Thesis Rant

Ostrom · 07-09-2009 6:28pm

Anyone writing up phd's here? Its making me physically sick.

dudara · 07-09-2009 6:38pm

Writing up my PhD thesis was one of the worst times of my life. I'm a real "cross the ts" and "dot the is" type person and combine that with an experimental physics and theoretical modelling PhD and you have a lot of scope. I could literally have spent a whole day making a graph perfect.

My supervisor and I devised a plan together. I was to deliver a draft chapter every 2 weeks and he suggested that I keep it to 120 pages exluding references etc. In the end, he was right. It really focussed me on saying what I had to say as precisely and accurately as possible.

So when it's PhD time, plan out your draft schedule. Submit each draft on time and start the next session. When you review the old sections, you'll see a lot more cohesion.

By the end of my writing, a series of dissimilar chapters (or so I felt) had developed into a cohesive and strong dialogue. One 3.5 hour viva later and I was finished! Only corrections to be made were commas!

Getting it bound (I went for red canvas) is a great feeling.

djpbarry · 07-09-2009 6:40pm

efla wrote: »

Anyone writing up phd's here? Its making me physically sick.

Yep; mine's due at the end of November. Have the bones done - just a matter of sticking to the schedule and putting in the hours, but motivation is seriously lacking at present, which worries me a little.

djpbarry · 07-09-2009 6:45pm

dudara wrote: »

I was to deliver a draft chapter every 2 weeks...

That's pretty much exactly what I've planned myself.

dudara wrote: »

...and he suggested that I keep it to 120 pages exluding references etc.

I hadn't even thought about restricting the length – I've just been trying to keep the waffle to a minimum. A lot of my graphs speak for themselves, which helps a bit! Oh and flowcharts to illustrate algorithms, I have found, work much better for me than text.

Jaysus I love a good flowchart...

dudara · 07-09-2009 8:46pm

djpbarry wrote: »

Jaysus I love a good flowchart...

Born to be a consultant

Ostrom · 08-09-2009 12:03am

djpbarry wrote: »

Jaysus I love a good flowchart...

I miss the flowcharts, as much as I miss the satisfaction of a balanced equation (went from engineering way back to sociology....dont ask).

Were you limited to 120 pages overall? I'm still uncertain what my limits are. I'm aiming for 40,000 words thereabout by christmas; getting one section out of the way before doing a bit more research. Just starting third year so I'm still ok for time.

ocul · 08-09-2009 12:11am

..one week left, serious amount of tidying up to do...a little bit of selective quotations, Google books/scholar, tweak a graph to make my argument persuasive etc...
but tv suddenly gets better; Miss Marple, Columbo...Witches...and the whole 'after this, now, i sit down and do a good....oh whats that, jaysis i think i'll have a glass of water, and THEN , i'll sit down' scenario...

djpbarry · 08-09-2009 9:42am

efla wrote: »

…went from engineering way back to sociology...

I’m an engineer working in biology so I’ve some appreciation of what you mean.

efla wrote: »

Were you limited to 120 pages overall? I'm still uncertain what my limits are.

I honestly haven’t even thought about the overall length – I’m just concentrating on getting the content as I want it while being conscious of the fact that somebody has to read this at some point and I don’t want to bore them to tears. I’m not terribly concerned with the number of pages it takes to get it done.

Zwillinge · 08-09-2009 12:52pm

Writing my summer project thesis, due in on Friday.
*bangs head*
I'm starting to lose all interest, has that happened to anyone? It's like, you just want it over and done and never look at it again. Picking away at it is just mleh feeling!
I still don't know where these things get bound

dudara · 08-09-2009 1:01pm

efla wrote: »

Were you limited to 120 pages overall? I'm still uncertain what my limits are. I'm aiming for 40,000 words thereabout by christmas; getting one section out of the way before doing a bit more research. Just starting third year so I'm still ok for time.

There was no official limit - but I had seen 300+ page theses submitted and that just seemed daft to me. I have a naturally succint style of writing and i think that I finished the thesis with 122 pages of actual content (excluding bibliograhy etc).

djpbarry · 08-09-2009 1:27pm

dudara wrote: »

There was no official limit - but I had seen 300+ page theses submitted and that just seemed daft to me.

I'll see your 300 and raise you 331.

dudara · 08-09-2009 1:36pm

djpbarry wrote: »

I'll see your 300 and raise you 331.

Do you have any affiliation with that PhD?

djpbarry · 08-09-2009 1:58pm

dudara wrote: »

Do you have any affiliation with that PhD?

Not exactly - seperate field but I know the guy who wrote it. Scared the hell out of me when I saw it in all it's (two volumes of) glory.

Ostrom · 08-09-2009 2:14pm

djpbarry wrote: »

Not exactly - seperate field but I know the guy who wrote it. Scared the hell out of me when I saw it in all it's (two volumes of) glory.

It looks very interesting! Are you close to completion? RE length - sociology theses tend to be longer due to higher bulls**t qualitative data content.

I'm more curious about what restrictions I may have to work with, but I had a look at some this morning which gave me a good idea.

dudara · 08-09-2009 2:57pm

djpbarry wrote: »

Not exactly - seperate field but I know the guy who wrote it. Scared the hell out of me when I saw it in all it's (two volumes of) glory.

The reason I ask is that the work (according to the abstract at least) doesn't look particularly novel. In the end of the day, a PhD has to be novel. Caveat - my assumptions of novelty are based on reading of the abstract.

Just remember, all you budding PhD thesis writers - you have to display novel and original research. Make sure that your writing demonstrates this clearly.

Ostrom · 08-09-2009 3:05pm

dudara wrote: »

The reason I ask is that the work (according to the abstract at least) doesn't look particularly novel. In the end of the day, a PhD has to be novel. Caveat - my assumptions of novelty are based on reading of the abstract.

Just remember, all you budding PhD thesis writers - you have to display novel and original research. Make sure that your writing demonstrates this clearly.

True, but there are limits to originality depending on which way you approch the subject. On methods alone, the thesis is certainly not original, nor are the measures. The unique case study approach, sampling technique, location and combination of methods make it novel. The line between originality/continuation is fine; your subject is sure to have been covered often before in many different ways.

dudara · 08-09-2009 3:07pm

efla wrote: »

True, but there are limits to originality depending on which way you approch the subject. On methods alone, the thesis is certainly not original, nor are the measures. The unique case study approach, sampling technique, location and combination of methods make it novel. The line between originality/continuation is fine; your subject is sure to have been covered often before in many different ways.

Agreed. My point is that you must highlight through comparison, and direct statement, the novel aspects of your approach. Otherwise, you will be facing lots of questions in the viva.

IvyTheTerrible · 09-09-2009 10:36am

My thesis was more than 300 pages long, but I had a truck load of appendices that had to be included, and data tables in the results section ran to several pages!

Thankfully, in our department, theses have to be printed on both sides of the page so it doesn't look too mad.

Ostrom · 10-09-2009 8:41pm

Started. Its...going. I'm not exactly sure where yet

Hoping to have it finished in two years

BlueBandit · 19-09-2009 10:42am

Last weekend in UCD:D:D

Dionysus · 19-09-2009 12:44pm

efla wrote: »

Anyone writing up phd's here? Its making me physically sick.

We all get sick and tired of our thesis: if we didn't we'd have dull minds. At the stage you're in I found it invaluable to ask family members and close friends to read a chapter or two. After they read it, they would talk with me about it and offer numerous perspectives and ideas that I hadn't considered. Such a simple thing helped me to get back into the thesis again.

One night I had four members of my family at the kitchen table reading a chapter each. It is really important that you get as many people as possible to proofread it as they will identify basic mistakes that you never noticed. It is very helpful if at least one of them is good at formatting.

Go n-éirí an t-ádh leat.

Dionysus · 19-09-2009 12:54pm

efla wrote: »

Started. Its...going. I'm not exactly sure where yet

Hoping to have it finished in two years

I'd aim for a year and you'll get nearer to two years than aiming for two years. Psychologically this makes huge sense. Once I started writing I had all 160,000 words (including footnotes) written in 16 months. I was working 12-16 hours per day every day and staying in the library until it closed at midnight. It was the best time of my life, much much better than the period at the start of the PhD when I was overwhelmed into stagnation by the magnitude of it. I'm proofreading a PhD thesis at present which is 80,000 words so, yes, I did get carried away.;)

In other words, you can get the basic 80,000 words for your PhD done in 8 months but that means absolute commitment. Just start writing, keep writing, get as many people as possible to read over it for you and keep writing and revising as you go. Just write!

RonMexico · 27-09-2009 6:00pm

Writing my thesis at the moment. Have roughly 13,000 words on the page and trying to wrap up the first chapter. Concentration is not the best at the moment, need peace and quiet which some people just do not understand no matter how many times I tell them to leave me work away uninterrupted :mad:

Living at home is a pain in the hole when you are doing a Ph.D !!!

I'm seriously thinking of moving most of my stuff into the college work space to get away from all the distractions. I have so many books though it would be a nightmare :eek:

Leopardi · 27-09-2009 6:41pm

Owing to technical problems with my laptop and a panic-induced rush towards completion, I made two basic errors in my dissertation. Two or three paragraphs are unevenly spaced and I listed the same item twice in my Bibliography. Now that I have submitted, I am wondering how such mistakes are viewed during the marking process.

Red Alert · 27-09-2009 9:19pm

Usually it'll just be a minor correction noted by the extern.

Leopardi · 27-09-2009 9:22pm

Red Alert wrote: »

Usually it'll just be a minor correction noted by the extern.

Thanks for that RA. In terms of grading, how would I be affected?

Ostrom · 28-09-2009 3:13pm

Dionysus wrote: »

In other words, you can get the basic 80,000 words for your PhD done in 8 months but that means absolute commitment. Just start writing, keep writing, get as many people as possible to read over it for you and keep writing and revising as you go. Just write!

Thanks for the encouragement!

I'm going about it a bit strange, its historical sociology, so I have been moving between sources / lit / theory for the past two years. The part I am writing now is the justification for my revisiting the particular area in the way that I am, and I want to have it at 40,000 words before christmas, which I seem to be on track to do. After that I need to get back to the data and do some proper analysis, as the past two years have been sniffing to see if it would work out. So, overall I'm hoping for no longer than two more years....

Turbulent Bill · 01-10-2009 4:27pm

Dionysus wrote: »

In other words, you can get the basic 80,000 words for your PhD done in 8 months but that means absolute commitment. Just start writing, keep writing, get as many people as possible to read over it for you and keep writing and revising as you go. Just write!

Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but I'd disagree with churning out the words just to get something down on paper. I started off just by building a table of contents about two years before I actually submitted, which revealed the overall thesis structure, where my work to date fitted into this and what I'd left to do. Of course this was revised a lot over time, but pretty quickly the main chapters were sketched out, and I could focus on individual sections. Had I just started writing the final thesis would have been unbalanced or needed heavy editing.

And whatever you do, use LaTeX - Word just isn't up to the job. Before deciding on the thesis software I attended a 'using Word for your thesis' training course, where the instructor couldn't get even basic cross-references to work properly :rolleyes:.

graduate · 01-10-2009 6:11pm

I did a thesis in Word and it was fine. Unless you have a lot of scientific stuff then Word/Endnote is the way to go. If you can do a PhD then you can certainly figure out Word, but it never ceases to suprise me that people are willing to spend years doing a PhD but not to spend an hour setting up appropriate styles in Word and getting used to the hyperlinks etc.

Nari85 · 01-10-2009 7:07pm

Just got my thesis back from the binders. The worst possible thing i could do was read it, 5 mistakes in the first chapter. Depressed off my head now

Thesis Rant

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