Life Experience on How to Survive Dissertation

This article is by no means brag of the author’s accomplishments but instead offers guidelines to get you through the dissertation writing process from someone who has gone through the whole process. The tips presented here are things the author thinks he would have done it differently.

• Set milestones and deadlines in the process: It is essential to have a goal to work towards to achieve to sustain your motivation for an extended period. It is essential to write down a list of all due dates, which will pressure you to finish your dissertation.
• Ensure the goals are flexible: You can easily blow yourself past your deadlines and have to keep on adjusting the deadlines back. Once you set your deadlines, it is essential that follow them to the latter.
• Request feedback often and early: If you can communicate with your committee members before about your writing, you will enjoy smooth editing and proofreading later on. Consider sending drafts to anyone willing to review them on your behalf.
• Handle feedback to the best of your ability: There are instances when we do not need criticism but need space and time to write or even desire to have someone to encourage us.
• Get to know your committee’s needs and expectations: Get the advice that your committee members desire from you. Consider reading dissertations completed by students who have worked with that particular committee.
• Note it is your dissertation: Keep in mind that at the end, it is your work at stake. Your work represents that you are an academician. Stand up for your beliefs.
• Take a break when necessary: Taking a break is essential for personal joy, and you should do it guilt-free. It is because a dissertation takes the longest time and breaks enables you to recharge and rejuvenate your energy levels.
• Remember to begin to write again: Short breaks are significant. You can consider taking a one-week vacation to do grading or even taking two weeks’ breaks to prepare for an interview. However, remember to begin writing again.
• Set aside your writing time: The most significant challenge of authoring a dissertation is close to people who do not understand, and they include family members, friends, and colleagues. Such people have no idea of the pain of writing a dissertation.
• Say yes sometimes: As if we have alluded earlier, it is essential to take breaks. Therefore, if someone takes you go for a drink, then shut down your computer and enjoy the drink.
• Write your dissertation little by little: Thesis writing is a marathon and not a sprint. Therefore, writing happens it little bits spread for an extended period. Even if you are busy, consider writing for 30 minutes each day.
• Stop excuses: You will always get millions of reasons not to write. You will have thousands of reasons not to write, such as computer acting funnily. The back hurts, you have a meeting to attend, you have jobs to apply for.
• Read everything you come across: Reading enables you to expand your vocabulary base and write concisely. Writing does not happen on an empty mind; reading provides more of information.
• Reading how to write a dissertation is different from writing a dissertation: Reading and writing are two various literary actions. While reading enriches what we write, reading how to write a dissertation is different.
• Celebrate accomplishments: Appreciate your writing accomplishments, however minor they are. Having a reward scheme is great as it motivates you to continue writing. Rewards need not something expensive but something that is within reach.
• Do not allow good feelings to distract or stop you from working: Do not let little feelings of accomplishments distract you from finishing your dissertation. Once you spend one page, then it means you are ready for the next page.
• Understand that you can do it: Believe in your abilities to carry through the entire process of writing your dissertation.