Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with dissertation

Thesis topics related to the Internet

metametababe — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:40:39 -0800

Looking for a thesis topic related to the internet and society...please help give me some direction! I'm looking for Masters thesis topics related to the internet. The topic can be anything related to the internet, from the impact of Tor on Burma to peer production methods in Wikipedia to internet security.

What questions do you have about the Internet that you wish someone would take a year and some research funds to answer?

(Any other resources you may have on generating research questions from vague ideas would be VERY helpful. (I did a search, of course, but didn't find very much.))

Give me your dissertation advice!

quodlibet — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 11:40:09 -0800

Starting my dissertation (in the social sciences) - what advice do you have for me? I'm a third year PhD student in Political Science, studying American urban politics. I passed my exams in May (with honors, woohoo!) and spent the summer regrouping/being a research assistant/general goofing off. Now with school back in gear, I'm ready to get started - choosing a topic, creating a proposal, and so on.

So - what advice to you have? What tools did you find helpful? (Software, esp. but also otherwise). What was a lifesaver? What do you wish you had done? Who did you seek advice from? How much time did you spend in the library/reading before starting your own writing/questioning? Any advice is welcome!

I've read through the previous questions, but thought I'd get an updated answer. A lot of them seem to resolve around procrastination - which isn't a huge problem for me (atleast right now, I know some of you are laughing now..). Thanks hivemind!

Remain Calm and Carry On: PhD Defense Version

meerkatty — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 15:20:01 -0800

Ph.D defense. What to know? How to keep calm? All tips and strategies welcome. So far, you wonderful Mefites have helped me find research material, walked me through my first academic conference and titled my thesis. Now there's one last thing: What should I know in regard to and how on earth to keep calm in my Ph.D defense? (It's in the UK, so technically a viva voce.) I have about 6 weeks until the big event.

What does a qualitative dissertation look like for a quantitative grad student?

Anonymous — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 08:15:16 -0800

Defended the MA, it's on its way to being published. Great! Dissertation chair wants me to continue with the project, adding a qualitative/comparative component. Uh oh. My social science master's thesis was a large-N quantitative study using existing data sets. I found some interesting and unexpected things, particularly in a single country. Now my dissertation advisor thinks I should focus on that for a dissertation and maybe do a comparative study with a nearby country for at least part of the dissertation.

One problem -- I don't really know how to do that. I have high-intermediate language skills for the countries in question (and will have another year under my belt after this upcoming academic year), but I don't really know what this kind of project would look like. It's not really historical (it deals with events in 2003) so it's not a matter of "getting into the archives". The availability of information for these countries is usually pretty poor (they're in the developing world and have poor or out-of-date webpages) so it's not as if I can just check out their library's web page and see what kind of data/sources they have.

Where do I start? How does one begin a qualitative/comparative project? How do I decide who to talk to if web information is pretty poor? My advisor is telling me to apply for grants to travel. Funding agencies won't fund my travel there unless I have a pretty specific project proposal, including what data sources I want to use, who I want to interview, etc. I have never done qualitative work before and I'm lost!

Anonymous because this is tremendously embarrassing. If you need more information, here's a throwaway email: qualclueless@gmail.com

Help me stay out of prison in authoritarian countries.

proj — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 15:19:38 -0800

Doing research in authoritarian countries. What is your experience? I am working on my dissertation proposal; I have several ideas, all of which would see me moving to one of several authoritarian countries to conduct field research of a political nature. The degree of authoritarianism differs between countries. I do have some experience living, for a short period of time, in a "friendly" (to the United States) authoritarian country, but not conducting research there.

I am curious about your experiences -- how easy was it for you to get access to data? Were you able to conduct your research relatively freely? Did you find yourself worried about what you were writing due to potential ramifications? How much information did the government request with respect to your research? Were you able to return after publishing your research? Bonus question -- if applying for a Fulbright-Hayes Dissertation Development grant (which must be approved by a host institution in the desired country), did you run into problems? Any and all advice welcome.

None of my dissertation ideas amount to "why country X is an authoritarian hellhole and the government should be overthrown" but each would require acknowledging, to some extent, that authoritarianism is the order of the day and the potential impact this may or may not have had on various civil society elements. Nor am I so naïve as to attempt to get locals to opine about the ills of their government, so I don't need advice on how to conduct a politically appropriate/sensitive conversation. I am particularly concerned, however, about monarchies that have laws against speaking ill of the monarch (an infraction that is broadly defined to say the least and is often used to punish political enemies). Although I have rarely read of non-nationals being imprisoned for this, I do not know the extent to which they traveled in the country after publishing their work.

Apologies for some vagueness.

The Toad wants to become Dr. Toad. Can you help?

The Toad — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 03:26:10 -0800

Academic Philosophy: Is there any chance a US/UK publishing house will consider my dissertation for publication? I just finished my dissertation in Philosophy at a German University. It's written in English and is concerned with a current debate in Bioethics.(*) I've passed all examinations and am now required to publish my dissertation before I can call myself "Dr. phil." (German equivalent to Ph.D.). Publishing your dissertation is not optional, but required in the German system. The normal procedure for a German doctoral student would therefore be to find a publishing house. However, I've been told by fellow philosophers that publishing an English language dissertation with a German publisher (like Mentis, LIT…) is less than ideal, because then, nobody outside Germany will ever read it or have access to it.

So here's my question(s):

Do US/UK academic philosophers sometimes/ever publish their dissertations in book form, or is this totally out of the question (or only relevant for "superstars")? In Germany, almost all academic publishing houses have special divisions for publishing dissertations - I understand that this is not the case for UK/US publishers. Do publishing houses accept dissertations anyway?

In your experience, is there any realistic chance that US/UK publishers would consider a (English-language) German dissertation for publication, at all? If the consensus is that the chances of this working out are near to zero, I'm not going to waste any time on it... Doing revisions, even relatively extensive changes, would be acceptable for me, though.

I could, of course, also publish my dissertation online (my University has a system for this). That would be hassle-free and everybody anywhere could read it for free - great!!! But: in Germany (at least in Philosophy), there is a still a strong bias against publishing online. People assume that if your dissertation is "just" published online, this is because it's so terribly bad that no "real" publisher accepted it. Ugh. Publishing in article format is not an option either, since this would not satisfy the publication requirements of my university.

Any ideas? I do not plan on staying in academia, I just want to get this thing published in a way that looks half-decent and reputable in the long term (i.e. on my CV). My thesis advisor and his colleagues couldn't really help me with my questions...

[(*) In case you're curious: I worked on the ethics of creating human-animal interspecifics, i.e. chimeras and hybrids, and it was great fun!]

Express help with MS Word pagination requested!

Mr. Gunn — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 10:28:29 -0800

How do I use two different pagination styles in one MSWord 2007 document? The dissertation guidelines state that I must use two different numbering styles, one for the front matter (acknowledgement, TOC, etc) and another for the rest of the document. The front matter gets a lower case roman numbering, centered at the bottom, the the rest gets Arabic in the upper right. Additionally, the copyright notice page must not be included in the numbering, but can't be at the beginning or end and the title page has to be counted in the numbering, but not displayed.

Leaving aside for a moment questions as to whether this is all strictly necessary, how do I do this? I can get the arabic numbers placed right, but I can't make them start later in the document. I've considered simply having two files which I later assemble.

How to live abroad on a whim as a grad student?

paultopia — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 22:21:29 -0800

How to get started thinking about living abroad (possibly Paris)? And does anyone have any wisdom from doing it while writing a dissertation? I'm a PhD student who has realized that I'll never have this much freedom again. I'm at the stage where all I have left to do is write a dissertation, and I'm in a discipline where I don't need a lab or anything, only a good library, to do it.

So I'm thinking of going to live somewhere I want while I do so, starting next year. Paris is number 1 on the list, though Rio, Florence, Vienna, and (if I'm in the mood to be conservative) New York are also candidates.

I don't have any French, natch, though I'd probably try and pick up some before going and hopefully pick up quite a lot while there.

Can anyone offer advice on how one goes about this? I'm particularly interested in wisdom on:

- Citizenship issues: can I even do this without violating French law or making myself liable for taxes to multiple countries? (Possibly helpful on legality, hurtful on taxes: I'm a U.S. citizen but I'm eligible for, and about to apply for, dual citizenship via British citizenship by descent -- and hence will be a citizen of an EU country when it comes time to do this thing.)

- Financial issues: my grad school stipend is paid in dollars... how hosed will I be, financially, if I go to Paris?

- Being a good grad student issues: will I ever actually write a dissertation if I do this?

- Logistical issues: how does one plan for and execute a move to a foreign country? What kind of paperwork does one need to do to live in France? How does one find a place? etc.

I wonder if there's a book on all of this...

Thanks!

How do I link a bunch of documents into a formatted binder of sorts?

special-k — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 13:01:07 -0800

How do I link a bunch of documents together into a binder which automatically updates when changes are made? I’ll be turning in my dissertation in a few months and my chapters are in various stages of completion. Some are fully done (published) and others are in draft form. I would like to be able to link all the documents into a binder so at any given time I have a formatted dissertation ready to print, share or just (gasp) submit. Also, I don't want to scramble to do this at the very end.

Chapter text is currently in word 2007 format [can be easily saved as pdf]. Figures are in Adobe Illustrator format [can be easily saved as eps or pdf]
I want to have single formatted document with a table of contents and continuous page numbers. My goal is to have the individual chapters (and figures) linked to this document so any changes made to a individual file will update in this binder. As you can guess, some will not change [the ones already published] and others will change quite frequently. How do I do this?

I have Adobe Indesign but I am open to other software suggestions.
Thanks

Yes, I really DO want to read your dissertation--please?

rhoticity — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 05:23:16 -0800

Is it in bad form to ask an author directly via email for an electronic copy of a dissertation or non-refereed academic article, if I, as a student, have no other method of access to the resources? I am in the process of writing a term paper for a college course and have run across citations for a dissertation and a presented paper at a conference, both by the same author (a professor at a school across the US from where I am.) Is it presumptuous of me to assume that it would be easy and normal for this professor to simply email me a copy of these two pieces of writing, without expectation of royalties or anything else? They're clearly for academic research purposes only, are extremely recent (no reason they would not be in electronic form, in other words), and are unavailable to me via any other modality.

Anyone have any tips as to things I should include in this email, provided I do end up sending it?

Dissertation fonts

philosophygeek — Sat, 17 May 2008 06:54:59 -0800

I'm working on my dissertation and looking for suggestions for fonts that will compliment each other well. The dissertation will be primarily in English, with substantial amounts of quoted German text, a fair bit of French, and occasional epigraphs or isolated words of polytonic Greek. My font needs are a body font (probably serif), a heading font (probably sans-serif), a polytonic Greek font (if not part of the other two) and a Blackletter font for fancy German text (e.g., epigraphs). My university does not restrict my choice of fonts beyond saying that the body font must be "readable" (i.e., no Comic Sans).

I love Garamond fonts and I recently acquired a copy of the Garamond Premier Pro Opticals set by Adobe, so I would like to use that font for most of the actual text, including Greek in the body of the dissertation. However, I would be willing to consider a different font if a different body font will cohere much better with the other fonts I will be using.

I am required to submit the dissertation to Proquest/UMI electronically, so there is a good likelihood of the dissertation being read on screen in addition to in print; hence, font choices that are reasonably pleasant to read both in print and on screen are preferable.

Finally, as I am a graduate student, cost is an issue; however, I am willing to pay for a font if it is truly exceptionally designed and meets my needs well.

How to get education funds earmarked?

cashman — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 07:31:51 -0800

Can a defunct trust fund donate tax-free to a university student's dissertation? I have a question regarding tax-free donations made to a state university.

My friend's parents were previously running a private trust fund. The trust is now defunct (since 2002) and there is about $4000 left in the trust account. The money has to be donated to a tax-free entity. My friend is a graduate student at a state university embarking on her dissertation and would like that money to be donated to the university and used to purchase her dissertation equipment and compensate her participants.

Since her university does not provide counsel on tax issues, I was wondering if this type of donation is allowed. Could the funds be earmarked for her dissertation? (She obviously has no desire to break any tax laws so any help is greatly appreciated).

Writing a scientific paper on scientific illustration - where can I find sources?

D J Robertstein — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 06:21:58 -0800

I chose an unusual subject for my third year dissertation- Scientific Illustration. I need to compare past and present methods of recording images and their pros and cons with a named example (at the moment I've chosen Phytophthera, potato blight), as well as methods by which students and researchers observe and record their images. I'm a little stumped though, as there is very little (to my knowledge) peer-reviewed referencable texts out there for me to study with. Can anyone help? I'm currently studying Biological Science in my 3rd year, and my research project, rather unusually, is about scientific illustration. I enjoy science, but do not want a career in it when I graduate, and so chose to keep at least one of my proverbial fingers in a vaguely artistic pie. However, I now have the task of making this paper sufficiently scientific, which is a major problem since there are few peer-reviewed papers and sources for the research I need to do compared to, say, a study into MRSA or cancer genes.
The bulk of the paper will be comparing methods of illustration from painting to photography with reference to their intended purpose (decoration, diagram, etc) and the type of information they must get accross to their audience, both in the past and in the present, with at least one example- it currently being images of potato blight, Phytophthera and how they have changed with changing methods of illustration. Moreover, I would also like to look into ways of helping students to observe and record what they see, and methods drawing diagrams for those who would not be described as artistically talented.

I'm sorry if this seems vague, but at the moment I'm sitting in a bit of a limbo between art and science, and as a result I am finding it very hard to aquire much source material. Are there any books, papers, or websites out there about the subject of scientific illustration, or comparisons between photography and illustration, past and present? If you have any questions I'll happily try to be more specific.

Thanks in advance.

Helpful guides for writing a dissertation?

limon — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 18:51:16 -0800

What guidebooks did you find helpful for the writing of a doctoral dissertation? (I'm writing a dissertation on literature, but guidebooks with a broader disciplinary scope are OK too, if you think they are particularly good.)

How to plan a daily schedule for a dissertation?

janecr — Mon, 21 May 2007 03:44:59 -0800

I need a daily work schedule to get me through a PhD. I am really bad at managing large amounts of unstructured time. I'm trying to draw up a daily schedule which factors in all the different things I need to do - writing, reading, library, sorting out notes etc. It should be easy, but I'm struggling - any tips, examples?

Help me choose a dissertation research topic in fire ecology.

arnicae — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 15:15:48 -0800

As a PhD student experienced in practical firefighting and, er, not so much in research, I'm having difficulty figuring out what to do my doctoral research in fire ecology on. A former firefighter of various stripes (Smokejumper, Hotshot, and even a little structural work thrown in) I eventually decided to go back to school to get a PhD in fire ecology after working for fire and environmental organizations in countries from Australasia to Africa and Central America and Europe.

I got into a great school, and am working with a great professor. I even secured funding for myself. It, too, is great: substantial, and flexible enough that I can do any kind of research that suits me.

That's the problem. I have wide-ranging interests and am fascinated by all sorts of issues regarding fire and sustainability, community-based fire management in industrialized nations and the developing world, and the development (or lack thereof) of a sense of individual responsibility for living/altering/working in fire-prone areas. I'm really interested in the impact of global warming on fire regimes. To put a fine point on it, I'm having difficulty defining a dissertation research project.

I realize this is a rather specialized question, and I'm asking for specialized answers: all of the general topic ideas that I need I can self-generate (that, indeed, is the problem).

Any ideas of pressing fire questions that no one else has addressed? The more specific the better.

A few other pieces of information that might help: I speak french and spanish (in addition to, you know, english). I'm a very experienced firefighter. Not so experienced as a researcher. Thanks for reading, and I appreciate any thoughts people might have. . .

Help me get wrapped up in LaTeX

JMOZ — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 09:13:15 -0800

Can anyone recommend a good LaTeX editor for Windows for writing my dissertation? So it's time to write my dissertation and graduate. In fact, it's a bit past time since I am planning on accepting a faculty job which will start in the Fall.

All this means, of course, that I need to write fairly quickly. Nonetheless, I have decided to learn/use LaTeX instead of Word. (I really can't stomach wrestling with Word for figure references, etc).

Can anyone suggest a particularly good/friendly/straightforward editor that works on Windows? I would like to end up with a PDF. Do I use miktek or something else? I currently have a lot of references in Endnote. Is there a particular bibtek editor/program/something or other that will work nicely?

Obviously, I don't really know what I'm doing here, so if you have other suggestions, I'd very much welcome them. I think I'm pretty set on LaTeX, and I have a good class file and templete which have the University of California format (and the weird UCSB additional requirements), but I am open to other thoughts and ideas you might have. Thanks!

Using Pages for a dissertation

raheel — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 09:57:02 -0800

I would really like to use Pages for my CS dissertation. Should I? I am going to start writing my Computer Science Ph.D. dissertation this month. Currently on a MacbookPro, I am searching my options for a good word processor. I have a pretty strong dislike for Word on Mac, although it is somewhat usable with Parallels. And with Zotero adding support for Word, it doesn't look too bad.

What I would really like is to use Pages for the whole thing. Just the simplicity and great UI makes it easy for me to fly through the writing process with Pages. But I haven't gotten beyond using it for Journal articles.

Will I regret using it for something as huge as dissertation?

Academic writer's block.

RogerB — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 14:45:03 -0800

Academic writer's block: tips, strategies, experiences, psychology for dealing with it? I am working on writing a Ph.D. dissertation, and my writing is going haltingly at best; there seems to be a constant threat of becoming stuck, blocked. So, I'd love to hear any tips or strategies for dealing with academic writer's block. (I'm in a humanities field in which the dissertation will be more about having interesting and original ideas, and writing a compelling argument about well-known texts, than about reporting new findings based on research. So this dissertation is, primarily, a large writing project, unlike in many other fields where the research being reported is at least as important as the writing.)

My writing style up to this point doesn't seem to be a good model going forward. I've usually written to deadline, in spurts of intense activity, after incubating an idea for a while beforehand. And I am not afflicted with logorrhea, like some academics I envy; I tend to write too little and too densely, not to overwrite and have to edit down to a page count. Still, I've produced short papers that I'm happy with, and published; and I am excited about my dissertation idea, so self-confidence would not seem to be the problem so much as procrastination and blocking.

More generally, I'd like to hear suggestions about becoming a productive scholarly writer. It seems like there's a big transition at the ABD stage, where a student who's used to writing smaller papers to given assignments and deadlines is faced with the requirement to produce longer works, write relatively constantly, and work with much less supervision for the rest of his or her career. Suddenly, becoming a productive academic seems a lot like becoming a productive writer of any other kind. How do people make this transition without getting stuck?

Let's assume that the rest of my specifics (topic, advisors, teaching and other responsibilities, institutional arrangements) are outside the discussion; I'm more interested in tips on becoming a productive scholarly writer than in getting therapy for my specific case. I've read a lot of books on this topic, and found most of them not very helpful (beyond delivering the welcome reminder that you need to sit down and try to write every day), but recommendations are still welcome.

Policies for the use of institutional data in a dissertation?

assmatt — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 08:25:19 -0800

I've been tasked to research universities' policies on providing institutional data for use in a dissertation. No specifics were given, but I'm assuming this would be non-identifiable (to comply with FERPA) individual data and/or cumulative/average statistics for various groups. Anyone out there have experience with such a policy at any university? Thanks.

How much do I charge for copy editing?

limeonaire — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 07:36:10 -0800

Freelance copy editing: what's the going rate, and how much should I charge? I'm currently a copy editor for a local magazine, which pays me $15 an hour for my freelance (not technically on staff) copy editing each month. The magazine's editor recommended me to a friend of hers who's writing her dissertation and needs a skilled copy editor to put it through the wringer. If this works out, the friend is going to recommend me to her other Ph.D.-candidate friends as well.

It sounds very promising, and I'm looking forward to the work. I love copy editing. But since I'm just starting out with this, I'm really not sure what hourly rate I should charge. Here are my current thoughts:

-I get the sense that the price the magazine is paying me is a steal, but since it's my first professional copy editing gig and I have a day job, I'm okay with that. It's worth it to me to gain the experience. What I'd like to know is this: what's the industry standard hourly rate for copy editing? (Or yearly salary, broken down.)

-Should I give this woman a discount from my current "corporate" hourly rate, so to speak, because she's an individual (and a friend of my editor, who knows how much they're paying me at the magazine and might call foul if I charge this woman more)? Or should I charge her the same?

-A factor: I don't yet know how long the dissertation is, nor how dense it is, nor how tight the writing is, so it's tough to estimate how many hours this will take. This site says the rate is much higher for academic copy editors for exactly these reasons. This mediabistro thread talks about going rates, as well—$30 seems to be about average for book copy editing, but that's not academic copy editing. Should these references be a factor in my decision?

-Would it be better to charge a flat fee, plus a slightly lower hourly rate? That seems more complicated, but it could be an option.

Thanks in advance for any light you can shed on this!

Can you plagiarize in a draft copy?

Anonymous — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 06:47:27 -0800

In academia, is it plagiarism if you haven't finished writing your document, and you give it to a colleague/professor to review for content changes/problems and they find uncited sources? A good friend of mine is finishing his Ph.D. He is just a few months from having his disseration completed, but he hasn't completed writing it yet. He recently gave a few of his chapters to his committee for comments (the normal process before you submit a final version for review). To his surprise, they found 5 references (out of 650+ in the document) that were not cited.

When they found this, instead of pointing them out to him (normal procedure) they submitted them to the graduate school citing plagiarism.

My friend has been an exemplary student. He has taught classes at the university, and actually brought charges against his students for plagiarism. He takes plagiarism very seriously, and had no intent to plagiarize.

The thing is this though. The document wasn't completed. He had not scrubbed it for sources. He had not proof read it. The formatting was off. It was definately a working draft, and everyone on his committee knew this and has acknowledged it. Yet, they cited him anyway.

The plagiarism "references" were not material to the central question. He did not steal any arguments from anyone. All the references in question were in the literary review portion of the document, citing sources that had been read as a build up to the central theme.

So, I'm looking to understand the word "plagiarism." The definitions are very loosely defined throughout the internet, so its hard to lock down.

Can plagiarism occur in draft versions of the document?

Can it be plagiarism if its a working document and there is no intent to plagiarize?

Is intent relevant at all, or is plagiarism just plagiarism no matter what?

Any thoughts, especially from Ph.D. students or people with Ph.D.s would be appreciated.

Thanks...

Can I get a hybrid text file/spread sheet?

oddman — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 13:19:43 -0800

I'd like a word processor that mimics Excel sheets. I've been giving some very good advice for making progress on writing my dissertation. The advice involves keeping a writer's log. In thinking it over, it occured to me that a word processing program that allowed you to keep seperate sheets inside of a single file (just like Excel does) would be great for this. E.g. I would a have a file named "Writing Log" and inside I'd have a separate sheet (selectable via tabs) for each project that I'm currently working on. Thus granting me ease of use and ease of organization. (A folder with multiple independent documents just isn't the same.) Does anyone know of a program that does this?

I know I could just use Excel but I'd rather not deal with having to use cells to support a lot of text.

Barring a program that does this natively could anyone suggest a work around that accomplishes the same task?

We don't need no education

ruff — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 23:59:46 -0800

I'm probably going to drop out of a Ph.D. program – should I still take my qualifying exams? Any chance this might let me ultimately get a Ph.D. while feeling like I left academia? If I do ultimately drop out, would taking exams have just been a big waste of time? Here’s the scene. I finished my required coursework. The next step was to take a qualifying exam. After that, I then would write a dissertation.

But instead of taking exams, I took a year off. I wanted to get experience before narrowing down dissertation ideas. During that year, I realized that studying environmentalism is not nearly as rewarding as actually making environmental stuff happen. Turns out I'm much more entrepreneurial, political, and social network-building than scholarly.

I don’t need the degree for my job goals (environmental nonprofit work and/or writing) -- it wouldn't hurt, but it doesn't help as much as work experience does. The isolation, lack of structure, and sense of pointlessness have really gotten to me. And I'm starting to worry about my financial future (buying a house, starting a family) and don't want to spend 2-3 more years just breaking even.

So, I’m probably going to drop out. I have one or two job offers, at least one of which I could defer long enough to take qualifying exams. The question is, should I bother doing that?

I’m leaning toward doing it because I imagine, in the not-too-distant future, I could end up doing a project that might fulfill the dissertation requirement (either research as part of my job, or further out, an independent book project). Maybe with orals behind me, I could get my degree while basically doing something else. I’d also welcome the chance to pull together what I’ve learned -- the learning does appeal to me somewhat for its own sake, somewhat -- and I'd like to leave things at a good stopping point.

But I recognize that this may just be a last-ditch effort to keep going even though my heart's not in it. I can't tell if I'm essentially tricking myself into continuing, delaying the inevitable, or just leaving my options open. (I'm not sure it matters.)

The major reason not to: Exams are designed to prepare people to do a dissertation. So taking them, if I don't end up going on, could be a big waste of time and energy. (I don’t fully comprehend how much.) I'm pretty burned out. And given my burnout, and all the other exciting possibilities out there, I wouldn't persevere through life-or-death stress levels -- I would only succeed if I managed to de-escalate the situation somehow.

Advice? Experiences? Suggestions? Am I underestimating the devotion and complaisance needed to get through exams? Do you think I might actually be able to do a dissertation while feeling part of the working world (in terms of money and daily schedule)? Or are oral exams the last major hump before you really are a free agent with only one research project between you and a degree?

How can I attain a good mark for my dissertation?

dance — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 11:08:49 -0800

I've got 10,000 words of a dissertation to write in 30 days. It's an undergraduate dissertation, but I really, really, need a II:I (2:1, II:1) or above. Please see inside for more information! Thanks! Can people who've gone through this process offer any insight or tips on
a) how to write a really good dissertation in a short space of time
b) what markers are looking for in a dissertation (own/original voice, etc)
c) best practices for:
i) organising myself (e.g. should I stick to a strict timetable?)
ii) organising my notes (e.g. should I buy VoodooPad?)

Thank you all very much in advance!