Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Min: A Guide to Starting, Revising, and Fin

Description: Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Min by Bolker Joan Discusses the various aspects of dissertation writing, such as choosing an advisor, a committee, and a topic, and offers advice on writing zero and first drafts, revising, and dealing with interruptions. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description Expert writing advice from the editor of the Boston Globe best-seller, The Writers Home Companion Dissertation writers need strong, practical advice, as well as someone to assure them that their struggles arent unique. Joan Bolker, midwife to more than one hundred dissertations and co-founder of the Harvard Writing Center, offers invaluable suggestions for the graduate-student writer. Using positive reinforcement, she begins by reminding thesis writers that being able to devote themselves to a project that truly interests them can be a pleasurable adventure. She encourages them to pay close attention to their writing method in order to discover their individual work strategies that promote productivity; to stop feeling fearful that they may disappoint their advisors or family members; and to tailor their theses to their own writing style and personality needs. Using field-tested strategies she assists the student through the entire thesis-writing process, offering advice on choosing a topic and an advisor, on disciplining ones self to work at least fifteen minutes each day; setting short-term deadlines, on revising and defing the thesis, and on life and publication after the dissertation. Bolker makes writing the dissertation an enjoyable challenge. Back Cover Dissertation writers need strong, practical advice, as well as someone who understands their particular situation. Joan Bolker, cofounder of the Harvard Writing Center, offers invaluable suggestions for "blocked" writers. She encourages them to discover individual work plans that promote productivity. Using field-tested strategies and positive reinforcement, she buoys the student through the entire process-from choosing a topic and advisor to setting short-term deadlines, revising, defending the thesis, and deciding whether to publish. Author Biography Editor of the best-selling The Writers Home Companion, Joan Bolker, Ed.D., has taught writing at Harvard, Wellesley, Brandeis, and Bard colleges. She is currently a psychotherapist whose speciality is working with struggling writers. She lives in Newton, Massachusetts. Excerpt from Book 1 Beginning IF YOU ENJOY RESEARCH and writing, some of the greatest gifts life can offer you are time, space, and a good rationalization for devoting yourself to a project that truly interests you. But there are many other stances from which to approach writing a doctoral dissertation. Most of the students I meet in my work dont often think of their dissertation projects with joyful anticipation. Instead, theyre overwhelmed by the size of the task, or they dont consider themselves scholars, or they are scared that theyre not up to it, or they dont even know how to begin. But even if youre not a true scholar yet (whatever that is) or are feeling frightened, you can still write a good dissertation, using a process that minimizes pain and increases your chances of feeling engaged and satisfied with your work. And the first step is to imagine your dissertation. The best way to begin a dissertation is not by positioning yourself in a library and writing "Chapter 1" on the top of a blank piece of paper. The best way to begin is by approaching your dissertation in your imagination, preparing to write in and about this thesis at every stage, and to become the researcher of your own work process. Imagining your dissertation allows you to develop passion, curiosity, and questions about your topic, as well as to think of yourself as someone who can make a commitment to scholarship. You may be given a topic. You may be so terrified you cant imagine "passion" or "pleasure" as words with any relevance to your undertaking. You may be writing a thesis for strictly instrumental reasons. Nevertheless, its still worth imagining-choosing and playing with different topics and different types of theses, giving yourself some leeway to explore before you commit to a particular topic in a specific format. You can take time at this point to speculate about how it will feel to have done this work, to own a doctorate. Or you can think about the process by which you hope to research and write, and where youll try to do your writing. You can imagine how much company youd like or will need-friends, coworkers, the active presence of your committee-during this project, and whom youll ask to be your advisor and your committee members. You may even want to consider seriously how you would feel, what might happen, if you were to choose not to write a dissertation. People write dissertations for many different reasons. For some of you the goal is to meet a professional necessity, to accomplish an instrumental task: you want to spend your professional life teaching at a college or university, and you know that a doctorate is a prerequisite. Others want to learn the process of producing a major scholarly work, to begin a life of serious research and writing. Still others, before they go on to the next phase of life, want to finish a process they began some time back when they entered graduate school. And then there are the lucky ones who have a burning question that they want to spend time answering. One of the ways to begin, no matter which of these agendas is yours, is by learning to write your way in. Writing Your Way In Writing is at the center of producing a dissertation. This book will teach you how not to talk away your ideas or lose them in mental gymnastics. You will learn to write in order to think, to encourage thought, to tease thought out of chaos or out of fright. You will write constantly, and continuously, at every stage, to name your topic and to find your way into it. You will learn to write past certainty, past prejudice, through contradiction, and into complexity. You will come to write out of your own self, and, eventually, even though you may be afraid of what your reader will say, you will learn to write in a way that will allow you to be heard. If youre to do all of this, you need to write every day, even if its only for fifteen minutes a day. If you commit yourself to writing at every stage, the process will look something like this: Early on, even before youve chosen a topic, you might make daily, dated journal entries, all of them in a thesis book (which might be separate pages on a pad that then go into a folder, or a bound notebook, or a computer file) about your thoughts, worries, interest in various topics. For example, 12/16/95: Today Im thinking about how intrigued Ive always been by the question of the use of model systems in studying biological development. Ive always been aware that there are real disadvantages that come along with the advantages of this method-I wonder if I could do something with this for my dissertation. . . . When you first choose a topic, youll spell out your preliminary hunches, ideas, questions: 1/15/96: What difference might it make if we were to use not rats, but elephants, as the model? What are the qualities of model system animals that have made us choose them so readily for much of our developmental research? As you start to accumulate data youll not only take notes, but also begin to work with the data-talk back to it in writing, ask it questions, let the material suggest questions to you, and then youll try to summarize your current understanding of it: 2/18/96: Organisms that share the desirable characteristic of having rapid embryonic development may share embryonic adaptations and constraints related to this trait-what difference does this make? As you go through, youll take some trial runs at writing some bits of the dissertation: 4/2/96: The model systems approach, clearly an extraordinarily powerful way to analyze animal development, is based on certain assumptions. One is that we can extrapolate what we learn from a few model species to many other organisms. . . . Youll keep track of the flashes of insight you have that are spurred by your reading, as well as any serious misgivings you have: 2/3/96: What am I really trying to say here, and does it make sense? At first youll write in short stretches, and a bit farther on you may produce up to five pages a day (Ill teach you how to do this in chapter 3). Developing Your Own Work Process Each of you reading this book is unique, and no single prescription is going to be useful for all of you. I want to help you figure out how to devise the strategies that best suit who you are and how you work. The only rules there are in the dissertation-writing process are the useful ones you make up for yourself. You own this dissertation, and you are the one responsible for getting it from conception to birth; you can get there by whatever process works for you. You begin by learning to pay attention to yourself as a writer, by writing at every possible stage of your work process. Youll note each day how your work has gone: how it felt, what you did and didnt accomplish; youll ask yourself, in an internal dialogue that you record, what you think might have gotten in your way, what nagging question youve been trying to ignore, what you need to work on next, how you might have to change your work space, whether you like or hate your topic on this particular day. You will take your own work habits as seriously as you take the material youre working on, and you will scrutinize them frequently to see if they need revamping. If you get stuck (you discover you dont like composing on the computer, but you dont know what to do instead; or you are having trouble making time to work; or your writing is coming very, very slowly-too slowly to make your deadline), youll seek consultation, first with yourself, in writing: 1/14/96 What is going on with my work? Im having a terrible time clearing out my schedule. Im doing favors for all my friends, and if I dont stop giving myself these excuses for not working, Im never going to finish my dissertation! How can I make sure that I write before I talk on the phone, before I meet Harry for tea, before I comb the dogs? After that, youll consult with your advisor, or with a friend who has lived through the process successfully, or perhaps with a counselor whom your university provides for such times. But first youll confront the stuck place youre in by writing about it, researching it, asking yourself when it began (was it after you had a disappointing meeting with your advisor, or after you drank too much, or after you heard about that article that youre terrified will scoop your idea but havent gotten up the courage to read yet?). Youll try varying your routine to see if another time, another place, another mode of writing works better. Youll think about whether its time to make yourself a detailed outline or to play with another chapter for a while and give this one some time to rest. You may decide to consider the worrisome thought that youre barking up the wrong tree with a particular idea. All of these issues are food not only for thought, but for writing. And writing about them, as well as about whatever static you are experiencing in your head, will serve to resolve most of the issues that are bothering you. Writing will also be an essential tool in choosing the topic of your dissertation. Choosing a Topic What do you want from a thesis topic? Writing a dissertation is very much like being in a long-term relationship: there are likely to be some very good times and some perfectly dreadful ones, and its a big help if you like what youve chosen. This particular relationship asks you to give up a lot of the other pieces of your life, to work li Details ISBN080504891X Language English ISBN-10 080504891X ISBN-13 9780805048919 Media Book Format Paperback Year 1998 Imprint Owl Books,U.S. Place of Publication New York Country of Publication United States Short Title WRITING YOUR DISSERTATION IN 1 Subtitle A Guide to Starting, Revising, and Finishing Your Doctoral Thesis DOI 10.1604/9780805048919 UK Release Date 1998-08-01 Translated from English AU Release Date 1998-08-15 NZ Release Date 1998-08-15 US Release Date 1998-08-15 Author Bolker Joan Pages 184 Publisher Henry Holt & Company Inc Publication Date 1998-08-15 DEWEY 808.066378 Audience Undergraduate We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:43672473;

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