.

Using the puzzle (even if it seems rather mechanical at first) is a good way to get past that first hurdle of presenting your work. Tt has the bonus of grabbing the reader’s attention.

Now, your seventh truth seems to tie into your fourth truth, your “give yourself time” one. Your seventh truth is “schedule time for writing.”

The reason that it’s different is the “give yourself time” means that you start long before it’s due.

Scheduling means that you have to think when is my most productive time. Am I a morning person? Am I a night person? Then make sure that you schedule your writing during your most productive time. For instance, take classes or teach them (as the case may be) at a time that doesn’t conflict with your most productive writing time.

Now, it’s perfectly true that when I teach I get enough of an adrenaline rush. It happens that I’m a morning person, so I always schedule my writing in the morning and then I teach in the late afternoon. The late afternoon, a lot of times, I might need a little nap. I’m a little tired after lunch, and I’m kind of nodding off, but when it comes to teaching I get a rush of adrenaline. It’s like having two different peak times because you spend your writing time when you’re naturally most productive. Then you do your teaching at a time that otherwise would be a down time. It makes you enormously more productive.

The problem that I see is that people say, “Well, I’m so busy, so I’ll write when I get a chance.” It’s a residual category. It’s what I do after I’ve done everything else.

You have to turn that on it’s head. Schedule your writing first, and make everything else fit. First and foremost, if you’re going to succeed, you need to be a writer.

Now, I want to tie your eighth and ninth together because I think one flows from the other one. Your eighth truth is “not all of your thoughts are profound,” and your ninth one is “your most profound thoughts are often wrong.” Why aren’t all my thoughts profound? I think they are.

You know, they are as long as they’re thoughts. Actually this is going to tie into the next one also, so let me tie all three together.

When I think of an idea, or when I talk about an idea in a bar to my friend, we’re having cigarettes and beers, and it’s 1:30 at night. You know, you think that’s really clever. That’s something.

The problem is I sit down to write it, it turns out to be much more complicated than I thought it was.

When I was in graduate school, and I was a beginning assistant professor, would keep a list of what I thought were interesting ideas. Half of them by the time I had worked on them for a day turned out to be not that important. A lot of the things that seem interesting and important are not as important once you start to write them.

That means that you need to start to write them as soon as possible. You learn about your own thoughts by trying to write them. Not by just repeating them and having other people say, “Oh, that’s a clever nugget.”

Writing is how you learn whether your ideas are profound.

The ninth one that you mentioned was your most profound thoughts are often wrong.

I have a friend who made this suggestion that you should kill your children. What he means by “kill your children” is after you finished a paper, and you think it’s almost ready to send to the journal, go through it and underline the three most clever and profound sentences, and delete them because you’re bored with this paper. You have read this paper so often. You thought about it so much. The three sentences that you think are the best are almost all non sequiturs. They’re usually something that they have nothing to do with the paper, or they’re an ad hominem attack on someone you should leave alone. You think, “Oh I really got that guy.”

Go through and take all of those “profound” thoughts out. They’re the things that are going to make referees angry or that are going to side track the reader.

You’re no longer competent to judge whether or not these thoughts are profound.

This leads to the tenth truth, which is that everyone’s unwritten work is brilliant.

In my essay, I try to conjure a figure that we’ve all met. Usually, it’s a like seventh year graduate student, and it could be a fourth year assistant professor who hasn’t published anything, but he’s extremely glib. He generally has a cigarette and probably a black turtle neck sweater and an imported beer. Probably a Hefeweizen from Germany. A person that excludes good taste. He holds court in this bar or in this coffee shop with his cigarette and tells you a three-or-four-hundred-word summary of what he’s going to write his dissertation or his next book on in the case of a professor.

You think, “Wow that’s so interesting.”

Then he asks you, “What are you working on?”

You’re a little confused because the chapter that you’re currently working on, you’re not quite sure it’s going right. The direction isn’t at good. You finished another chapter, but you’re not sure it hangs together, and so you sort of stutter. From this guy, you get a smug smile, “It’s hard, isn’t it?”

Well, the truth is that guy is a poser.

He’s not actually working on anything. The reason that his glib superficial description of his work is so impressive is that he’s been saying the same thing for five years.

You are the winner here. You’re the one who’s actually working on something. You’ve written several pages today. You wrote several pages yesterday. You finished a chapter in the past month.

It’s hard to know because you’re in the middle of a project. Beware of the people that have this description of their work that is practiced and sounds like it’s good. People who are writing are often confused, embittered, and angry.

In fact, I think if you’re not a little bit confused, embittered, and angry, you’re not working hard enough on your writing.

This guy’s work is unwritten. That’s why it sounds brilliant. Everyone’s unwritten work is brilliant. You have to encounter how hard your idea is by writing it.

If you could give grad student just one piece of advice over all about their dissertation what would that be?

I’m going to give three. I’m a professor. I have a hard time giving just one.

Okay. I’m a lawyer, so I can negotiate, so that’s fine.

I’ll try to be brief about it, though.

The first is that graduate students elevate the dissertation in their mind to the status of something that’s enormous.

In a way, that absolves them of responsibility for not finishing it very quickly. You should think of the dissertation as being a sort of glorified class requirement. It doesn’t have to be publishable. It doesn’t have to be close to publishable. In fact, when you start to think of your dissertation what you’re doing is saying, “I have to write something that four or five people who may not like each other very much have to all sign off on.”

Which brings me to the second point. How good does your dissertation have to be?

Well, one of my professors told me a good dissertation is a done dissertation, and a done dissertation is good.

What that means is that as soon as you get it finished then you’ve already accomplished the first piece of advice was don’t elevate this to having the status of some gigantic important book. You recognize it’s just a glorified class requirement. Now you look and there’s four different people on your committee. Maybe they don’t like each other very much. Maybe they don’t even talk to each other, and so they communicate only through you. Where you bring a draft to one, and they give you corrections. You make the changes, and then another person says, “No, no. Change all that back.”

Well, what you need to do is have them talk to each other. But what you really need to do is recognize that a done dissertation is good. Just finish what they say. Don’t let them use you as a pawn in a personal war that for them goes back ten years. Just get the work finished, and once you’re in a position to have it done you can work on a book that then you won’t have to please four masters who are making different demands on your time.

The way to do that is the third piece of advice which is don’t read. Write.

I ask my students, the students who work with me on their dissertation, to put up a three by five card in their work cubicle or their library carrel or wherever they’re working, that says, “Don’t read. Write.” Because writing is an output-based metric. Reading is an input-based metric. You should always avoid input-based metrics.

“I read two books today” means you did nothing. If you wrote something then you had an accomplishment. What are you supposed to read though? The answer is let other people, including your faculty advisors, be your research assistants. You can hire them as research assistants, and you don’t have to pay them. You give them a draft, and they say, “Oh, here’s four things you should cite.” Well, go look up precisely those four things. Cite those four things, and add them to your references because then you’re not reading to decide whether or not it’s relevant. You already know that it is. You have used your faculty advisors as unpaid, really smart, highly-trained research assistants.

Make the system work for you.

That’s brilliant. You mentioned that students make the mistake of elevating their dissertation much higher than it should be. What are some other common mistakes that you see students making as they work on their dissertation?

I guess an elaboration of that first one is the one that’s most important which is after I’ve been working on it for six months, and I haven’t written anything, the explanation has to be that it’s really hard and really profound. After 18 months or two years, I knew a guy who worked for seven years on his dissertation. He had 600 pages written, but since he’d been working on it for six years it had to be something enormous. Now, he could have turned in what he had, and it would have been fine, but it wouldn’t have been fantastic. It wasn’t good enough because he couldn’t explain to himself why he’d done it for six years. He ended up not finishing, although he had 600 pages written.

Well, believe me, by that time the faculty really just wanted him to go away. Write an introduction, write a conclusion, hand it in. Say, “That’s enough. I’m done.”

What else separates a student who gets their dissertation done from a student who doesn’t complete their dissertation on time?

I would say that completing your dissertation on time largely just requires you sitting down and writing out a timeline that starts with finishing . Then give yourself reasonable amounts of time to do all the things you need to do in the middle, and work backwards to now. Now, I finished my dissertation when I was 25. I wrote the whole thing in six months. Was it good? No. It was terrible, but a good dissertation is a done dissertation. After I finished it I was able, on my own without the infighting and bickering of faculty members looking over my shoulder, to be able to fix the problems, and send it to journals, and I got it published.

Think of it as a job. Think of it as something that has a schedule that you can produce. Rather than “I’m working on this, and my lack of productivity is a sign of my profundity,” which is a trap many of us fall into.

Having a deadline is an important part of becoming a professional because you have to learn to generate internal deadlines. Journal editors do not have deadlines. They would prefer that you don’t send your paper to them.

The editor of the philosophy journal, economics journal, political science journal, they’re not going to call you and say, “Hey, are you going to send that paper in?” They hope you don’t. You have to generate your own internal deadlines. You might as well start doing it now. Think of it as a job. Have deadlines, and meet the deadlines. If it isn’t perfect that’s fine. The faculty will tell you what you have to add.

In this timeline that you’re talking about (other than sending your work to journals) what other steps should people consider in making it?

I guess I would suggest you send papers to journals before a lot of people actually send their papers to journals. Let me see if I can explain that. For anyone who does computer programming, you know something called “machine intensive debugging.” Machine intensive debugging means that I don’t stare at the program and try to figure out what errors of programming or logic are in it. I send it to the computer, and it comes back with error messages.

Now, there are no obvious mistakes. I don’t send it to the computer so that it bombs in the first line. I do the best that I can to make sure that it doesn’t immediately bomb. Well, you can think of journals the same way. Since I, myself, was the editor of the Journal Public Choice for five years, let me say immediately that doesn’t mean send in half-finished papers. It means get the paper to a certain point of being good and then finish it in the sense that you edit it. You correct the references. You make sure the title page is right. There are no typos. There’s no hanging widow titles. It looks like a professional paper.

Then the referees are going to tell you what you should work on.

You need to have a portfolio of papers. People are surprised when they first come out. You know, they’re teaching, they’re spending time trying to get their dissertation into shape, and two or three years pass by. Start sending papers to journals right away, and that sort of generates it’s own momentum, its own logic. You get the paper back, and you’ve got comments. Basically these are like error messages from the computer. Fix those. Send it back again. You’ll be publishing papers before you know it.

Send the paper out before you think it’s perfect because the editors aren’t going to think it’s perfect anyway. Even the paper you worked on for three years is going to come back with error messages.

This is my final question. Do you have any advice on how to generate really interesting ideas that spark quality papers?

I do, and the answer is write a lot of different papers, and recognize that not all of your ideas are as profound as you thought they were. As we’ve already discussed. When the paper comes back from the journal … This has happened to me several times. My most cited paper is the 1986 American Political Science review paper with Arthur Denzau. We had sent it to four other journals before it was finally accepted. When the paper started out, it wasn’t very good, but we got comments from referees that said, “You know, this is stupid, but if you were really going to do this here’s what you could go and do.”

Well, we took those seriously. By the time I had worked on it for two and a half years, it had been turned down at four places. We had gotten comments from twelve different referees. The paper was excellent, and it was partly because of the important ideas that we had gotten from machine intensive debugging.

From having those very smart anonymous referees make suggestions.

Again, you can use smart people as your unpaid research assistants as long as you keep at it, and take comments seriously. Let the editors edit. Let the referees tell you. If they think there’s something wrong with a passage, there is. Don’t be defensive about it. Fix it.

Well, thank you very much for joining us, Dr. Munger and for your great advice.

It was a pleasure.

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I wrote my entire dissertation in 48 hours

At one point I hallucinated: one of my books suddenly had arms and legs and walked around my desk

by Anonymous student

Wednesday September 23 2015, 12:03am

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Whether you are a fresher reading about Cambridge, or a returner doing your dissertation this year, I urge you in all seriousness not to repeat this experience, or to write it in anything like the circumstances in which I did mine. But this will offer a huge serving of  S chadenfreude  over the folly of my former self.

For a long while, I’ve wanted to pursue a career in theatre and film – especially theatre; there’s nothing like acting in front of the live audience and seeing them respond in laughter or tears to comedy or tragedy – and the ADC was a huge attraction for me when I applied to Cambridge. Consequently, in first year I became very committed to it. Then, as I got more and more into it and realised just how much I loved pretty much every aspect of Cambridge student theatre, the amount of it I did intensified in second year. The only problem was that this was at just the point when the workload for my subject ramped up. Keeping up with weekly essays was one thing: it was hard doing eight hours of theatre six days and then bashing out an essay on the back of very little reading the day before it was due in. But we were supposed to work steadily through our dissertations as well, in order to complete them before the deadline at the start of exam term. Considering my routine, of course I didn’t do that.

Thus, I ended up staring at my diary entry ‘DISSERTATION DEADLINE’ – and this was in black permanent marker, beneath a date just two days into the future. I had written none of the 5,000 words required. I had made no notes. I had done zero reading. I was fucked.

In this situation, there were two options: give into the panic, accept a fail on this part of my degree – or work flat out with only brief stops for food, cigarettes and sleep until I finished it in time for the deadline. Either way, I was in mad, bad and sad territory. I went for the latter option. I thought, as Hunter S. Thompson wrote in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:  “We can’t stop now – we’re in bat country.”

As I got going – coming up with responses to extracts chosen at random from my primary texts – I realised that there was no time for sleep. The first all-nighter was grim; I sat in the library and frantically bashed out as much material as possible with the goal of finishing my first draft before 6 in the morning. The panic made me procrastinate a lot. I went out for cigarettes every half an hour. I remember spending twenty minutes Facebook-stalking my GCSE Geography teacher, despite having zero interest in him at all, never mind his posts such as: “Got a new iPhone and loving it”.

I finished that first draft at 8, went for breakfast in the college bar and got 6 cans of Monster Energy while I was at it. I then guzzled away at them as I leafed through the books and typed, typed, typed. By the afternoon, I was editing it into a second draft. I was almost overcome by the profound desire to go back to my room, climb under the covers and enjoy the bliss of the sleep I needed, but I’d just take several gulps of Monster and type on.

Around 3.30 a.m. during the second all-nighter, I felt a flush of confidence that I’d produced a passably complete dissertation. All I needed to do was the footnotes and bibliography. Do them and I’d maybe scrape 60. I got too confident and spent an hour talking to my best friend on the phone (she lives in America and it was evening there) while chain-smoking. I went back and found footnoting more annoying and time-consuming than I’d envisaged. I started to feel the time pressure like a horrible burn – it was nearly just hours until the deadline and the bloody footnoting was interminable. The whole business belonged in Dante’s vision of hell in the Inferno . Just after I had that thought, I had a hallucination in which one of the books I had lying about developed arms and legs and started doing handstands on the desk. Watching this, I had a feeling like I’d taken a wrong turn into a very, very bad part of town.

I downed some more Monster and hugged close to the fact that if I didn’t think about anything else but the footnotes, ignored the tiredness and carried on doing these footnotes as quickly as possible, I could print the document off, hand it in to my DoS and sleep soundly and happily. Somehow I did that, and slept for 19 hours straight.

It wasn't a great start to exam term – which was later full of its own stresses. I felt shellshocked and all over the place for the next few days. I now think of it as an amusing anecdote and as an example of something not to do, for myself and others, but there's no getting away from the fact that it was deeply unpleasant at the time.

Don’t do it. I learned my lesson for finals and worked through my degree more steadily – especially the dissertation.

However, at this point you will, dear reader, want to know what I got for that second year dissertation. I don’t know how: but I got 67.

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10 top study hacks for the night before the exam

(Last updated: 12 May 2021)

Since 2006, Oxbridge Essays has been the UK’s leading paid essay-writing and dissertation service

We have helped 10,000s of undergraduate, Masters and PhD students to maximise their grades in essays, dissertations, model-exam answers, applications and other materials. If you would like a free chat about your project with one of our UK staff, then please just reach out on one of the methods below.

It's the night before your big exam. The hard work is done, your revision has met its end and now is the perfect time to calm down your nerves and make sure that you're ready to enter into that exam hall well rested and confident in your ability to write an amazing exam essay.

We picked the brains of one of our top academics for their 10 ultimate tips and tricks to help ensure that you're ready to ace your exam! ...

1. Play it safe

One of the first rules for running a marathon is not to do it in new shoes. The logic of ‘nothing new’ in sporting events extends to food, clothes, routines, and so on. If you haven’t tried something in the past, now is not the time to experiment with a new memorisation technique , pharmaceuticals (legal or illegal), or work routines. Go with what has worked best in the past, no matter how much someone might try to convince you of a newer, better, or faster way. And this includes how much of the following advice you might want to take.

2. Ready yourself well in advance

There is an old adage that states, ‘Well begun is half done’. Even before you spend the night before an exam getting ready, you should also spend the days before the night before getting ready. The night before an exam is not the time to hunt up that book from the library your instructor insisted you look over. Everything you need to prepare for the exam should be available for your use the night before so you can make the best use of your time.

3. Sleep is your friend

Many people think that the best use of their study time is to sacrifice sleep so that they can study more. But study after study shows that getting sufficient rest is vital to the way we consolidate new information. We recommend this: come home and take a little nap before you start to study (20-30 minutes). Then start fresh. Get a regular night of sleep 6.5-8 hours, but go to bed early. Then start studying again first thing when you wake up until it is time to take the exam. This will give you two opportunities to come at the material revitalised. If you skimp on sleep, you will never really feel fresh, and will most likely just feel irritable, distracted, and burned out. Nevertheless, as always, see #1.

4. Eat right

You want to eat healthy, with a nice mix of good carbs, proteins and fats. It would probably be best to avoid a massive carb that is just going to make you sleep with a sugar crash, especially the morning of the exam. Probably best to avoid taking on too much caffeine as well. Drink plenty of water for optimal brain function . You want to get the most out of your food and drink, but not abuse it to the point of diminishing returns. Nevertheless, as always, see #1.

5. Be examiner

One of the most effective ways to prepare for an exam is by actually engineering an exam for yourself. Go through all of your materials (textbooks, notes, ancillary materials) and look for possible questions. Imagine that you are the cruellest and most sadistic examiner to have lived. Then take that test. It will certainly give you an idea of where your strengths and weaknesses lie.

6. Study groups and study buddies

The chances are very high that you are not the only one preparing for the same exam the night before. Find someone or a group of someones that you trust to stay on task and want to do well and study with them. It is best to arrange this ahead of time, but this can be a highly effective way of preparing for an exam. It makes the best sense, however, to keep the number small and to work with people who might be slightly higher performing than you are in class.

7. Go offline (scary but necessary)

Unless there is some vital, study-related reason you need to be connected to Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and so on, you should consider dropping off the face of the virtual world for a few days. It might start with the need to Google the name of something that might be on the exam and end two hours later with you laughing over a cat video and hating how you got sucked down yet another rabbit hole. For the 12-24 hours leading up to the exam, the only thing you should be focused on is the exam. Everything else can wait.

8. Limit distractions and contacts

Going along with dropping out of the Internet, or simply turning off your computer, is limiting your distractions. These, sadly, can be several. Now certainly, there are people who actually think and work better with noise around them. But what we're talking about is the distraction that will suck up needed time: your housemate who wants to recount last night's antics, the friend who wants to hit the shops with you, your mum who won't stop calling... As best you can, be unavailable until exams are over.

9. Pomodoro!

As far as structuring your time goes, you can’t do worse than the famous Pomodoro model of productivity . This method was developed by Francesco Cirillo and is based on those little red tomato kitchen timers. Essentially, work on one thing with the timer set for 20-25 minutes. Then take a short break (stretch the legs, get a drink). Then go another 25 minutes. After 4-5 sets of 20-25 minutes, take a long break for 15-30 minutes. Then begin again. The most important thing within this method is that for those 20-25 minutes you focus entirely on the task at hand. Nevertheless, as always, see #1.

10. Be ready to go

More than likely the closer you get to the next day, and certainly the next morning, the more anxious you will become, and probably the more focused on the exam. On the day before your exam, we recommend that you gather up everything that you will need in advance. Have the clothes you will wear ready (and best go with layers in the event that the room is too warm or too cold). Have what you will eat more or less ready to be eaten. It's probably even best to shower the night before. This way you will not have to put too much effort into getting ready in the morning.

Go into that exam room prepared, focused and calm. Good luck, you've got this!

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Preparing for your dissertation defense, published by steve tippins on april 4, 2019 april 4, 2019.

Last Updated on: 30th August 2022, 04:43 am

Preparing for your dissertation defense is one of the most important things you’ll do as a doctoral candidate. Now that you’ve completed your dissertation, it’s up to you to present the results to your committee.

However, the results aren’t just about your study. Your committee wants to see what you learned through the process and whether you are ready to take on the responsibility of being a scholar.

What is a Dissertation Defense?

When you finish your dissertation and your committee has said you are ready to move forward, there is a formal meeting–your dissertation defense–where you have the opportunity to explain what you did and what you found.

Your committee then has the opportunity to ask questions related to your work, the implications of what you found, and your future. It is a chance for you to stand before your peers and be welcomed into the academy. Defending your dissertation is one of the great rites of passage into the world of academia.

How to Prepare for Your Dissertation Defense

Rather than write a quick list of dissertation defense tips, I thought I’d create a comprehensive guide to defending your dissertation. After chairing and sitting on countless dissertation committees, these are the steps I recommend you take.

Cultivate The Right Attitude

Perhaps the most important thing to have as you prepare to defend your dissertation is a revised view of your academic self. You’ve spent years gaining knowledge on your chosen subject, and now is your time to shine. While it’s natural to be nervous — after all, you’re jumping the highest hurdle in academia — keep in mind that this is your moment to shine and that you are now an expert on the topic.

One way to look at the dissertation defense is as a rite of passage. You are being tested, and just as with any rite of passage, the more rigorous the test, the prouder you will be of making it through.

During the process of your defense, keep this in mind: your committee tests you not only to ensure your worthiness but also to enable you to see just how much you know; to step into your new role as “expert.”

Prepare For Your Committee’s Questions

With this attitude in mind, you will want to prepare to demonstrate your expertise. That means anticipating questions the committee may have about your research.

If your dissertation asserts the likelihood of a recession in the presence of particular economic indicators, your committee will want to know what socio-political conditions are linked to these indicators. If you found that high achieving students are more likely to have had parents who volunteered in their schools, your committee members will likely ask you to speculate about how to increase parent involvement in schools.

In other words, you’ll need to be able to participate in discourse beyond your results — questions that speak to the relevance and implications of your research.

This kind of preparation goes beyond creating a PowerPoint of your findings (though that is necessary too); it’s part of your stepping into your expert role.

One thing I always tell my students is “Be able to explain your topic to your grandparents,” because to elucidate someone who knows nothing about the topic (no offense to the grandparents!) you must know it inside and out.

Of course, you’ll also want to know your topic well enough to discuss the topic with the top researchers in the field, but at this stage, you’ll have read enough of their work that you’ll feel you know them personally. It’s usually more difficult for academics to simplify than to complicate.

To ready yourself for potential questions, give your abstract to a few friends outside your academic program and have them ask you questions about your study. The advantage is their “outsider” perspective; you’ll have fun answering their questions and will likely have to make a few new neuronal connections to do so. Practicing like this will also help you relax during the actual defense.

Here are some questions you may be asked during your dissertation defense :

• “What are the strengths and weaknesses of your study?”
• “What was the most surprising thing you found?”
• “What will you do next with your results?”
• “If you could do this over, what would you do differently?”

Organize Your Presentation

Keep in mind that your presentation to your committee can double as your presentation to the faculty at any university to which you apply; your preparation will serve a dual purpose. You’ll need, therefore:

• a concise overview of the literature in which your study is grounded,
• a clear description of your study’s purpose, methodology, and findings,
• and a discussion of the implications of these findings.

Naturally, you will need to consult your department’s and college’s specific requirements, but every dissertation committee (and faculty search committee) will want to fully understand these basic elements of your work.

I have provided a list of questions to help prepare your dissertation defense. If you have time restrictions I would put more emphasis upon your results and the implications of your work. Think of organizing your slides according to these questions:

1. Why did I choose to study this? Don’t be afraid to reveal something personal about your motivation, as long as you can do so with poise and dignity. Your committee members will appreciate this humanizing element but keep it brief!

2. What have other people interested in this topic found? If your study is the next clue in the hunt for answers about this topic, what were the clues that led you here? What paths have past researchers gone down — both fruitful and not? What solid theoretical foundation stands under your study?

This portion of your presentation is the easiest to overdo. You will likely need to edit it again and again to ensure it is both concise and comprehensive. Stick to the major themes in your presentation but be prepared to answer questions about less dominant streams of research.

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3. How did my research question evolve? Answering this question links your research to what has already been established, placing your study in the stream of knowledge. Keep it brief but don’t skip this step, as it is key to showing you as an academic, rather than a student.

4. How did I organize my study? This is a description of the basics of your study and the “whys” of these choices. You can expand a bit here, as the decisions you made at this stage demonstrate your ability to think critically about approaching a research question. Why did you choose your particular methodology? What was the benefit of this design over another option you might have chosen?

5. What did I find? You can begin this section with what you expected to find and why, then explain what you actually found. Keep this section simple and factual.

6. What do the findings mean in relation to the question? Whether or not your findings matched your expectations, they tell you and your colleagues something important about the topic. What is it? Can we speculate that this is a promising area of research, or is this a path we might think of as a dead end? What, exactly, does this study tell us?

7. What’s next for me and for the research? You’ll want to give your committee (and any faculty search committee) a preview of your prospective academic career. What new questions has your study sparked for you? What would you hope other researchers would look at next? How do you intend to fit into the academic conversation on this topic?

Depending on your committee and requirements, you may want to include potential grants you will consider applying for to fund your next study. (This inclusion becomes more important when applying for academic positions.)

Prepare Yourself Mentally

Going back to attitude, remind yourself that a dissertation defense is your opportunity to step into your new role. This is your domain now. Breathe deeply and feel the pride that comes with a job well done. Know that you belong in this realm and the dissertation defense is your chance to prove it. Be humble, too; after all, you stand on the shoulders of giants.

Getting enough rest the night before, drinking water and bringing some with you to drink when your mouth gets dry, and being wise about what you consume prior to the defense (maybe go easy on the carbs and caffeine) are all obvious but frequently overlooked pointers. Your committee members want to know you can handle the pressure and take care of yourself under duress .

You might want to give yourself a few minutes of silence and rest before heading in to defend. Take those moments to recognize whatever you’re feeling, then humbly begin your academic career by presenting your most important work to date. And then get ready to roll up your sleeves for the next one. Congratulations, Doctor!

Steve Tippins

Steve Tippins, PhD, has thrived in academia for over thirty years. He continues to love teaching in addition to coaching recent PhD graduates as well as students writing their dissertations. Learn more about his dissertation coaching and career coaching services. Book a Free Consultation with Steve Tippins

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• Starting the research process

How to Choose a Dissertation Topic | 8 Steps to Follow

Published on November 11, 2022 by Shona McCombes and Tegan George. Revised on November 20, 2023.

Choosing your dissertation topic is the first step in making sure your research goes as smoothly as possible. When choosing a topic, it’s important to consider:

• Your institution and department’s requirements
• Your areas of knowledge and interest
• The scientific, social, or practical relevance
• The availability of data and resources
• The timeframe of your dissertation
• The relevance of your topic

You can follow these steps to begin narrowing down your ideas.

Table of contents

Step 1: check the requirements, step 2: choose a broad field of research, step 3: look for books and articles, step 4: find a niche, step 5: consider the type of research, step 6: determine the relevance, step 7: make sure it’s plausible, step 8: get your topic approved, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about dissertation topics.

The very first step is to check your program’s requirements. This determines the scope of what it is possible for you to research.

• Is there a minimum and maximum word count?
• When is the deadline?
• Should the research have an academic or a professional orientation?
• Are there any methodological conditions? Do you have to conduct fieldwork, or use specific types of sources?

Some programs have stricter requirements than others. You might be given nothing more than a word count and a deadline, or you might have a restricted list of topics and approaches to choose from. If in doubt about what is expected of you, always ask your supervisor or department coordinator.

Start by thinking about your areas of interest within the subject you’re studying. Examples of broad ideas include:

• Twentieth-century literature
• Economic history
• Health policy

To get a more specific sense of the current state of research on your potential topic, skim through a few recent issues of the top journals in your field. Be sure to check out their most-cited articles in particular. For inspiration, you can also search Google Scholar , subject-specific databases , and your university library’s resources.

As you read, note down any specific ideas that interest you and make a shortlist of possible topics. If you’ve written other papers, such as a 3rd-year paper or a conference paper, consider how those topics can be broadened into a dissertation.

After doing some initial reading, it’s time to start narrowing down options for your potential topic. This can be a gradual process, and should get more and more specific as you go. For example, from the ideas above, you might narrow it down like this:

• Twentieth-century literature   Twentieth-century Irish literature   Post-war Irish poetry
• Economic history   European economic history   German labor union history
• Health policy   Reproductive health policy   Reproductive rights in South America

All of these topics are still broad enough that you’ll find a huge amount of books and articles about them. Try to find a specific niche where you can make your mark, such as: something not many people have researched yet, a question that’s still being debated, or a very current practical issue.

At this stage, make sure you have a few backup ideas — there’s still time to change your focus. If your topic doesn’t make it through the next few steps, you can try a different one. Later, you will narrow your focus down even more in your problem statement and research questions .

There are many different types of research , so at this stage, it’s a good idea to start thinking about what kind of approach you’ll take to your topic. Will you mainly focus on:

• Collecting original data (e.g., experimental or field research)?
• Analyzing existing data (e.g., national statistics, public records, or archives)?
• Interpreting cultural objects (e.g., novels, films, or paintings)?
• Comparing scholarly approaches (e.g., theories, methods, or interpretations)?

Many dissertations will combine more than one of these. Sometimes the type of research is obvious: if your topic is post-war Irish poetry, you will probably mainly be interpreting poems. But in other cases, there are several possible approaches. If your topic is reproductive rights in South America, you could analyze public policy documents and media coverage, or you could gather original data through interviews and surveys .

You don’t have to finalize your research design and methods yet, but the type of research will influence which aspects of the topic it’s possible to address, so it’s wise to consider this as you narrow down your ideas.

It’s important that your topic is interesting to you, but you’ll also have to make sure it’s academically, socially or practically relevant to your field.

• Academic relevance means that the research can fill a gap in knowledge or contribute to a scholarly debate in your field.
• Social relevance means that the research can advance our understanding of society and inform social change.
• Practical relevance means that the research can be applied to solve concrete problems or improve real-life processes.

The easiest way to make sure your research is relevant is to choose a topic that is clearly connected to current issues or debates, either in society at large or in your academic discipline. The relevance must be clearly stated when you define your research problem .

Before you make a final decision on your topic, consider again the length of your dissertation, the timeframe in which you have to complete it, and the practicalities of conducting the research.

Will you have enough time to read all the most important academic literature on this topic? If there’s too much information to tackle, consider narrowing your focus even more.

Will you be able to find enough sources or gather enough data to fulfil the requirements of the dissertation? If you think you might struggle to find information, consider broadening or shifting your focus.

Do you have to go to a specific location to gather data on the topic? Make sure that you have enough funding and practical access.

Last but not least, will the topic hold your interest for the length of the research process? To stay motivated, it’s important to choose something you’re enthusiastic about!

Most programmes will require you to submit a brief description of your topic, called a research prospectus or proposal .

Remember, if you discover that your topic is not as strong as you thought it was, it’s usually acceptable to change your mind and switch focus early in the dissertation process. Just make sure you have enough time to start on a new topic, and always check with your supervisor or department.

If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

Methodology

• Sampling methods
• Simple random sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Cluster sampling
• Likert scales
• Reproducibility

 Statistics

• Null hypothesis
• Statistical power
• Probability distribution
• Effect size
• Poisson distribution

Research bias

• Optimism bias
• Cognitive bias
• Implicit bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Anchoring bias
• Explicit bias

Formulating a main research question can be a difficult task. Overall, your question should contribute to solving the problem that you have defined in your problem statement .

However, it should also fulfill criteria in three main areas:

• Researchability
• Feasibility and specificity
• Relevance and originality

All research questions should be:

• Focused on a single problem or issue
• Researchable using primary and/or secondary sources
• Feasible to answer within the timeframe and practical constraints
• Specific enough to answer thoroughly
• Complex enough to develop the answer over the space of a paper or thesis
• Relevant to your field of study and/or society more broadly

You can assess information and arguments critically by asking certain questions about the source. You can use the CRAAP test , focusing on the currency , relevance , authority , accuracy , and purpose of a source of information.

Ask questions such as:

• Who is the author? Are they an expert?
• Why did the author publish it? What is their motivation?
• How do they make their argument? Is it backed up by evidence?

A dissertation prospectus or proposal describes what or who you plan to research for your dissertation. It delves into why, when, where, and how you will do your research, as well as helps you choose a type of research to pursue. You should also determine whether you plan to pursue qualitative or quantitative methods and what your research design will look like.

It should outline all of the decisions you have taken about your project, from your dissertation topic to your hypotheses and research objectives , ready to be approved by your supervisor or committee.

Note that some departments require a defense component, where you present your prospectus to your committee orally.

The best way to remember the difference between a research plan and a research proposal is that they have fundamentally different audiences. A research plan helps you, the researcher, organize your thoughts. On the other hand, a dissertation proposal or research proposal aims to convince others (e.g., a supervisor, a funding body, or a dissertation committee) that your research topic is relevant and worthy of being conducted.

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McCombes, S. & George, T. (2023, November 20). How to Choose a Dissertation Topic | 8 Steps to Follow. Scribbr. Retrieved September 3, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/research-process/dissertation-topic/

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10,000 words dissertation due in 72 hours

I'm a final-year law student. I have a 10,000-word dissertation due 72 hours from now (midday Tuesday) and all I have is a 1,000-word plan. I have a generally good idea of what I'm going to write plan plus all the materials I'm going to use. I don't really know how i'm this position but let's just say I've been a complete train-wreck mentally the past year. I have no desire whatsoever to get a good grade or a career in law, only to pass and be done with uni.

Weirdly enough I still somehow think (rather confidently, even) that I will be able to finish it. I've written 3,000 words from scratch in 12 hours before. Am I in trouble? How hard is it to just churn out a 'pass' dissertation? Would love to hear from ppl with similar experiences. Plus any words of encouragement/motivation would be much appreciated.

EDIT/UPDATE: I managed to write close to 6,000 words in 72 hours. I also managed to get a last-minute extension (granted literally 3 hours before the original deadline) which gave me an extra week. I ended up submitting 7,500 words (so 25% below the maximum word count). I got my results 2 weeks ago and got a 65 (which would have been over 70 but I had forgotten to make a blog that accounted for 10% of the total marks lmao). So yeah all was well. I'm graduating with a 2.1. Obviously, I would not recommend doing what I did but for those doing their dissertation next year, I just want to say that please do not worry or panic - dissertations (undergraduate ones at least) - are just not that big of a deal. So long as you write down basically everything you want to say and give it a basic structure; and what you write more or less makes sense, you will be absolutely fine .

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How to Successfully Defend Your Dissertation & Not Have a Nervous Breakdown

Today marks the 1 year anniversary of my (successful) dissertation defense. Even though things obviously worked out in my favor, that still doesn’t take away from the empathy I feel while I watch my colleagues go through this arduous process. I remember very little from the two months leading up to my defense. It’s pretty much a blur. By the time the day actually arrived, I was exhausted, exhilarated, and everything in between. I didn’t know what to feel. Others wanted me to be excited that I was “finished” (for those of you Ph.D.’s out there, you know that the defense is only one, albeit major, benchmark to graduation) while my committee members made seemingly joking remarks about “now the real work begins”. I think I felt my soul die a little bit. In preparation, I remember spending time with Google asking questions like, “tips for a successful dissertation defense”, “how to not cry in the middle of your defense” (lol), “dissertation defense examples”. While some of the information I found on the internet was helpful, I don’t really feel like anything I read really prepared me for that experience. I put together a list of tips based on my own experience and that of my colleagues, and hopefully you find some (or all) of this helpful!

Learn by watching

Sit in on other defenses. This is the best way to get an idea for the environment, content and vibe of a dissertation defense. I mean, let’s be honest we all would rather learn from other people’s mistakes than make our own. I sat in on a handful of defenses before I gave mine, and I really think it made a difference in my plan of attack. I also picked the brains of my more senior colleagues about things they wished they would have done differently. Sitting in is also a collegial act that helps build connection with other academics.

Practice makes perfect

True in most areas of life, and exceptionally true in the case of dissertation defenses (& any presentation, really). I practiced my defense so many times that I was rehearsing it in my dreams (no joke). Given that most defenses have a time limitation, practicing is essential, especially if you tend to go off on tangents. You shouldn’t be dependent on your presentation slides. A good presentor has a conversation with their audience where the slides simply serve as a roadmap for that conversation. I like to think about the advice I got from a mentor of mine who said, “Know your defense well enough that if the power went out you could keep going.” This is advice that I have carried with me into my professional life.

Suck it up & get feedback

I tend to be hyper self-critical. It sometimes impacts my desire for feedback even though I know how valuable constructive criticism can be. I can let the fear of someone criticizing my work inhibit my professional development and ultimately producing a higher quality product. So, how did I overcome this hurdle? I gave my defense slides to a couple people I felt completely comfortable with – close friends, close colleagues. It’s advantagous to get feedback from both academics and non-academics. A variety of lenses will help you view your presentation in many shades – some of which may be immensely helpful and bring new insight into your work.

Let off some steam

For those of you who are part of #BachelorNation, take a tip from Corinne Olympios and take a nap, I mean hey, “Michael Jordan took naps. Abraham Lincoln took naps.” My point is, do something that helps you relax and center yourself (something that is a good habit to develop, in general). When I’m super stressed out I take to one of two activities (sometimes both): cleaning & running. I think I’m drawn to both of these activities because they’re physical and upon completion give me a sense of accomplishment. Play “Shake it Off” and dance around a bit (totally done that before). Get on Instagram and browse photos under #puppy – there’s research to support that looking at cute things can have positive health impacts like adding 7.5 minutes (see here ) on to your life and lowering your blood pressure. You do you.

Confidence is key, so don’t bullshit

You need to know your defense presentation backwards and forwards (see “practice makes perfect”). Don’t try to bullshit your way through your results section. I know in my field this tends to be the most complex area. You need to know why you chose your analysis plan, how to explain it and how to make inferences from it. Think of your defense as a multi-course meal. This is the main course of your presentation, and it’s the longest course of the entire meal. If all of a sudden your meal went from salad to desert you would be wondering why, and so will your committee. Knowledge is power here.

Plan a post-defense reward

I had a bottle of champagne in my fridge for two months with a tag that said “Do not drink until after defense”. It was a solid motivator during that last week when all I kept thinking about was how once I was finished I could come home, pop that champagne, and celebrate this amazing accomplishment. Find something to reward yourself with that can help keep you motivated – a trip, that cute dress you’ve been eyeballing, a night out with friends, or in my case, a bottle of champagne. Celebrate! You deserve it, Dr.!

Here are a few tips for the day of :

• Don’t have too much caffeine. You’re already going to be hyped up and pumped full of adrenaline. Have your normal morning cup of coffee/tea and then cut yourself off.
• Try to schedule your defense earlier in the day (you don’t want to be waiting around all day).
• Dress to impress. Research shows that if you feel confident in what you are wearing that you are more likely to perform better in a task. Rock that #bosslady/#bossman outfit.
• Get there early. You do not want to be rushing. Worse. feeling. ever.
• Invite some friendly faces. You’ll want to have some people you can trust in the audience that will nod enthusiastically while you’re talking about your research.

What other tips and tricks do you have to help get through stressful academic moments like this? Comment below?

WORK WITH ME

Thank you for sharing your tips and experience. I will be defending in a matter of weeks. I fully understand the varied emotions and feelings that you talked about. I am looking forward to completing this MAJOR milestone.

Wow – congratulations! This is a huge accomplishment. Going through this process, is just that – a process. You will be processing all those emotions as you continue to prep and then afterwards. Just remember that, assuming you prepared the way you’re supposed to, you are the expert on your topic the day you present. Go into it with confidence! I wish you all the best the day of!

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How To Write an Essay the Night Before

While it isn’t something we recommend, sometimes you find yourself writing an essay the night before it’s due. You won’t be the first or the last, believe us. But if you want to know how to get the most out of your essay then this article is for you. Just because you’re writing it last minute it doesn’t mean it can’t still be good! Here’s how to do it:

Take a breath

There’s nothing worse than going into writing an essay stressed and disorganised. Especially when you’re doing it at last minute, you might feel like you’re running out of time but that isn’t always true. It doesn’t take too long to write an essay (depending on the length and how well you know the subject of course!) so, don’t panic! It isn’t going to help you if you’re freaking out so instead take a deep breath before you start and relax. If you want to produce a good piece of work then it’s best to do it with a clear mind. Be confident in yourself because you can do it!

Write an essay plan

If there’s anything that can really help you get it done quick, it’s a plan. You might be wondering how to write an essay plan, so one way would be to plan your essay out paragraph by paragraph. You can plan your overall point for each paragraph with the examples and references you want to include to back up each point. Alternatively, you could use a mind map to develop your essay ideas. You can use your first point and branch off in more detail. Whichever way you decide to do it, it will give you a clear idea of what you want to write. Plus, it will avoid any waffling when you actually get down to writing, as you’ll know what you want to say in advance. Follow it step by step and you’ll have produced your essay in no time!

Use the marking scheme

As you work on your essay it’s a good idea to use the scheme that you will be marked against. You want to look at your essay as if you’re assessing it, then you’ll know how good it really is. It won’t take long and it’ll make sure you’ve written to the best of your ability. It’s a good idea to read the marking scheme before you start your essay so you can tailor it to where the marks are. However, you should read through it once you’ve finished too so you can edit wherever you need to improve. This will save you from completing other drafts because let’s be honest – you don’t have time! Use every available resource, it’ll help!

Have some friends proofread

Although the work has to be your own, there’s no harm in getting a couple of friends to check over it for you. It can be for things as simple as grammar and spelling, they will earn you a couple of extra marks! Once you’ve read over it a couple of times yourself, it’s easy to miss things so another pair of eyes is always a great help. If anyone you know is happy to have a look over it for you then make the most of it! It could be the difference between an average and good mark! There’s nothing better than a helping hand.

Remove any distractions

As easy as it is to have your attention pulled away to other things, it really won’t help you here. Get off Tiktok and get working! You don’t have time to be procrastinating with other things so don’t let it happen. Simply put yourself in a quieter room and put anything that’s going to distract you far away from your reach. You can reward yourself now and again if it’s going to help your concentration but be reasonable with yourself. You know deep down you’ll regret it if you let distractions ruin your essay, so don’t.

Be ready to submit before the deadline

You might be feeling pretty panicked as it is so there’s no point making it worse. Let yourself be ready to submit at least an hour before the deadline. There’s nothing worse than a last-minute panic when your internet starts slowing down! This way you’ll be prepared for any curve balls that may come your way, leaving you plenty of time to deal with them effectively. It’ll also give you some time to relax afterwards because you can rest happy knowing it’s uploaded in good time.

These are just some of the helpful tips that will get you through this deadline nightmare! It might seem overwhelming and impossible in the beginning but it’s perfectly doable. Hopefully, these steps will make your work a whole lot easier. Remember, if you want a good model essay written so you have a guide for your work then check out our essay writing services . Good luck with your essay!

Dissertation Strategies

What this handout is about.

This handout suggests strategies for developing healthy writing habits during your dissertation journey. These habits can help you maintain your writing momentum, overcome anxiety and procrastination, and foster wellbeing during one of the most challenging times in graduate school.

Tackling a giant project

Because dissertations are, of course, big projects, it’s no surprise that planning, writing, and revising one can pose some challenges! It can help to think of your dissertation as an expanded version of a long essay: at the end of the day, it is simply another piece of writing. You’ve written your way this far into your degree, so you’ve got the skills! You’ll develop a great deal of expertise on your topic, but you may still be a novice with this genre and writing at this length. Remember to give yourself some grace throughout the project. As you begin, it’s helpful to consider two overarching strategies throughout the process.

First, take stock of how you learn and your own writing processes. What strategies have worked and have not worked for you? Why? What kind of learner and writer are you? Capitalize on what’s working and experiment with new strategies when something’s not working. Keep in mind that trying out new strategies can take some trial-and-error, and it’s okay if a new strategy that you try doesn’t work for you. Consider why it may not have been the best for you, and use that reflection to consider other strategies that might be helpful to you.

Second, break the project into manageable chunks. At every stage of the process, try to identify specific tasks, set small, feasible goals, and have clear, concrete strategies for achieving each goal. Small victories can help you establish and maintain the momentum you need to keep yourself going.

Below, we discuss some possible strategies to keep you moving forward in the dissertation process.

Pre-dissertation planning strategies

Get familiar with the Graduate School’s Thesis and Dissertation Resources .

Create a template that’s properly formatted. The Grad School offers workshops on formatting in Word for PC and formatting in Word for Mac . There are online templates for LaTeX users, but if you use a template, save your work where you can recover it if the template has corrruption issues.

Learn how to use a citation-manager and a synthesis matrix to keep track of all of your source information.

Skim other dissertations from your department, program, and advisor. Enlist the help of a librarian or ask your advisor for a list of recent graduates whose work you can look up. Seeing what other people have done to earn their PhD can make the project much less abstract and daunting. A concrete sense of expectations will help you envision and plan. When you know what you’ll be doing, try to find a dissertation from your department that is similar enough that you can use it as a reference model when you run into concerns about formatting, structure, level of detail, etc.

Think carefully about your committee . Ideally, you’ll be able to select a group of people who work well with you and with each other. Consult with your advisor about who might be good collaborators for your project and who might not be the best fit. Consider what classes you’ve taken and how you “vibe” with those professors or those you’ve met outside of class. Try to learn what you can about how they’ve worked with other students. Ask about feedback style, turnaround time, level of involvement, etc., and imagine how that would work for you.

Sketch out a sensible drafting order for your project. Be open to writing chapters in “the wrong order” if it makes sense to start somewhere other than the beginning. You could begin with the section that seems easiest for you to write to gain momentum.

Design a productivity alliance with your advisor . Talk with them about potential projects and a reasonable timeline. Discuss how you’ll work together to keep your work moving forward. You might discuss having a standing meeting to discuss ideas or drafts or issues (bi-weekly? monthly?), your advisor’s preferences for drafts (rough? polished?), your preferences for what you’d like feedback on (early or late drafts?), reasonable turnaround time for feedback (a week? two?), and anything else you can think of to enter the collaboration mindfully.

Design a productivity alliance with your colleagues . Dissertation writing can be lonely, but writing with friends, meeting for updates over your beverage of choice, and scheduling non-working social times can help you maintain healthy energy. See our tips on accountability strategies for ideas to support each other.

Productivity strategies

Write when you’re most productive. When do you have the most energy? Focus? Creativity? When are you most able to concentrate, either because of your body rhythms or because there are fewer demands on your time? Once you determine the hours that are most productive for you (you may need to experiment at first), try to schedule those hours for dissertation work. See the collection of time management tools and planning calendars on the Learning Center’s Tips & Tools page to help you think through the possibilities. If at all possible, plan your work schedule, errands and chores so that you reserve your productive hours for the dissertation.

Put your writing time firmly on your calendar . Guard your writing time diligently. You’ll probably be invited to do other things during your productive writing times, but do your absolute best to say no and to offer alternatives. No one would hold it against you if you said no because you’re teaching a class at that time—and you wouldn’t feel guilty about saying no. Cultivating the same hard, guilt-free boundaries around your writing time will allow you preserve the time you need to get this thing done!

Develop habits that foster balance . You’ll have to work very hard to get this dissertation finished, but you can do that without sacrificing your physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing. Think about how you can structure your work hours most efficiently so that you have time for a healthy non-work life. It can be something as small as limiting the time you spend chatting with fellow students to a few minutes instead of treating the office or lab as a space for extensive socializing. Also see above for protecting your time.

Write in spaces where you can be productive. Figure out where you work well and plan to be there during your dissertation work hours. Do you get more done on campus or at home? Do you prefer quiet and solitude, like in a library carrel? Do you prefer the buzz of background noise, like in a coffee shop? Are you aware of the UNC Libraries’ list of places to study ? If you get “stuck,” don’t be afraid to try a change of scenery. The variety may be just enough to get your brain going again.

Work where you feel comfortable . Wherever you work, make sure you have whatever lighting, furniture, and accessories you need to keep your posture and health in good order. The University Health and Safety office offers guidelines for healthy computer work . You’re more likely to spend time working in a space that doesn’t physically hurt you. Also consider how you could make your work space as inviting as possible. Some people find that it helps to have pictures of family and friends on their desk—sort of a silent “cheering section.” Some people work well with neutral colors around them, and others prefer bright colors that perk up the space. Some people like to put inspirational quotations in their workspace or encouraging notes from friends and family. You might try reconfiguring your work space to find a décor that helps you be productive.

Elicit helpful feedback from various people at various stages . You might be tempted to keep your writing to yourself until you think it’s brilliant, but you can lower the stakes tremendously if you make eliciting feedback a regular part of your writing process. Your friends can feel like a safer audience for ideas or drafts in their early stages. Someone outside your department may provide interesting perspectives from their discipline that spark your own thinking. See this handout on getting feedback for productive moments for feedback, the value of different kinds of feedback providers, and strategies for eliciting what’s most helpful to you. Make this a recurring part of your writing process. Schedule it to help you hit deadlines.

Change the writing task . When you don’t feel like writing, you can do something different or you can do something differently. Make a list of all the little things you need to do for a given section of the dissertation, no matter how small. Choose a task based on your energy level. Work on Grad School requirements: reformat margins, work on bibliography, and all that. Work on your acknowledgements. Remember all the people who have helped you and the great ideas they’ve helped you develop. You may feel more like working afterward. Write a part of your dissertation as a letter or email to a good friend who would care. Sometimes setting aside the academic prose and just writing it to a buddy can be liberating and help you get the ideas out there. You can make it sound smart later. Free-write about why you’re stuck, and perhaps even about how sick and tired you are of your dissertation/advisor/committee/etc. Venting can sometimes get you past the emotions of writer’s block and move you toward creative solutions. Open a separate document and write your thoughts on various things you’ve read. These may or may note be coherent, connected ideas, and they may or may not make it into your dissertation. They’re just notes that allow you to think things through and/or note what you want to revisit later, so it’s perfectly fine to have mistakes, weird organization, etc. Just let your mind wander on paper.

Develop habits that foster productivity and may help you develop a productive writing model for post-dissertation writing . Since dissertations are very long projects, cultivating habits that will help support your work is important. You might check out Helen Sword’s work on behavioral, artisanal, social, and emotional habits to help you get a sense of where you are in your current habits. You might try developing “rituals” of work that could help you get more done. Lighting incense, brewing a pot of a particular kind of tea, pulling out a favorite pen, and other ritualistic behaviors can signal your brain that “it is time to get down to business.” You can critically think about your work methods—not only about what you like to do, but also what actually helps you be productive. You may LOVE to listen to your favorite band while you write, for example, but if you wind up playing air guitar half the time instead of writing, it isn’t a habit worth keeping.

The point is, figure out what works for you and try to do it consistently. Your productive habits will reinforce themselves over time. If you find yourself in a situation, however, that doesn’t match your preferences, don’t let it stop you from working on your dissertation. Try to be flexible and open to experimenting. You might find some new favorites!

Motivational strategies

Schedule a regular activity with other people that involves your dissertation. Set up a coworking date with your accountability buddies so you can sit and write together. Organize a chapter swap. Make regular appointments with your advisor. Whatever you do, make sure it’s something that you’ll feel good about showing up for–and will make you feel good about showing up for others.

Try writing in sprints . Many writers have discovered that the “Pomodoro technique” (writing for 25 minutes and taking a 5 minute break) boosts their productivity by helping them set small writing goals, focus intently for short periods, and give their brains frequent rests. See how one dissertation writer describes it in this blog post on the Pomodoro technique .

Quit while you’re ahead . Sometimes it helps to stop for the day when you’re on a roll. If you’ve got a great idea that you’re developing and you know where you want to go next, write “Next, I want to introduce x, y, and z and explain how they’re related—they all have the same characteristics of 1 and 2, and that clinches my theory of Q.” Then save the file and turn off the computer, or put down the notepad. When you come back tomorrow, you will already know what to say next–and all that will be left is to say it. Hopefully, the momentum will carry you forward.

Write your dissertation in single-space . When you need a boost, double space it and be impressed with how many pages you’ve written.

Set feasible goals–and celebrate the achievements! Setting and achieving smaller, more reasonable goals ( SMART goals ) gives you success, and that success can motivate you to focus on the next small step…and the next one.

Give yourself rewards along the way . When you meet a writing goal, reward yourself with something you normally wouldn’t have or do–this can be anything that will make you feel good about your accomplishment.

Make the act of writing be its own reward . For example, if you love a particular coffee drink from your favorite shop, save it as a special drink to enjoy during your writing time.

Try giving yourself “pre-wards” —positive experiences that help you feel refreshed and recharged for the next time you write. You don’t have to “earn” these with prior work, but you do have to commit to doing the work afterward.

Commit to doing something you don’t want to do if you don’t achieve your goal. Some people find themselves motivated to work harder when there’s a negative incentive. What would you most like to avoid? Watching a movie you hate? Donating to a cause you don’t support? Whatever it is, how can you ensure enforcement? Who can help you stay accountable?

Affective strategies

Build your confidence . It is not uncommon to feel “imposter phenomenon” during the course of writing your dissertation. If you start to feel this way, it can help to take a few minutes to remember every success you’ve had along the way. You’ve earned your place, and people have confidence in you for good reasons. It’s also helpful to remember that every one of the brilliant people around you is experiencing the same lack of confidence because you’re all in a new context with new tasks and new expectations. You’re not supposed to have it all figured out. You’re supposed to have uncertainties and questions and things to learn. Remember that they wouldn’t have accepted you to the program if they weren’t confident that you’d succeed. See our self-scripting handout for strategies to turn these affirmations into a self-script that you repeat whenever you’re experiencing doubts or other negative thoughts. You can do it!

Appreciate your successes . Not meeting a goal isn’t a failure–and it certainly doesn’t make you a failure. It’s an opportunity to figure out why you didn’t meet the goal. It might simply be that the goal wasn’t achievable in the first place. See the SMART goal handout and think through what you can adjust. Even if you meant to write 1500 words, focus on the success of writing 250 or 500 words that you didn’t have before.

Remember your “why.” There are a whole host of reasons why someone might decide to pursue a PhD, both personally and professionally. Reflecting on what is motivating to you can rekindle your sense of purpose and direction.

Get outside support . Sometimes it can be really helpful to get an outside perspective on your work and anxieties as a way of grounding yourself. Participating in groups like the Dissertation Support group through CAPS and the Dissertation Boot Camp can help you see that you’re not alone in the challenges. You might also choose to form your own writing support group with colleagues inside or outside your department.

Understand and manage your procrastination . When you’re writing a long dissertation, it can be easy to procrastinate! For instance, you might put off writing because the house “isn’t clean enough” or because you’re not in the right “space” (mentally or physically) to write, so you put off writing until the house is cleaned and everything is in its right place. You may have other ways of procrastinating. It can be helpful to be self-aware of when you’re procrastinating and to consider why you are procrastinating. It may be that you’re anxious about writing the perfect draft, for example, in which case you might consider: how can I focus on writing something that just makes progress as opposed to being “perfect”? There are lots of different ways of managing procrastination; one way is to make a schedule of all the things you already have to do (when you absolutely can’t write) to help you visualize those chunks of time when you can. See this handout on procrastination for more strategies and tools for managing procrastination.

Your topic, your advisor, and your committee: Making them work for you

By the time you’ve reached this stage, you have probably already defended a dissertation proposal, chosen an advisor, and begun working with a committee. Sometimes, however, those three elements can prove to be major external sources of frustration. So how can you manage them to help yourself be as productive as possible?

Managing your topic

Remember that your topic is not carved in stone . The research and writing plan suggested in your dissertation proposal was your best vision of the project at that time, but topics evolve as the research and writing progress. You might need to tweak your research question a bit to reduce or adjust the scope, you might pare down certain parts of the project or add others. You can discuss your thoughts on these adjustments with your advisor at your check ins.

Think about variables that could be cut down and how changes would affect the length, depth, breadth, and scholarly value of your study. Could you cut one or two experiments, case studies, regions, years, theorists, or chapters and still make a valuable contribution or, even more simply, just finish?

Talk to your advisor about any changes you might make . They may be quite sympathetic to your desire to shorten an unwieldy project and may offer suggestions.

Look at other dissertations from your department to get a sense of what the chapters should look like. Reverse-outline a few chapters so you can see if there’s a pattern of typical components and how information is sequenced. These can serve as models for your own dissertation. See this video on reverse outlining to see the technique.

Managing your advisor

Embrace your evolving status . At this stage in your graduate career, you should expect to assume some independence. By the time you finish your project, you will know more about your subject than your committee does. The student/teacher relationship you have with your advisor will necessarily change as you take this big step toward becoming their colleague.

Revisit the alliance . If the interaction with your advisor isn’t matching the original agreement or the original plan isn’t working as well as it could, schedule a conversation to revisit and redesign your working relationship in a way that could work for both of you.

Be specific in your feedback requests . Tell your advisor what kind of feedback would be most helpful to you. Sometimes an advisor can be giving unhelpful or discouraging feedback without realizing it. They might make extensive sentence-level edits when you really need conceptual feedback, or vice-versa, if you only ask generally for feedback. Letting your advisor know, very specifically, what kinds of responses will be helpful to you at different stages of the writing process can help your advisor know how to help you.

Don’t hide . Advisors can be most helpful if they know what you are working on, what problems you are experiencing, and what progress you have made. If you haven’t made the progress you were hoping for, it only makes it worse if you avoid talking to them. You rob yourself of their expertise and support, and you might start a spiral of guilt, shame, and avoidance. Even if it’s difficult, it may be better to be candid about your struggles.

Talk to other students who have the same advisor . You may find that they have developed strategies for working with your advisor that could help you communicate more effectively with them.

If you have recurring problems communicating with your advisor , you can make a change. You could change advisors completely, but a less dramatic option might be to find another committee member who might be willing to serve as a “secondary advisor” and give you the kinds of feedback and support that you may need.

Managing your committee

Design the alliance . Talk with your committee members about how much they’d like to be involved in your writing process, whether they’d like to see chapter drafts or the complete draft, how frequently they’d like to meet (or not), etc. Your advisor can guide you on how committees usually work, but think carefully about how you’d like the relationship to function too.

Keep in regular contact with your committee , even if they don’t want to see your work until it has been approved by your advisor. Let them know about fellowships you receive, fruitful research excursions, the directions your thinking is taking, and the plans you have for completion. In short, keep them aware that you are working hard and making progress. Also, look for other ways to get facetime with your committee even if it’s not a one-on-one meeting. Things like speaking with them at department events, going to colloquiums or other events they organize and/or attend regularly can help you develop a relationship that could lead to other introductions and collaborations as your career progresses.

Share your struggles . Too often, we only talk to our professors when we’re making progress and hide from them the rest of the time. If you share your frustrations or setbacks with a knowledgeable committee member, they might offer some very helpful suggestions for overcoming the obstacles you face—after all, your committee members have all written major research projects before, and they have probably solved similar problems in their own work.

Stay true to yourself . Sometimes, you just don’t entirely gel with your committee, but that’s okay. It’s important not to get too hung up on how your committee does (or doesn’t) relate to you. Keep your eye on the finish line and keep moving forward.

Helpful websites:

Graduate School Diversity Initiatives : Groups and events to support the success of students identifying with an affinity group.

Graduate School Career Well : Extensive professional development resources related to writing, research, networking, job search, etc.

CAPS Therapy Groups : CAPS offers a variety of support groups, including a dissertation support group.

Advice on Research and Writing : Lots of links on writing, public speaking, dissertation management, burnout, and more.

How to be a Good Graduate Student: Marie DesJardins’ essay talks about several phases of the graduate experience, including the dissertation. She discusses some helpful hints for staying motivated and doing consistent work.

Preparing Future Faculty : This page, a joint project of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, the Council of Graduate Schools, and the Pew Charitable Trusts, explains the Preparing Future Faculty Programs and includes links and suggestions that may help graduate students and their advisors think constructively about the process of graduate education as a step toward faculty responsibilities.

Dissertation Tips : Kjell Erik Rudestam, Ph.D. and Rae Newton, Ph.D., authors of Surviving Your Dissertation: A Comprehensive Guide to Content and Process.

The ABD Survival Guide Newsletter : Information about the ABD Survival Guide newsletter (which is free) and other services from E-Coach (many of which are not free).

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Before the Dissertation

A textual mentor for doctoral students at early stages of a research project, foreword by john m. swales, look inside.

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Description

“This very readable book is what every graduate student needs as they start a program. I wish my own MA and PhD students, during my 40 years of supervising, could have been demystified by having Casanave's ‘textual mentor' as a companion."

                                                                                        --Merrill Swain, Professor Emerita, OISE, University of Toronto

  “Before the Dissertation is an insightful, relevant, and accessible resource for doctoral students at any stage. Full of reflections and advice not found in other books, it serves as an indispensable guide for students and their supervisors. And the dispelling of myths is a superb idea!”

                                                                                                --Robert Kohls, PhD candidate, University of Toronto  

Before the Dissertation concerns issues to consider before students start writing, indeed before they commit to a major high-stakes dissertation project, whether qualitative or quantitative or something in between. It is especially relevant for students who wish to do projects that involve a lengthy research period (which can add to stress), and that also involve reading, data collection, and writing in more than one language. From the earliest stages of doctoral work, even before the proposal stage, and during intermediate stages of preparation for a project as well, there are things to think about and discuss with friends, family, and advisers such as: Why do you want to pursue a doctoral degree? Do you fully understand what you are getting into? How will you manage to develop an appropriate topic? What will your role be in your project and what languages will you use with multilingual participants? How might you engage with reading, people, and personal writing at early stages in ways that will contribute to your project's development? How much attention should you pay to quality-of-life issues?

Before the Dissertation speaks to an audience in the social sciences, but in particular to doctoral students who have experience with and interest in international, multilingual, as well as native English speaking students and settings and who wish to investigate topics in (second) language and multicultural-transcultural education. Athough appropriate for use in English-dominant doctoral programs throughout the world, the book will relate more closely to students in the North American educational system than to ones, for example, in the British system. The main audience for this book is thus doctoral students who are first or second/additional users of English, who are interested in pursuing topics in one of the social sciences, including education and multilingual inquiry, and who may just be finishing course work in an English-dominant university and are wondering what might happen next.

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The Day Before the Dissertation Defense and the Best Ways to Spend It

No doubt, you will be nervous before your defense. Your will get an adrenaline rush which can make your arms and legs trembling, give you sweaty palms, and make your stomach churn. And it’s normal! The hardest part is waiting for the beginning, but once the defense starts, feelings should get under control. The main thing you shouldn’t do is to learn any new information the day before your defense. Try to understand that you will never be able to memorize everything and all the additional facts you can find will make you even more confused as a result. So what will be the ideal scenario to spend the day before this important event? Here are some ideas:

Things to take

First thing to do is to prepare the items you may wish to take with you, don’t forget to include the following:

• An additional copy of your dissertation;
• A portable USB drive with all the necessary files (just in case);
• A list of questions you want to ask the examiners (if you have any);
• The additional notes you have made lately;
• The list of corrections you have come across while reviewing your paper.

Give a couple of final defense speech rehearsals to your friends to make sure you have memorized everything. Review your thesis and its central arguments one last time. Revise your answers to some of the objections you think you might hear. A good tip is to compose lists of all the possible questions and answers to them beforehand so you could just revise this information the day before your defense.

Meet some friends

You will want to hear some good and inspiring words to increase your self-confidence before this dreadful event. So make sure to arrange a meeting with your family or close friends. Of course, they will do their best to encourage and support you.

Clean the house

The other important thing is to keep yourself distracted from all the unnecessary thoughts as they only increase your anxiety. Try to stay busy during the day: clean the house, do some washing, or even cook something. But make sure to not overdo yourself if you don’t want to be tired and exhausted on the day of your defense.

Exercise will no doubt reduce some of the emotional intensity you might be feeling. It will also help you to clear your thoughts and calm yourself down a little bit. So going to the gym will not be a bad idea. If you don’t have such a possibility, just do a simple workout at home.

A good sleep

Make sure to have a good night sleep before this important day. You may try listening to music or watching a short funny video before you go to bed, this will help you to relax and fall asleep faster. Your brain should be well-rested in order to perform at its best. So don’t make a mistake spending the whole night studying, better have a few extra hours of sleep.

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Durham student writes dissertation on existence of God in eight hours and gets a 2.1

Imogen noble spent all night in library to bring her thesis to fruition, article bookmarked.

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A Durham student wrote her dissertation on the existence of God in just eight hours and achieved a 2:1.

Imogen Noble put pen to paper for the 12,000-word essay, the most important document in her degree, over the course of one night before the deadline in May.

The Philosophy graduate, who calls herself the “queen procrastinator”, spent all night in the library at Durham University to bring her thesis to fruition.

It was titled: “Considering the Existence of God as an Intelligent World-Soul and its Role within Plato’s Virtuosity”.

Despite leaving it until the last minute, Ms Noble submitted the document to her tutors with time to spare and even had time to print it on pink paper.

She has since gone on to graduate from the high-flying Russell Group university with a 2.1.

When asked why she left it so late, Ms Noble told The Tab : “Literally because I’m a queen procrastinator who would do anything other than take a stab at the 12,000.

“Plus I knew based off of other essays I can bang out a few thousand words in a couple of hours so I rested hard on my laurels.

“I’d done a lot of reading, mainly procrastination reading of stuff I didn’t need (and to build up my dire selection of references for my bibliography) but hadn’t written a word.

“What really kept me going was the fact it was due and if I didn’t get it done I’m a mug who’s wasted three years lol.”

Ms Noble admitted that every plan she had presented to her supervisor was “demolished” so she was left with a thin roadmap, just days before it was due.

She faced a long-haul session in the library, boosted by energy drinks and £1 sweet packets, with the deadline impending – and she made it.

Ms Noble put it down to practice. “I pretty much do them for all my essays so I’ve got the routine down to a T,” she said.

“Arrive at 9pm after dinner so you’re fuelled, energy drink (sugar-free ofc) at 1-2am to stay awake then a plethora of Sainsbury’s three for £1 sweet bags just for fun, complete by sunrise so you don’t have to walk home in the dark.”

Additional reporting by SWNS

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Travis kelce and taylor swift pack on the pda during electric lady studios date in new york.

Travis Kelce was quite the gentleman as he helped his girlfriend Taylor Swift on their way to their date on Saturday evening.

The couple showed off their own “Love Story” in New York City as they were photographed packing on the PDA outside of Electric Lady Studios.

As they entered the building, Kelce was seen holding Swift’s hand.

She wore a fabulous floral Zimmermann dress that currently retails for nearly $800 , while Kelce sported a Vivienne Westwood look. He also showed up fairly clean shaven — aside from his now-famous mustache .

Just one night before, the couple — who began dating last summer — was caught holding hands while on their way to another date at Brooklyn pizza spot Lucali .

Swift and Kelce quickly jetted to New York City after the Kansas City Chiefs won their game against the Baltimore Ravens on Thursday.

The pair left under the radar, covering themselves with dark umbrellas as they boarded Swift’s private plane on Thursday night.

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Earlier that night, they partied alongside Kelce’s friends and teammates , including Patrick Mahomes, at Prime Social in Kansas City, Missouri.

Also this week, Kelce revealed that being “arm candy” for the pop star “doesn’t bother him.”

“It’s the life I chose, I guess. I have fun with it,” the NFL tight end, 34, joked in his interview with “CBS Mornings.”

While admitting that his whirlwind romance with the Grammy winning hitmaker “put him on the map” for a large audience, he also praised his family for how they’re handling their newfound fame.

“ Mama Kelce  — she’s  having so much fun ,” the pro athlete said of his mother, Donna Kelce.

“I think my dad [Ed] is slowly getting more comfortable with it, and [my brother] Jason has always been a pro at it.”

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