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Waiting to Get Your Dissertation Accepted?
Last Updated on: 30th August 2022, 04:46 am
Half of the people who enter a PhD program do not finish. You want to be part of the other half. The phase where most people stop their quest for a PhD is when they start to write their dissertation.
This is where the journey can become lonely. Gone are the days of having classmates working on the same assignment. It’s just you trying to learn a new “language” and figure out your dissertation. So what steps can you take to make sure that you finish your dissertation?
As a dissertation committee chair of many years, I’ve seen the most common areas where students struggle. Here are the dissertation writing tips that I give my students. Keeping these in mind will help you follow-through to completion.
1. Learn the Language
The first dissertation writing tip I have is something many people skip over, to their own detriment. It’s to learn to the language of academic writing.
Academic writing is a new language for many, even those who have already done PhD course work. You must be specific to a greater degree than before and if you make statements, you must back them up with citations.
When talking with a friend I can say, “Research shows that some dogs are smarter than aardvarks.” In academic writing you need to tell the reader who conducted the research showing that some dogs are smarter than aardvarks and when and probably indicate that statistical tests have been done to support the conclusion.
To write a dissertation, you must read hundreds of academic articles. All of them have been written with an academic style. Carefully observe not just the content, but the writing style as well.
Take every chance that you can to practice specificity in your writing. Do not assume that your readers know what you are talking about–explain it to them.
2. Learn the Style Guidelines
My second dissertation writing tip is to learn the style guidelines of your institution. Every school/discipline requires a certain type of style to be used for format and citations. Make sure that you determine what style is required and learn it well. Many people have been slowed down by not using/understanding the required style.
APA style is currently a popular system used for academic writing. There are specific requirements as to how references are used in the document and listed as a reference. Spacing requirements and how headings are to be used are also covered in all systems of writing style, and you must adhere to them. Get the manual early and become familiar with it. The writing lab at Purdue University has a great website for fast help with APA and MLA styles.
3. Be Disciplined
You don’t walk out the door and run a marathon if you have never run before. It takes time and lots of training. A dissertation is much like a marathon. Most of us don’t sit down and write 147 pages (or however long your dissertation will be) in one sitting. We have to write our dissertation in small pieces.
Some parts of Chapter 2, your literature review, can be written in small, distinct time periods. You can summarize an important article in one sitting. Other areas, say Chapter 1, require consistent thought throughout the entire chapter (see this post on Alignment).
Regardless of where you are in your writing, most people report to me that they get to the end faster if they dedicate consistent time periods on a daily basis (or at least several times weekly) towards writing their dissertation.
Don’t wait for inspiration to strike you. Going out for ice cream will almost always trump inspiration. Just sit down and write. Some days it may not be good, but the process trains you to show up and eventually all of the good stuff will make it into your dissertation.
Of all the dissertation writing tips I’ve given, this may be the most important one. That’s because, without discipline, the rest of the tips will be worthless.
4. Learn to Proofread
Proofreading our own writing is hard, but you must do it. Committee members don’t like to see documents that are full of writing errors or missing words, sentences, or entire sections. As a dissertation committee member myself, I can tell you that I wouldn’t be saying this if it wasn’t common.
If you go back through your writing and make sure that you are saying what you intend to say, you can avoid delays. If there are problems with the methodology, for example, they may not show up until the basic writing issues are eliminated. If your wording is not precise and clear, your committee members will be unable to find the flaws in the study design, which are the problems that take the most time to fix.
If writing is an issue for you, then consider using an academic editor. That means using an editor who understands academic writing and has done this professionally for other people. Just because a friend got an A in English or published a short story does not mean they will be a good academic editor.
5. Ask for Help
I already addressed using an editor for writing help. There may be other areas where help can be important. A dissertation coach who has been through the process many times can help you avoid pitfalls and set you up for success beyond the completion of your dissertation.
While a dissertation editor can help you fix mistakes after you’ve made them, a coach can help you avoid making them entirely, saving you valuable time, effort, and money.
Moreover, a coach offers moral support that your chair doesn’t have the time (or the job description) to offer.
A good coach may even be able to help you finish a semester or so earlier than you would have otherwise, making it a solid investment for your bank account as well as for your nerves (and your family’s nerves). Many people end up saving money in the long run by hiring a coach.
Dissertation Writing Tips: Summary
These dissertation writing tips come from my own experience working with countless students as a chair and a coach. While they might seem simple, following them can save you a great deal of hardship down the road.
Rome was not built in a day and dissertations aren’t written in one sitting. When you get to the dissertation writing stage it can be lonely and it requires discipline and hard work. It is hard, but you can do it. And you don’t have to do it alone.
