This month on the blog, we're featuring a guest post by dissertation editor, coach, and author Noelle Sterne.
You’ve
reached the first dissertation milestone—approval of your prospectus. Great! And
you can’t wait to plunge into the next step, writing the proposal. But now, somehow,
it’s not working. With all the best intentions and surrounded by all the
scholarly materials, you may be spending long fruitless hours in your study or
the library. The days are slipping away, your friends are out eating pizza, and
your family wonders what you’re really doing in all those solitary hours. You
feel paralyzed.
To
cheer yourself up, you remember that the
proposal becomes the first three chapters of the real dissertation or doctoral
study. But this fact offers little consolation. A completed proposal seems
like a sky-high wall with not even a step stool in sight. Where is that danged
first step?
Break the Rules
Here is one remedy. Contrary to the
King's advice to the White Rabbit in Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland, you don't have to
start at the beginning and keep going until you reach the
end. If you follow this dictum, you may only increase your fears
and tremors.
In my academic coaching practice, I
advise clients not to start at the beginning--that is, with Chapter 1, the introduction. Why? This chapter requires a
concise overview of your topic and the
literature. You must be highly
familiar with both. But many students don't get to know what they're really
writing about until they've been living with their capstone for
several months.
How to Start
So, here’s first trick to break your
paralysis: Make separate files for each chapter. Use the university’s requisite
chapter names and headings (from the capstone manual or handbook), or the
templates in the capstone section of the
university website. Once you create the files
you’ll feel more organized. You’ll also gain a sense of accomplishment. You can
keep throwing notes into these files as new materials surface and brilliant
thoughts occur to you for each chapter.
The second trick: Start writing by choosing
something relatively straightforward. No doctoral divine lightening will strike
if you start in the middle, or later. I
often recommend that students start with Chapter 3: Methods. In this chapter
you describe who's in the study and how you will study
them—your population and sample, and what you're going to put them through (experiments,
questionnaires, or interviews). Your writing style
here should be direct, with precise descriptions of the steps you'll take
to gather information for your later conclusions.
Dissertation Brownies
It's kind
of like a recipe for dissertation
brownies—as in this example student’s paragraph:
First,
I will create
a flyer for recruiting students
to complete my questionnaire on their most effective study habits.
Then, I will seek
permission from the Office of Student
Affairs to post the flyer on campus
bulletin
boards. When students respond to my contact information,
I will send
them the letter of introduction to
the study and the informed consent to participate. Next,
I will . . .
In the margin of the
paragraph above, the student's chair commented, "What's your authority for bypassing the
university's institutional review board?" The student hastened to add this
information in the next draft. What you write may not be the final draft, and
shouldn't be. Accept this, and recognize that you’ve made progress in writing
something.
The Advantages
Writing anything loosens your fear-frozen
mind so you think more creatively about
the steps you need to take. Let’s say you were writing the example paragraph from
above—you need to think about where to recruit, who to recruit, when, and many other considerations. As you visualize the actual steps, think about
what your actual recruitment flyer and
letter of intro to the study will say. This is a great opportunity to actually
draft the flyer, letter, and informed consent form—you're going to need them as appendices. Then, possibly to your elated
shock, you'll have written more!
When you see the paragraphs
mounting, you will feel greater confidence to keep writing. A
few days after I guided my client Rod to start with his third chapter, he
emailed me: "I finally got to a double digit page numbers! A
miracle!" I congratulated him for reaching page 10. Practice makes progress.
As you keep going, you'll likely
find that related ideas pop up. Say you’ve decided to study the study habits of
red-headed students over six feet tall. You suddenly realize that another study
could be done on the study habits of enrolled redheads under six feet. Here's
where you click to your largely empty file of Chapter 5: Discussion,
Conclusions, and Recommendations, and type the new idea under the subhead of suggestions
for future research. You’ve written more!
Starting your proposal with
something easier isn't a black mark on your moral fiber. It's
simply a way to get moving. So, choose a section or subsection that feels
doable, even obvious. Tell yourself, "It's all got to get done anyway."
Now . . . start writing.
For 30 years, dissertation editor, coach, and author Noelle Sterne, Ph.D. (Columbia University) has helped doctoral candidates complete their dissertations. Her new handbook addresses their overlooked but crucial nonacademic difficulties: Challenges in Writing Your Dissertation: Coping with the Emotional, Interpersonal, and Spiritual Struggles (Rowmand & Littlefield Education, September 2015). Visit her website at trustyourlifenow.com.
.png)
Never miss a new post; Opt-out at any time
.png)
