How to start a dissertation
A dissertation or thesis is a long piece of academic writing based on original research, submitted as part of an undergraduate or postgraduate degree. The structure of a dissertation depends on your field, but it is usually divided into at least four or five chapters including an introduction and conclusion chapter. Instead of the standard structure outlined here, you might organise your chapters around different themes or case studies. Other important elements of the dissertation include the title page , abstract , and reference list. The title page is often used as cover when printing and binding your dissertation. The acknowledgements section is usually optional, and gives space for you to thank everyone who helped you in writing your dissertation.
Writing and structuring your dissertation
This handout will not only answer this question, but also give you good, practical advice on starting, drafting, and completing your dissertation. Partly because the dissertation is a completely new experience that is much larger and more independent than your previous academic work. To this point, being a graduate student has been, more or less, an extension of your earlier life as a student.
The reading assignments, labs, papers, and tests you have been assigned as a graduate student may not have been so different from your undergraduate course work. It is the academic project that marks your transition from student to scholar. Writing a dissertation is a lot like writing a book.
It is, by definition, a self-directed process. This independence can make the process seem very intimidating. When you embark on this large, independent project, you may begin to ask yourself questions about your future in academia. After all, the dissertation is the beginning of the end of a graduate career. When you finish your dissertation, you have to change your life pretty dramatically —you may go on the job market, begin work as an independent scholar, develop classes, move out of a community that you have grown to love, and so on.
You may also feel like your dissertation will begin to define your professional identity. You may feel like your research interests, your theoretical influences, and your skill as a writer may all be evaluated by this first piece of serious scholarship. Whether any of these points are true or not, you may find yourself questioning your commitment to your chosen profession or topic and unable to begin the dissertation.
If you find yourself questioning your commitment to your dissertation or a career in academia, consider these tactics:. This may be a time to ask yourself what the Ph. Remember that what it means to you and what it means to your partner, family, or friends may be very different. You might make a list of all the reasons you want to get the Ph. You might try free-writing about your topic and the reasons it inspires you.
And why? If you are too close to your own graduate school anxieties to think critically about them, visit campus resources that can help you sort out your thinking on this difficult and important issue. Your advisor or colleagues in your department may be able to help you if you have a good relationship with them. Other graduate students, especially those who are about to finish or have finished, may be particularly helpful.
University counseling services may prove helpful as well. They regularly talk with students about just this issue. Many, many people lead happy, fulfilling lives, build lucrative and rewarding careers, make important contributions to knowledge, share interesting ideas with others, and generally get along just fine without three letters after their names. Deciding not to continue with a Ph. It also does not mean that you have wasted the time and money that you invested in the degree up to the ABD stage.
The dissertation is not a one-shot deal. Unlike the elaborate study strategies you developed in order to pass your comprehensive exams, writing the dissertation will enable you to start developing a set of valuable research and writing skills.
Thinking analytically, synthesizing complicated information, writing well, and organizing your time will all serve you well regardless of the career you begin. If you choose a career in academia, the systems of support, research strategies, work schedules, and writing techniques that help you do the dissertation will help you write books, articles and lectures for many years to come. If you take some care in developing your dissertation, the document can be transformed, after graduation, into a book or series of articles that can help launch your academic career.
Unlike earlier course papers that just received a grade and were then shuttled off to a filing cabinet or trash bin, your dissertation can be used and revised for years to come. Sometimes, even if you appreciate the differences between the dissertation and previous work and know that you really want to complete the degree, you may still have trouble.
Both external and internal stresses can cause the dissertation process to be more difficult than it has to be. 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? Even when you are dedicated to your dissertation and have no problems with your topic, advisor or committee, you can have trouble getting your dissertation written.
Simple exhaustion, financial stresses, and family responsibilities can seem to conspire to keep you from doing the work that you need to do. Often, graduate students juggle many personal and professional responsibilities while working on their dissertations. You may be teaching an undergraduate course, working a second job to make ends meet, seeking child care, writing conference papers, serving on committees, and more.
All of these activities and worries can leave you feeling exhausted. Sometimes, finding time to exercise, meditate, or participate in relaxation programs yoga, stretching, massage therapy, and so on can help you cope with tiredness better, even if those things do little to alleviate the work load.
The Student Recreation Center and Rams Head gyms offer several exercise classes that may prove useful and relaxing. Good nutrition can also go a long way toward improving your sense of well-being.
A fellowship, grant or scholarship can provide enough financial cushion that you can quit at least one job, and perhaps even find full funding for a year. The Graduate School offers funding workshops and a GrantSource library that can help you identify potential sources of funding.
Full fellowships or grants, though, can be a mixed blessing. Often, having one part-time job or other commitment while researching or writing can help you structure your day, get to campus early in the morning, and so on.
Without that structure, the day can slip by pretty quickly. So while fellowships can be tremendously helpful, they also require great discipline to prove effective. Effective time management can be another way to alleviate some of the external stresses of graduate school. Here are a few strategies:. When scheduling your dissertation time, think about when, where and how you work best.
By giving some thought to these details, you can ensure that the hours you schedule for dissertation work are productive. Do you write well in the morning, or are you too sleepy to do academic work? Can you work in the evening after a day, or do you really need a break? 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. If at all possible, plan your work schedule, errands and chores so that you reserve your productive hours for the dissertation.
Directors of Graduate Studies and other employers may be pretty sympathetic to this desire to schedule your best hours for your dissertation—after all, the dissertation is your reason for being here and should be your number one priority. So working in a consistent setting can help you not only get great work done in discrete sessions but also pull together ideas from past work and use them constructively.
So practice working elsewhere, and at other times. Being away from your favorite fountain pen is not an excuse not to write! Graduate students sometimes report that they feel bogged down by departmental requirements, graduate school regulations, and other bits of bureaucracy.
Here are a few tips to keep you sane:. Some sources of graduate student stress are not external—instead, they come from within. Competition is rampant among graduate students. Departments often hold meetings in which graduate students are ranked in order to determine who should be given funding or teaching appointments.
This competition can lead to a cut-throat atmosphere that encourages hostility and fears of inadequacy and also inhibits much-needed personal support. But what can you do if you feel that competition within your department is hindering your ability to get work done? Remember that you are not in competition with the students in your department. Your only competition is more than likely with the graduate students at other universities who will be applying for jobs in your field at the same time you are.
After all, if two people are writing dissertations on political theory in the civil rights movement, they may be in initial competition for jobs, but once they get jobs, they will be far more likely to work in a collegial way. If you are having problems with competition in your department, you can try to transform the sense of competition into one of cooperation.
Try working on some collaborative projects with students in your department like co-authoring a conference paper with a student doing similar research. Or form a writing and support group—the Writing Center can help you do that. Many graduate students report feeling like a fraud at some time during or through most of!
It may be helpful to find a person who is AHEAD of you in the process maybe a friend who has defended to serve as support and to urge you to keep moving. Gathering wisdom from those who have gone before and passing it along to those who are coming up can foster a marvelous spirit of collegiality in a department and help everyone get more and better work done. Come by to see your advisor. Stay in close contact with your committee. Meet bright, generous people in other departments.
Let the Writing Center help you start an interdisciplinary writing group. Go to conferences and meet interesting supportive people on other campuses who will e-mail with you and share your joys, rather than trampling on them.
People procrastinate for a lot of reasons, some of which you already know. The key to beating procrastination, though, seems to be figuring out why you are procrastinating, so that you can develop strategies for stopping it. The University Counseling and Wellness Services sometimes sponsors a dissertation support group, for example, that allows students to meet with a counselor in groups to work through dissertation problems.
Not a word is coming to you. Many people use rewards, feedback, and punishments as motivators in the dissertation process. Here are some examples:. One of the most important parts of becoming a scholar is feeling like one.
The transition from student to scholar is a huge mental step toward completion. Here are a few tips that can help:. The dissertation is a marathon, not a sprint, and it will take endurance, determination, and perseverance.
Developing and sustaining the will to complete a complicated, long-term project is a habit that will serve you well in other areas of life. Take time to laugh at the process and at yourself. Figure out who would play whom in the movie version of your dissertation or of your dissertation defense!
We consulted these works while writing this handout.
Clarify the focus of your study. Point out the value of your research.
The sun is shining but many students won't see the daylight. Because it's that time of year again — dissertation time. Luckily for me, my D-Day dissertation hand-in day has already been and gone.
This handout will not only answer this question, but also give you good, practical advice on starting, drafting, and completing your dissertation.
Brace yourself: the next sentence is going to sound major. Writing a dissertation is the culminating event of your graduate school career.
What Are the Steps in Writing a Dissertation?
One great piece of advice I was given once by a tutor was that before you start any essay or project, first write down your own opinions or ideas. Often when we read a lot first, the opinions of others cloud over our own ideas. For example, by writing down what you think about a primary text first, when you start reading the opinions of others you can recognise the different arguments. Discover your own opinion, even if these are just a few odd ideas at first, and then learn to trust it. Try to write your own response to it if you can as doing this will help you later on, particularly if the argument is quite complex.
How to structure a dissertation
The doctoral dissertation is the crowning achievement of your PhD program and an accomplishment of which you can be very proud. For any large project like this, understanding the steps and sequence can help reduce some of the anxiety you may be feeling about writing a dissertation. As you progress through your program, each of the steps described below is designed to help you make concrete progress on your dissertation in smaller, manageable chunks. Step 1: Project Ideation. In your coursework, you will learn a great deal about the theories and practices central to your field of study. You will gain broad exposure to the field to help you to start thinking about a topic of inquiry for your project. You will also learn more about research ethics and methodologies so that in the next phase you will be ready to formally develop your project proposal. Step 2: Project Development.
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Your best dissertation guides will be your supervisor, committee, and fellow graduate students, but here are a few tips to get you started:. Choose work hours that correspond to the times when you feel you work best. Likewise, if you really hit your stride in the evening shift, your hours so you do most of your writing during your peak time.
Guide to undergraduate dissertations in the social sciences
This article helps you work out exactly what you should include and where to include it. For example, dissertations in the humanities are often structured more like a long essay , building an overall argument to support a central thesis , with chapters organized around different themes or case studies. In many cases, each will be a separate chapter, but sometimes you might combine them. For example, in certain kinds of qualitative social science, the results and discussion will be woven together rather than separated. The order of sections can also vary between fields and countries. For example, some universities advise that the conclusion should always come before the discussion. The acknowledgements section is usually optional, and gives space for you to thank everyone who helped you in writing your dissertation. This might include your supervisors, participants in your research, and friends or family who supported you. The abstract is a short summary of your dissertation, usually about words long. In the abstract, make sure to:.
Dissertations
The dissertation or final year project requires organisational and time management skills in order to complete to a high standard. Due to competing demands on time, many students do not always devise and follow a work schedule, which can have implications for the quality of work that is produced and stress levels! Before getting started — consider how you will manage your time This video clip contains comments from the following academics:. The first stage is to decide on the topic that you wish to write about. You have an opportunity to explore and research in depth, using any previous study, a subject that is of personal interest to you and also helps you develop your interest even further. The topic can be related to a career aspiration. Although the dissertation is hard work, it should be rewarding, because it represents individual academic achievement of a kind that may makes a difference to your field of enquiry. Let your ideas and imagination flow! Because of this, I felt I had useful background knowledge. Reading journal articles over the summer to look at the type of research that was being done in the topic area.
