Tackling the Dissertation
Recently a Ph.D. candidate I follow on Instagram posted about her sense of urgency and dread as her dissertation deadline loomed.
She was 7 months out and was starting to feel the pressure, so she reached out to her social media followers for some advice. I remembered all too well those feelings of anxiety as the deadline approached. Seven months may seem like a long time to some, but when you are in the final leg of your Ph.D. journey and all of your years of research and toil now rest squarely on how well you can distill down the Gordian knot of thoughts in your brain into a coherent book--oh yes, you are writing your first book—then 7 months may as well be 7 minutes. So, I decided to share some of the best advice I had gotten and felt really helped me power through those last few months, tackle my dissertation, and get PhDone! I want to take a moment to give a shout-out to the Dissertation Institute where I learned a lot of these tips and tricks and recommend them to any doctoral students of an underrepresented group to check out if they have the time.
When scheduling your writing and planning out your writing time, make really small tasks as opposed to broad goals. For example, instead of telling myself “I’m going to work on Chapter 2 today” I would make small tasks, such as “I am going to write 250 words on my introduction section discussing the proton radiation I used.” The idea behind this concept is we often give ourselves unreasonable and undefined tasks, such as "I am going to write chapter 2 today." But when is chapter 2 done 🤷🏽♀️? What does “done” look like 👀? It is very hard to quantify such a broad goal and can leave you feeling like you didn’t accomplish anything, which can breed procrastination. But if you give yourself these smaller tasks that you can complete more easily and quantify what completion looks like, you will not only be able to write your 250 words, but you will also actually exceed that amount. Especially if you apply freewriting.
Free write during writing time. Do you know that you use different parts of your brain when you are writing versus editing? It can be very counterproductive to your writing to also be editing and formatting at the same time. So, when you are writing your 250 words, do so in a format that doesn’t distract from your writing. For me, because I edit and format in LaTeX I free write in Word. Others do so by hand.
I have found that when I am stuck on what to say, writing out the question I am trying to answer or explain and then writing my explanation helps. This allows me to get my words out without trying to worry about how to make it sound fancy. Polish it later.
Check out the Academic Phrasebank when you get stuck on wording and you feel like you are being repetitive. See my blog post on Resources for Research Paper, Thesis, and Dissertation Writers for more information.
Work backwards from your school or department deadlines to develop your schedule. This helps you to quantify that 7 months (or however long) and help you understand how much time you really have for writing, advisor review, etc…
Remember, the only person you need to please is your advisor. You may have a big dissertation committee, but it is your advisor's job to work with them not yours. You should just do what he/she/they want you to do. When you get committee comments run them thru your advisor and they can help you disposition them.
Make sure you know what format your advisor wants for your dissertation. My advisor wanted me to take my journal articles and make them into chapters. Others like the introduction, literature review, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion format. Look up your advisor’s dissertation ProQuest or ask them for a copy. This is a good indication of how they want your dissertation formatted. Also, make sure you know the formatting requirements of your dissertation set out by your school.
Make a list of stuff that you need to do but doesn't require thinking. When you are fried and can't look at your dissertation draft again work on that stuff. It could be formatting work, inserting/cleaning up citations, or paperwork for your defense and graduation. Anything related to your dissertation that isn't writing should go on that list.
I found making a preliminary PowerPoint of my research as if I were defending and running that through with my advisor and a few members of my committee was helpful. It helped me gather my thoughts and focus on how to present it to people who hadn't been living in my head for the past three years, which helped me structure my dissertation.
Good luck. You got this✊🏽 also you have a reference manager right 👀🤓 (See my blog post here.)