Academic Writing and Presentation: Six Tips for Writing the Dissertation

Post written by guest author Jessica Marter Kenyon, a doctoral student in Geography.

The dissertation is the sine qua non of the doctoral program. The task is a rite of passage: considered necessary for students to undertake before they become fully-fledged scholars. The quality of the central dissertation question, as well as the way in which it is researched, has a heavy bearing on job prospects once the Ph.D. is completed. It's no surprise, therefore, that the undertaking constitutes perhaps one of the major sources of stress for doctoral students. Here, broken down into six areas, are some tips to help you along the way. Though they are organized numerically and somewhat chronologically, there are exchanges between most of the ‘steps.’ Some may be most applicable to social scientists, and to those early on in their doctoral programs, but many others are generally relevant.

Produce the idea

• The right idea can launch your career and put you in position to make a real impact in your field. Consider that your research question will overwhelmingly direct your study. It will influence the contours of the methodological and technical skills you gain, the people with whom you come in contact, the theories you explore, and your eligibility for job postings.
• Choose something you really enjoy: you’ll need to be motivated enough to study this topic throughout your graduate career (and, perhaps, for a while after!). The most basic requirements the dissertation question must fulfill are: originality (as far as its contribution to the literature) and feasibility (is it actually possible to answer using the methods you’ve chosen, the funding you have, your technical skills, etc.).
• Keep a journal of ideas. When you are reading literature related to your general issue area, write down any ideas you have about flaws or gaps you identify (How would the conclusions change if the study were conducted in a different place? With a different population? Using a different methodology?). Often, writers will include a section at the end of each article that outlines areas for future research. Pay special attention to those paragraphs!
• Talk to as many knowledgeable people as you can, especially in your department. Find out what your fellow students and the faculty think is the most exciting (yet feasible) idea. Make sure your advisor is on board, as their support could be crucial.
• Consider marketability. Is your topic pushing theoretical or methodological boundaries in some aspect? Where do your questions and approach situate you as a researcher?
• For more guidance (geared to an audience of economics students), read this note from Don Davis, of Columbia University’s Economics Department

Determine your approach/methods

Remember that, while you must select the methodology most appropriate to your research question, you will also be defining yourself by your methods. So make sure your question helps you use the methodologies you are interested in. In some cases, the research question will lead the selection of your methods while, in others, the reverse may be true. Since methodologies are discipline and question-specific, I will simply provide some food for thought:

• Is your dissertation going to take the form of a series of papers (typical of physical/life science) or a book (typical of social science and humanities)? Your choice will likely be driven by the morays of your discipline or sub-discipline. Your advisor and other mentors should be able to help you understand what is de rigeur in your field.
• Be strategic. Are there technical skills or techniques you wish to gain over the course of your studies? If so, it would be wise to find an appropriate way to incorporate these into your dissertation research. Of course, you will also need to dedicate time and resources to acquiring these skills.
• There are two major pairs of methodological binaries to consider when selecting your methods: qualitative vs. quantitative and empirical vs. theoretical. You will need to assess where you want to situate your research: on either side of these binaries, or perhaps in the middle. Increasingly, researchers are finding interesting ways to bridge these traditional divisions, or to apply unorthodox methods to questions that have only been explored in one way.
• Lastly, consider your data needs and sources. Will you be using primary or secondary data? Does your field value collecting your own data? If so, you may want to build in a time and financial budget that allows you to do your own fieldwork. If not, consider using existing data in order to save time and money. How will you get access to the data?

Get funded

Not only is outside funding quite likely necessary for you to complete your degree, it’s also a good way to show future employers that you are fundable and can independently garner financial support for your research. Below are some general things to consider. For more detailed information on successfully finding funding, see Daniel Ervin’s GradPost here.

• More funding is available at the all-but-dissertation (ABD) stage, so if you are a first or second year, don’t be too discouraged: there will be more opportunities later on!
• Consider discipline-specific, professional society subgroups, UC-wide grants, and UCSB-specific grants because the pool of applicants will be somewhat more limited
• For larger grants (from the NSF or NIH, for example, consider teaming up with faculty or fellow students)
• Once you’ve written one funding application, the subsequent ones will be easier because you already have a lot of the important language (about yourself and your research) written down. At this point, you should be applying for every opportunity you can. Take the hours necessary to tailor your existing language to the grant opportunity on offer. Like dating, funding is to some extent a numbers game.
• Grant proposals may require a budget. Be as thorough as you can in considering every possible expense so as not to literally shortchange yourself.

Conduct research

Once you have your research questions, methods, and funding all lined up, it’ll be time to actually start executing your project. As with methods selection, the ways in which researchers conduct their research is highly question and discipline-specific. So, here I will provide you just with some general tips on staying ahead of the game.

• Organization is key to successfully conducting research. You must be able to intellectually and physically manage everything you’ve read. A lot of software programs exist to help you manage your bibliography. Check out this helpful comparison from Wikipedia.
• Another good tip is that maintaining flexibility throughout the course of research may help you avoid some stress (and produce an intellectually honest piece of work at the end). It’s difficult to control every parameter that can impinge on your work (particularly if you are working outside of a laboratory setting). You may wish to sit down and evaluate which aspects of your work are non-negotiable, and which are not. If you encounter a hiccup, can you be flexible with regards to your research site, for example?
• Don’t forget to back up your data daily. There can be few things more demoralizing than losing all of your hard work.

Write

In order to graduate, you’ll have to set down your findings on paper. The quality of your writing is also an important factor in how seriously your work is taken. If you can’t communicate your ideas to other people, they will have a limited impact. At the very least, it is important to be direct, clear and explicit. Many students come up against the common difficulty of ‘writer’s block’, however.

• By now, you probably have enough experience writing for classes to know your major writing hang-ups. Take some time to explicitly identify what these are.
  • Are you a perfectionist? Can you not move on from a phrase or paragraph until it’s exactly as you want it? Try and let that compunction go for a few minutes and just write out a ‘flow’ version, where you spill out all of your thoughts in plain language or in bullet points. You can go back to edit, rephrase, and add citations.
  • Are you hung up on what you want to say? Free writing can kick you into gear. Give yourself a specified (probably short) amount of time to answer some fundamental questions, such as “Who is my audience?”, “What am I really trying to say with this piece?”, “What is the major thrust of my argument?”, “If someone could take away only three things from this paper, what would they be?”. This should provide you with more clarity about your goals.
  • Does it just not sound right? Your writing will improve with practice, and over time you will become familiar with your discipline’s language. Review the organization and language of papers written by relevant researchers, note their commonalities, and try and apply them in your own work.
  • Do you never seem to have the time or will to write? Consider scheduling weekly times that you dedicate to writing and rarely deviate from. Many experts on writer’s block advise that you should write something every day, even if what you write isn’t necessary very long or very good. Lastly, be honest with yourself and maintain a diary (even if just for a week or two) in which you track how much time you’ve spent writing. Both the act of keeping the diary and the subsequent analysis of your writing behavior may provide you with a better sense of how much time you really do spend writing, and whether/when the time is productive.
• For more, check out Columbia University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Teaching Center Completing Your Dissertation Without Tears.

Promote the dissertation

Early on in your academic career, peers, students, and employers will use your dissertation as a shorthand way of understanding who you are. Therefore, you’re going to want to find ways to promote your work so that it reflects well upon you and your capabilities and future trajectory as a researcher.

• When given the opportunity, you want to be able to discuss your work in a succinct and exciting way. Be able to give 1, 2, and 5-minute ‘pitches’ in which you outline the context, questions and purpose of your research. You’ll have ample opportunities to practice these pitches with family members and friends. Pay attention to when and why people stop listening to you (they will eventually). These may be areas of your pitch to focus on tightening up.
• Present your work at conferences. This is a good way to get your name out there within the relevant academic community, and also a good way to solicit preliminary feedback about your ideas.
• If you have the work, try and publish parts of your dissertation before you graduate.
• Student paper competitions abound, especially within subspecialty groups. Look for announcements and consider sending your paper in: it’s pretty low-work, high-reward.
• You’ll want to be smart about leveraging your dissertation into a job. Think about how your work might be applicable to a variety of departments. If you’ve chosen something ‘trendy’, beware that you have more competition, and think about how to frame your work as distinct from the competition.

Conclusion

The dissertation is a formidable personal project, and one that has a lot of moving parts. Nonetheless, many of its aspects become highly manageable as long as you invest some foresight and organization into your process. If you take one thing away from this post, it should be that you aren’t alone! Many academics have preceded you in this undertaking, which means there is a lot of tried and true advice out there to strategically help you along the way.

How to Get Published Webcasts

Writing and preparing your first journal articles can be a daunting task. To help ease the process, Publishing Connect, a service from Elsevier, provides a series of webcasts titled "How to Get Published."

In three videos, each between five and twelve minutes long, the webcasts walk you through preparing your manuscript, using proper language, and structuring your article.

If you want to explore further, Elsevier also offers a series of guides on different career topics on their Biggerbrains website including:

• Introduction to Scholarly Publishing Webcasts
• Peer Review - The Nuts and Bolts
• Get noticed. Disseminate your research better.

How I Wrote 70 Pages in 2 Weeks

When I received approval from my faculty advisor to start my qualifying exams, I experienced feelings of excitement (woohoo, one last obstacle before I’m ABD!) and anxiety (I will never be able to complete this long paper in such a short period of time). For my qualifying exams, I was given one month to write a critical analysis, which would weave together a narrative of the literature, for three distinct topics. Each topic had a reading list of 30 to 40 books and journal articles.

In less than two weeks, I have already written 70 pages and I am almost done with the second topic paper. I hope to share some tips for productive writing with you, and as I am still in the process of writing, I would truly enjoy if you had any tips to share with me (by commenting on this post).

Organize

I wish I could say that the 500 pages of notes that I took from the 120 books and articles were an exaggeration. While there are many different types of note-taking strategies (i.e., annotating, summarizing, outlining), I kept mine simple. I copied and pasted key quotes from each text into a separate tab in the notebook layout on MS Word.

After completing the readings, I devised six research questions to guide each review of the literature. I then reorganized my notes around the research questions.

It was not until this entire organization process was complete that I was ready to begin writing. While this may seem like an extensive process, having organized notes to guide my writing greatly increased my productivity.

Writing

How did I complete 70 pages in less than two weeks? With a combination of mini-goals, rewards, and healthy habits.

Goals. Knowing that I had one month to complete the qualifying exams on top of my classes, jobs, and other extracurricular activities, I set many small goals that guided my writing process. Since I gave myself one week per topic, I knew that I would have to finish one research question per day for six days, allowing one day for revising the final paper. I recommend making these goals visible on your desk to keep you on track.

Rewards. Once you set the mini-goals for your paper, you need to reward yourself when you achieve each goal. The simplest and most effective reward for me is the opportunity to relax. If I finish addressing a research question in the afternoon, I spend the rest of the evening relaxing, watching TV, or exercising. I have also found other types of rewards to motivate me through the hard writing sections; of course, chocolate treats are my favorite type of reward.

Healthy Habits. It is essential to take care of your well-being when you are under pressure to complete large projects or papers. With the qualifying exams, you may feel incredibly anxious about how your committee will respond to your paper or defense. You might think that you should stay up all night to fine tune and perfect every word that you write. Or, you might justify skipping all of the “non-essential” parts of your day (i.e., social activities, exercise, relaxing) to get more writing done. None of these habits are healthy. In fact, they can intensify your anxiety in an already stressful situation. Make sure to get enough sleep (6 to 8 hours a night), exercise at least 3 to 4 times a week, drink plenty of water (your brain needs it), and don’t forget to eat (preferably something healthy).

One thing that really helped me through the process was positive thinking (i.e., “You can do this.” “You are almost done!” “Keep going strong”). Sometimes you need to reboot your mind to get rid of the negative thoughts that are inhibiting your writing. Another fun thing to do is to post a request for encouragement on your social media profile. I did this and I received a great collection of encouraging comments, funny pictures, and entertaining quotes from my friends. It also helped me realize that I’m not alone in this writing process. I always have support available.

Additional Tips

Gmail Folder for Important DocumentsDon’t Forget to Save. To prevent a minor heart attack, save your documents in multiple locations (i.e., desktop, email, Dropbox, flash drive). Also, save multiple versions of the document. I email my document to myself every night and post the date in subject of the email. If I ever want to revert to a previous version or find a section that I deleted, I can go into my email to see the archive of documents.

Save Editing Until the End. One way to procrastinate is to read and edit your entire document every time you open it. This is a big time-waster. Open the document and scroll directly to the bottom. Read 2 to 3 sentences directly above to recall where you left off and then jump right into writing. Wait until finishing the entire draft of your paper to edit and fine-tune it.

Final Thoughts

Writing is a different process for everyone. Feel free to use any of these suggestions in your writing process (and share your tips in the comments section of this post). The goal is to find a healthy writing process that allows you to be productive and efficient with your time.

Tips for Conquering Your Literature Review

Writing a literature review is a daunting task that requires demonstrating your understanding of prior research on a topic by weaving a narrative from a never-ending collection of scholarly articles, books, and other data sources.

How do you even get started when faced with this task? In the article, "Conquer Your Next Research Project the Easy Way With These Tools," Aaron Couch recommends starting by creating a "plan of action." A plan of action can be an bulleted outline and it should include key deadlines, daily and weekly goals, and action items. This will help you get started on your literature review and stay on track to complete it by your deadline.

Couch's article also highlights some useful tools for collecting, highlighting, and annotating data and managing citations (i.e., Evernote, Diigo, Zotero) as well as tips for backing up your research. The article includes multiple links helpful resources (i.e., awesome backup sources).

While Couch's article is geared toward conducting research, the majority of the advice can be applied to writing a literature review. However, don't start your literature review with Wikipedia, heed Couch's second recommendation of using an educational setting (i.e., UCSB Library) to jumpstart your search for data. Google Scholar is another good resource.

Keeping a Research Journal

At an academic career panel I attended last spring, one of the presenters emphasized the importance of keeping a research journal. While the physical form can vary, the research journal is where you record details about the work you are doing, ideas for new research paths to explore now or later, and information and reflection on articles and other publications relevant to your discipline.

As a graduate student, the journal will help you keep track of your various projects and serve as a place to focus your dissertation topic. Record any ideas or a-ha moments when they occur instead of racking your brain to think of them when you eventually sit down to write. Jot down questions or insights that come up during course discussions, department seminars, or conversations with your peers. While reading articles, books, and journals, note details like the full citation for later reference, related publications or authors to research later, and how you can relate the ideas to your own work.

The act of writing all of this down will allow you to draw connections between various authors and ideas. If you find yourself coming back to the same questions over and over again, those might be good candidates for a dissertation topic. You can also keep possible research tracks in reserve for the future. When you are on the job market, you can address these potential topics in cover letters and interviews to show your passion and direction.

While a research journal would traditionally be kept on paper for easy access at all times, the proliferation of laptops, tablets, and other mobile devices makes it just as straightforward to keep it purely electronic. A digital journal would allow for searching to easily find something you wrote down last year and if you store it in the cloud, you can get to it from anywhere with an internet connection and don’t have to worry about losing your only copy. Consider using Evernote or something similar to keep your digital research journal.

For more thoughts and advice about keeping a research journal, check out these articles:

• Keeping a Research Journal, Bowdoin University
• Getting Started in Research: Your Research Journal, About.Com: Graduate Student Advice
• Keep a Research Journal, Monash University 

Writing Tips for Success

Writing is already hard enough without the daily stressors, technology distractions, and the ever-so-common writer's block. Here are some resources to help improve your writing experience: 

A Kick in the Pants: How to Obliterate Distraction, Clear Your Head, and Finally Write What Makes You Happy

Apps to Combat Those Internet Distractions

Overcoming Writer's Block: How to Outsmart Your Inner Critic

How to Be a Writer: 201 Compelling Tips

Browse through these articles for helpful tips and inspiration before you start writing your next paper.

Free Online Course: Writing in the Sciences

Looking to improve your writing skills? Coursera, a free online learning platform, is currently offering a course on Writing in the Sciences from Stanford University.

According to the course description, "This course trains scientists to become more effective, efficient, and confident writers. This is a hands-on course that emphasizes interactive examples and practice. In the first four weeks, we will review principles of effective writing, examples of good and bad writing, and tips for making the writing process easier. In the second four weeks, we will examine issues specific to scientific writing, including: authorship, peer review, the format of an original manuscript, and communicating science for lay audiences. Students will complete editing exercises, write two short papers, and edit each others’ work. 

The primary audience is undergraduate science majors, graduate students in scientific disciplines, and professional scientists. Students from non-science disciplines can also benefit from the training provided in the first four weeks (on general principles of effective writing)."

Taught by Kristin Sainani (née Cobb), a clinical assistant professor at Stanford University and a health and science writer, the course includes videos with interactive practice exercises and integrated quiz questions. There will also be standalone writing and editing exercises. The class is already in progress, but students may sign up at any time and watch the videos on their own schedule.

Let us know in the comments if you decide to take the course!

Writing...You Can Do It!

"I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done." ~Steven Wright

As I sat down to write this blog post, I spent five minutes staring at the wall in front of me hoping for an epiphany of what I should write about, three minutes being distracted by the individuals walking by the Graduate Student Resource Center, and a few minutes surfing the Internet for the perfect quote to start the blog post.

Writing is hard. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Even though I've written over 300 blog posts, multiple 40-60 page class papers, and an entire book, I still find it difficult to share my thoughts on paper in a logical, cohesive manner.

Why am I sharing this? Because you are not alone when you face a daunting writing task. Everyone faces writing challenges. However, writing is just that: a "challenge" not an "obstacle." Anyone can write—it just takes time and dedication.

In the blog post, "How I Wrote a PhD Thesis in 3 Months," James Hayton, Ph.D., shares ten tips for completing your writing projects. One of the ideas that stood out was having a limited timeframe. When Hayton was given a hard deadline by his advisor, he no longer aimed for perfection, he wrote quality work that was good enough to submit. Hayton also broke up his thesis writing efforts into small, achievable goals (i.e., writing 500 words a day every day). Hayton's 10th tip is to edit as you write. However, I've heard differing opinions about this. Some people work better when they spend quality time just writing (not worrying about editing or adding in quotes/citations) and then editing at the end of a chapter. Other people (myself included) prefer to edit as they write. While this may be efficient, it can also be a problem if you spend more time editing a sentence to perfection than writing.

Based on personal experience and articles and books that I've read, here are some additional tips for writing a lengthy paper:

1. Organize what you read. For each article that you read, write down three to five quotes, a short summary of the article, and the full citation in the format used by your field (i.e., APA, MLA). Don't wait until you have to write your paper, start organizing your readings as soon as you have an idea of what you will be writing about.
2. Use your reading notes to create an outline. See what articles have common themes and ideas and group those article summary/quotes/citations together under a heading. 
3. Weave the story together. Find a way to weave your notes, research, and thoughts into a narrative. Don't be hard on yourself. Just start typing and see what you come up with. If you face writer's block, go for a short walk, take a shower, or kick back on the couch for a few minutes and try to think through the material you are writing about. 
4. Set aside writing blocks. I have heard that it's important to write every day even if it's only for 15 to 20 minutes. However, I can't write anything useful in that short amount of time. I set aside large chunks (three to five hours) for two or three times a week.
5. Plan accordingly. Take note of when you can be the most productive writer and schedule your day around your writing block. I can write two to three times more in the morning right after waking up than in the afternoon when I have too many things going on in my mind. I usually prefer writing on the weekends, so I will schedule Saturday and Sunday mornings as my writing blocks. Do what works best for you.
6. Just keep writing. Sometimes the hardest part of writing is when you can't think of a scholarly way to share your thoughts. I always find it helpful to just write my thoughts as a stream of consciousness, finish the rest of the paragraph, and then go back at a later time to try and improve the writing so it is worthy of being in a thesis or scholarly journal article. 
7. Participate in a writing group. It's always helpful to have a group of peers who you can share your writing with, get feedback from, talk things through when you are stuck, and who will keep you honest about meeting your deadlines. If you can't find a writing group, check in with your Graduate Program Assistant and see if he or she knows of any groups in your department (or start your own—your classmates will appreciate you).
8. Reward yourself. Set your weekly goal (i.e., writing the first ten pages) and if you achieve it, reward yourself with a tasty treat, night out, or something else that makes achieving your goal worthwhile.

What works for you? Share your writing tips in the comments section.

Thesis and Dissertation Writing Tips

Photo Credit: Microsoft OfficeTomorrow is the first day of spring and we all know that with spring or summer comes a bright, shiny sun and the temptation to relax on the beach or in a park and soak in the warmth.

Unfortunately, a dissertation is not going to write itself (believe me, I’ve tried staring at a computer for a while, hoping that when I blink an entire paper will appear before my eyes). So, resist the temptation to head outdoors and instead spend quality time writing your thesis or dissertation.

Here are two helpful articles to get you started:

Writing Your Dissertation or Thesis

This article presents an interesting way to write – turn off your computer screen and pour as much knowledge into the paper as possible, then turn the computer screen back on and start revising and reorganizing.

How to Get it Done?

In this article, author Christine Jensen Sundstrom makes a great point: writing a dissertation is not about how smart you are or whether you know a lot about a topic, it’s about being persistent, resilient, ready to accept challenges, and self-motivated.

Both of these articles are from GradShare: Where Graduate Students Help Each Other Succeed. Browse the website and you will see other students asking for help, support, and advice – this is a great way to connect with like-minded others and form a writing group or find a support buddy.

Free One-on-One Writing Consultations for Graduate Students

Photo Credit: Fotolia

Need assistance with a writing project?

Sign up to receive a one-on-one writing consultation with Doug Bradley (Writing Program):

https://csep.cnsi.ucsb.edu/forms/PDS/WritingConsultation.php

You can be at any stage in the writing process when you sign up for a consultation, however you will get more out of your consultation if you provide your writing outcomes and objectives when you sign up.

Learning how to write is a valuable skill, so don't miss out on this opportunity to receive free counseling!