The Final Mile: Taking the Last Steps to a Finished Dissertation

By Jen Johnson, Dissertation Editor

In the Writing Center, one of an editor’s primary responsibilities is reviewing dissertations and doctoral studies for form and style. This review is more than just a last stop for students on their way to earning a doctoral degree; it is also a prepublication review, meaning that one of our tasks as editors is to guide students toward creating a final document ready for publication. Let me pause here for a moment while we consider, again, the conclusion of that last sentence. A final document ready for publication. Dear reader, do those words give you a bit of a shiver? I hope they do, because they do me.

As a writer with some experience in the publishing world, I can tell you that “a final document ready for publication,” no matter what the genre, is a pretty ambitious goal, both for the writer and the editor. It means countless hours, if not days or weeks, of revision; it means fretting over every last comma and adjective; it means checking and double-checking the veracity of every idea and image. And this is when the final document is a 12-line poem. My mind, quite frankly, boggles at the commitment required to thoroughly revise a narrative the length of the average dissertation.

All this is to say, I am sympathetic to the task set before students in the final stages of their doctoral programs. After all the work of preparing for, designing, and executing a study, creating a final document ready for publication must feel a bit like entering Mile 24 of a marathon: You’ve never been so profoundly exhausted in your life, but though you feel as if you cannot possibly take another step, you know you must—after all, you’ve already come so far, and you have just 3.2 miles to go! This analogy has proven helpful for me as a writer, but it has been even more useful to me as an editor, and I remind myself of it each time I sit down to review another study. Which is why, I have to confess, I am more than a little awed whenever I read a clean, clearly articulated, well-formatted document that succeeds in “checking all the boxes” of its respective rubric. In those pages, the evidence of a student’s hard work—all those miles logged—positively gleams. He or she is so close, all that’s needed from me is a little nudge toward the finish line. And I give that nudge with absolute pleasure.

Of course, not every student is able to carry his or her work so far alone, even with committee help, and that’s okay, too; that’s why the Writing Center exists, after all. But I must also say that it’s always clear to me, as an editor, the difference between those students who have given their best effort and those who have opted out, between those who have struggled to reach the 24th mile and those who are still loitering around the last water station, waiting for someone to come pick them up. The evidence is in the care given to the document on my screen, the work put into every paragraph, every sentence, every word. It is unmistakable, that effort. And when it’s there, it makes my heart sing.

So if I could convey to our doctoral students but one message, it would be this: Though you may feel that the real work of your research is done once you’ve written up your results and conclusions, it isn’t. What you do with the final draft of your study matters; these last miles matter, more than you know. Take heart. Don’t stop. Keep tinkering. Keep polishing. And know that we’re waiting for you at the mile marker. Give us the very best work you can, and I promise we’ll give the very best right back to you.