I vividly recall my junior high school science class when my teacher assigned a big report. It was one of those first encounters with a project that would consume my thinking and my parent’s dining room (the first of many). On his handout he listed Q & A – one of which was “When should I start the project?” His answer: “Yesterday.” I feel as if I need to provide the same question and answer for students preparing to write dissertations. When should you start? Preferably before you even begin your doctoral program. If not, then immediately upon being accepted.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean that you should pick your topic at that point. My advisees would be the first to tell you that I deliberately encourage them to wait before they pick out their topics so they don’t spend all that time and effort in a Ph.D. program only to exit knowing a lot about one thing. They’ll be the first to tell you that if they start to talk about topics in the first year or so I’ll start to quote Dewey, “It does not pay to tether one’s self to the pole of use with too short a rope.”
So what do I mean about starting “yesterday”? There are two critical capacities you must develop before successfully completing your dissertation – two things that seem so obvious they are often overlooked. First, you have to learn how to write. Second, you have to learn how to think. Both of these things take time and effort to develop, and both are absolutely essential for successful dissertations.
First, you have to know how to write, and it is far, far better if you can write well. Think to your self, “How do I want my advisor to spend his or her time and energy?” "At what level of my work do I want my advisor to focus: the details or the big ideas?" The time an advisor takes to mark up grammar, mechanics, and technical issues such as A.P.A. style is time not spent helping you develop your ideas. Any writing coach can help you with your writing (to some degree, mind you). You need your advisor to help you with your problem, your research design, your analysis, and your conclusions. You need your advisor to help you abstract, to critically reflect, and to enlarge your understanding so you can enlarge the understanding of your readers. This won’t happen if your advisor is consumed in the menial issues of your writing.
Second, you have to know how to think. Again, this seems obvious, but it really isn’t. If you’ve not read Dewey’s How We Think, read it. Think about the elements Dewey describes regarding thinking and then do your best to assess the degree to which you demonstrate those elements. Your committee will expect you to abstract. They will expect you to generate warranted assertions and to justify your judgments. If you cannot think critically, then you will struggle. If you cannot think, then you will have difficulty understanding the feedback you get from your chair and your committee. Don’t assume your capacity to think is sufficient simply because you are a doctoral student and because you’ve managed to pass your classes up to this point. Thinking is a capacity achieved over time through deliberate work. If you do not recognize growth in this area from your own self-assessment, then start having conversations with your advisor to get a sense of where you are in relation to where you need to be for your dissertation. These conversations often happen as you prepare for comprehensive exams, and often those exams will give you feedback regarding your capacity to think. Nevertheless, have that conversation with your advisor as well.
