How to Finish Your PhD
Mar. 9th, 2013 12:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fjmThis is a sequel to Tips for Getting your PhD:at LJ http://fjm.livejournal.com/1225525.html/ or DW http://fjm.dreamwidth.org/23705.html
Over the years I have discovered that many people don’t know how to figure out that their PhD (or book) is finished; or, and related, that they find the completing of the PhD takes almost as long as the writing of the first draft.
For better or worse, on the Belbin test I am a completer/finish. I don’t actually share the weakness of this type in that I am not particularly meticulous and I am not a perfectionist, but some of the reasons for that, is that I believe firmly in something that is often derided. Competence. And that is where I am going to begin.
Competence
The nature of the PhD has changed a lot in the past twenty years, from a life’s masterwork, often taking more than a decade to write, to the final qualifying exam to prove that you can cope with being lost, bored, and isolated. Oh, did I say that? I mean of course that you show perseverance, independence of mind and self motivation. As well of course as originality, insight and brilliant writing/calculating abilities.
Measuring all of those is Bloody Difficult ™. Aiming for perfection at them is nigh on impossible. When working out if you have finished, the thing to do is to concentrate on the measurable, what is now called competency based assessment. Much of what I am about to say is going to sound as if I am talking to slightly retarded children, but having heard a boyfriend declare numerous times that his thesis was “almost finished and just needs tidying up”, only to discover when he was refused another extension, that one chapter was completely unwritten, I refuse to apologise or call it other than it is.
How to know you have finished the first draft.
1. You have the number of chapters you are supposed to have.
2. The thesis is the right length for your rubric.
3. Every chapter has a beginning, middle and end.
4. But you don’t necessarily have an introduction or conclusion (see below).
How to take the first draft, to the final draft.
One of the mistakes people make is to over revise the first part of a thesis (the bit you wrote earliest) and under revise the later parts. People also tend to focus on detail, which is not wrong, but misses the point. The following needs to be considered in order because it always goes from the general to the particular. Or, to misuse C. S. Lewis, “Further up and further in!”
But first, before you start,the thesis. In our print culture “justification = finished”. A document “left justified” is still “in process” and it doesn’t hurt to remove the illusion of completion.
Section One: Structure.
Part one: Argument, evidence and analysis.
My own students will recognise this mantra. It is astonishing how many PhD students get locked into description, or forget that every good argument needs support or that evidence doesn’t explain itself.
1. Check that every single chapter begins with a clear statement of i) the chapter’s argument, ii) the evidence/sources/texts/experimental data you are going to use to explore the argument.
2. Check that you have actually used everything you mentioned in ii).
3. Check that every paragraph begins with an argument (if you think I’m kidding take the Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction challenge, open at any page and check a paragraph. I do this with students all the time. It’s only once backfired.)
4. Check that every argument has evidence to support it: quote from a text, or data, but think of your evidence as if it was a noun, it should be something concrete (you can use other people’s opinions as evidence only if it is evidence of opinion ie James’s opinion on Heinlein’s writing is not untypical of a member of his peer group, whereas Mendlesohn’s is rather out of step with most feminist critics).
5. Check that after you have cited evidence, you analyse it. You must not do the equivalent of “look, isn’t this pretty, but I’m not going to tell you why I am showing it to you”.
Questions to ask of evidence:
Have I used the best piece of evidence for this bit of argument?
Is this the best place to use this piece of evidence or would it be more useful elsewhere?
Have I actually explained what it is this piece of evidence is showing (ie analysis).
6. Do not end paragraphs (or chapters for that matter) with someone else’s words. (You can begin a chapter/section or paragraph with a quote as long as you then do something with it, otherwise the quote is decoration, the graduate student equivalent of a school kid underlining things in pretty colours).
Part Two: it is actually one document not an essay collection.
Having done the above, read through your thesis and check the chapters are in the right order. As far as possible, there should be some kind of route through the thesis. This might be an “if this, then that” kind of route. It might be chronological. It might be looking at the spread of an idea through an affinity group, or exploring the matrix interconnectivity of a group. But think of it as a route to somewhere.
If there is absolutely no route you can construct because it really and truly doesn't matter how you read the thesis (and this does occasionally happen) then take a tip from an old singing teacher of mine. Start strong, bury weakness in the middle, and end on a high note. Or to translate: make sure you start with a solid, competent chapter; put any sections you think may not have enough evidence or a really convincing argument in the middle, and end with the really strong, well argued, well supported stuff.
Part three: write your introduction. This should consist of (in order).
1. The context of your work (US students need a literature review here, the rest of us can get on with the thesis).
2. The argument you intend to make.
3. The issues you intend to consider to make this argument.
4. The type of material you will be exploring (this might be a list of books or a discussion of oral history, or a particular method or theory).
5. Any innovative method.
6. Describe the contents of the chapters in brief (maybe 200 words per chapter).
Tips: an introduction of anything, whether the entire book, or for each chapter, should be no more than a fifth of the whole. Any sentence or section of anything which contains the phrase “but first I must explain/explore/give you the history of” is about to get badly sidetracked.
Part four: write your conclusion.
This is the bit I actually find very hard. My book The Inter-Galactic Playground doesn’t seem to have one. Someone really should have mentioned that to me.
1. In this thesis, I have shown…. Summarise argument. Do not worry if it is not long, there are no rules.
2. If you have something really new to draw attention to, do so.
3. If there are questions that you think arise from your thesis, state them (this is not an admission of failure, it’s an argument that your thesis has opened up a whole new line of enquiry.
4. If there are aspects of the thesis that you think need to be subjected to a different approach, say so. Ibid.
That’s it. Don’t get bogged down. Don’t drivel. I’ve seen people undermine themselves at this stage by not knowing when to stop. If your conclusion is only two pages, so be it.
Section Two: Line editing.
Line editing is a process, and a little factory method never hurt.
Make a table. Down the side list everything you need to check. Across the top list the chapters. Do this thing by thing, or chapter by chapter, it doesn’t matter. Just make sure you do it. This is also where it’s worth working backwards through the thesis for two reasons i) this will help keep your attention off content—you’ve done that already, leave it alone—ii) this is where your final chapters, that you maybe didn’t revise as much, get a little tlc.
And please remember to include your bibliography in this process.
Things to put in the left hand column: (you may have others)
Computer spell check.
Hand spell check (make a list of the words you can't spell and search for them).
Proper names (actually, you will save yourself a lot of bother if, once you discover you regularly spell a name incorrectly, Mendlesohn for example, you stick incorrect and correct versions into autocorrect).
Use of commas.
Use of colons and semi colons.
Use of brackets/dashes (check consistency of usage).
Any use of accents.
Apostrophes!
Link words (because, therefore, however, consequently, furthermore, hence &etc are not interchangeable confetti. They have meanings, make sure you are using the correct one).
Delete any example of “in fact” (it either is, and doesn’t need to be stated, or it’s not actually a fact)
Look for “or in other words”, and then decide which set of words is more precise: delete the others.
Paragraphing.
That all sentences are actually sentences.
That all footnotes/endnotes have content.
Citation format, as in choice of format; make sure you are using the right one for your department and that you have used it consistently.
Citation format as in getting it right (the commonest mistake I see is capitalisation of the “p” for page, and the lack of a period after it, and the lack of a space after that period).
Citations: making sure anything cited is in the bibliography
Calculations/analysis of statistics.
Diagrammes, properly inserted and not disrupted by any of the above.Check your fonts are all the same.
Make sure all your headings are formatted the same way (use the headings programme and add to this column how each type of heading should be formatted.
Page numbers inserted in every section.
When every single chapter has checks against all of this, You Are Done! At this point you are not allowed to revise anything.
Finally:
1. Create a contents page.
2. Write acknowledgements (avoid mentioning pets)
3. Write an abstract.
4. Complete any other bits of paper your university wants.
Print and bind.
Hand in.
Leave the damn thing in a nice dark cupboard for a month.
When you read it, acknowledge it as a completed piece of work, make a list of everything you would have done differently, and when your examiner questions something you've done say “yes, I was thinking about that and if I were to begin exploring that further, this is what I would do…”
Good luck. .
Over the years I have discovered that many people don’t know how to figure out that their PhD (or book) is finished; or, and related, that they find the completing of the PhD takes almost as long as the writing of the first draft.
For better or worse, on the Belbin test I am a completer/finish. I don’t actually share the weakness of this type in that I am not particularly meticulous and I am not a perfectionist, but some of the reasons for that, is that I believe firmly in something that is often derided. Competence. And that is where I am going to begin.
Competence
The nature of the PhD has changed a lot in the past twenty years, from a life’s masterwork, often taking more than a decade to write, to the final qualifying exam to prove that you can cope with being lost, bored, and isolated. Oh, did I say that? I mean of course that you show perseverance, independence of mind and self motivation. As well of course as originality, insight and brilliant writing/calculating abilities.
Measuring all of those is Bloody Difficult ™. Aiming for perfection at them is nigh on impossible. When working out if you have finished, the thing to do is to concentrate on the measurable, what is now called competency based assessment. Much of what I am about to say is going to sound as if I am talking to slightly retarded children, but having heard a boyfriend declare numerous times that his thesis was “almost finished and just needs tidying up”, only to discover when he was refused another extension, that one chapter was completely unwritten, I refuse to apologise or call it other than it is.
How to know you have finished the first draft.
1. You have the number of chapters you are supposed to have.
2. The thesis is the right length for your rubric.
3. Every chapter has a beginning, middle and end.
4. But you don’t necessarily have an introduction or conclusion (see below).
How to take the first draft, to the final draft.
One of the mistakes people make is to over revise the first part of a thesis (the bit you wrote earliest) and under revise the later parts. People also tend to focus on detail, which is not wrong, but misses the point. The following needs to be considered in order because it always goes from the general to the particular. Or, to misuse C. S. Lewis, “Further up and further in!”
But first, before you start,
Section One: Structure.
Part one: Argument, evidence and analysis.
My own students will recognise this mantra. It is astonishing how many PhD students get locked into description, or forget that every good argument needs support or that evidence doesn’t explain itself.
1. Check that every single chapter begins with a clear statement of i) the chapter’s argument, ii) the evidence/sources/texts/experimental data you are going to use to explore the argument.
2. Check that you have actually used everything you mentioned in ii).
3. Check that every paragraph begins with an argument (if you think I’m kidding take the Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction challenge, open at any page and check a paragraph. I do this with students all the time. It’s only once backfired.)
4. Check that every argument has evidence to support it: quote from a text, or data, but think of your evidence as if it was a noun, it should be something concrete (you can use other people’s opinions as evidence only if it is evidence of opinion ie James’s opinion on Heinlein’s writing is not untypical of a member of his peer group, whereas Mendlesohn’s is rather out of step with most feminist critics).
5. Check that after you have cited evidence, you analyse it. You must not do the equivalent of “look, isn’t this pretty, but I’m not going to tell you why I am showing it to you”.
Questions to ask of evidence:
Have I used the best piece of evidence for this bit of argument?
Is this the best place to use this piece of evidence or would it be more useful elsewhere?
Have I actually explained what it is this piece of evidence is showing (ie analysis).
6. Do not end paragraphs (or chapters for that matter) with someone else’s words. (You can begin a chapter/section or paragraph with a quote as long as you then do something with it, otherwise the quote is decoration, the graduate student equivalent of a school kid underlining things in pretty colours).
Part Two: it is actually one document not an essay collection.
Having done the above, read through your thesis and check the chapters are in the right order. As far as possible, there should be some kind of route through the thesis. This might be an “if this, then that” kind of route. It might be chronological. It might be looking at the spread of an idea through an affinity group, or exploring the matrix interconnectivity of a group. But think of it as a route to somewhere.
If there is absolutely no route you can construct because it really and truly doesn't matter how you read the thesis (and this does occasionally happen) then take a tip from an old singing teacher of mine. Start strong, bury weakness in the middle, and end on a high note. Or to translate: make sure you start with a solid, competent chapter; put any sections you think may not have enough evidence or a really convincing argument in the middle, and end with the really strong, well argued, well supported stuff.
Part three: write your introduction. This should consist of (in order).
1. The context of your work (US students need a literature review here, the rest of us can get on with the thesis).
2. The argument you intend to make.
3. The issues you intend to consider to make this argument.
4. The type of material you will be exploring (this might be a list of books or a discussion of oral history, or a particular method or theory).
5. Any innovative method.
6. Describe the contents of the chapters in brief (maybe 200 words per chapter).
Tips: an introduction of anything, whether the entire book, or for each chapter, should be no more than a fifth of the whole. Any sentence or section of anything which contains the phrase “but first I must explain/explore/give you the history of” is about to get badly sidetracked.
Part four: write your conclusion.
This is the bit I actually find very hard. My book The Inter-Galactic Playground doesn’t seem to have one. Someone really should have mentioned that to me.
1. In this thesis, I have shown…. Summarise argument. Do not worry if it is not long, there are no rules.
2. If you have something really new to draw attention to, do so.
3. If there are questions that you think arise from your thesis, state them (this is not an admission of failure, it’s an argument that your thesis has opened up a whole new line of enquiry.
4. If there are aspects of the thesis that you think need to be subjected to a different approach, say so. Ibid.
That’s it. Don’t get bogged down. Don’t drivel. I’ve seen people undermine themselves at this stage by not knowing when to stop. If your conclusion is only two pages, so be it.
Section Two: Line editing.
Line editing is a process, and a little factory method never hurt.
Make a table. Down the side list everything you need to check. Across the top list the chapters. Do this thing by thing, or chapter by chapter, it doesn’t matter. Just make sure you do it. This is also where it’s worth working backwards through the thesis for two reasons i) this will help keep your attention off content—you’ve done that already, leave it alone—ii) this is where your final chapters, that you maybe didn’t revise as much, get a little tlc.
And please remember to include your bibliography in this process.
Things to put in the left hand column: (you may have others)
Computer spell check.
Hand spell check (make a list of the words you can't spell and search for them).
Proper names (actually, you will save yourself a lot of bother if, once you discover you regularly spell a name incorrectly, Mendlesohn for example, you stick incorrect and correct versions into autocorrect).
Use of commas.
Use of colons and semi colons.
Use of brackets/dashes (check consistency of usage).
Any use of accents.
Apostrophes!
Link words (because, therefore, however, consequently, furthermore, hence &etc are not interchangeable confetti. They have meanings, make sure you are using the correct one).
Delete any example of “in fact” (it either is, and doesn’t need to be stated, or it’s not actually a fact)
Look for “or in other words”, and then decide which set of words is more precise: delete the others.
Paragraphing.
That all sentences are actually sentences.
That all footnotes/endnotes have content.
Citation format, as in choice of format; make sure you are using the right one for your department and that you have used it consistently.
Citation format as in getting it right (the commonest mistake I see is capitalisation of the “p” for page, and the lack of a period after it, and the lack of a space after that period).
Citations: making sure anything cited is in the bibliography
Calculations/analysis of statistics.
Diagrammes, properly inserted and not disrupted by any of the above.Check your fonts are all the same.
Make sure all your headings are formatted the same way (use the headings programme and add to this column how each type of heading should be formatted.
Page numbers inserted in every section.
When every single chapter has checks against all of this, You Are Done! At this point you are not allowed to revise anything.
Finally:
1. Create a contents page.
2. Write acknowledgements (avoid mentioning pets)
3. Write an abstract.
4. Complete any other bits of paper your university wants.
Print and bind.
Hand in.
Leave the damn thing in a nice dark cupboard for a month.
When you read it, acknowledge it as a completed piece of work, make a list of everything you would have done differently, and when your examiner questions something you've done say “yes, I was thinking about that and if I were to begin exploring that further, this is what I would do…”
Good luck.
