The mere mention of thesis writing causes many students to instantly reach for their panic button. I was no different. I was freaking out about the mere thought of all that writing. However, after successfully preparing and defending my thesis, I learned that the process is just that, a process.
Below are 5 points I think you will find useful to help you overcome such anxiety during the writing stage of your PhD program.
Set a Thesis Defense Date
At your next thesis committee meeting, tell your committee members that you plan on graduating in the next six months. Then, start to set a date for the defense. This is important for two reasons. The first is that you have to find a date that will work for all committee members. Remember these individuals most likely have very hectic schedules. This is even more important if you just happen to want to have your defense during everyone’s vacation time. Secondly, setting a date makes the thought of graduation seem more real and within your reach.
Plan Around Your Thesis Defense Date
Setting a thesis defense date gives you a deadline. Of course you will need to have your work completed ahead of this date to give your committee members enough time to review it. Some PhD programs have a strict timeline but if yours does not, ask your committee members if two weeks prior to the defense will be enough.
When making your schedule, be realistic with the timeline for each task and plan your daily activities accordingly for the next 4 months. Also, you will need to plan all those last minute experiments within this time frame as well. Don’t forget the time you need for analyzing and interpreting the data. This can help tremendously. Although it might take a few hours to write the schedule, you will most likely maximize your time and efforts. Overall, the schedule will help you be very thorough and serves as a great blueprint.
Your Thesis Defense Date is the Light at the End of the Tunnel
Setting a thesis defense date will serve as your light at the end of the tunnel. During your last six months of graduate school, you may feel overworked and stressed beyond measure. However, you can ease your mind by focusing on the thesis date as the day that it will all end. The countdown to your defense date will give you strength because it is a constant reminder of how far you have traveled. It is also a source of hope, since if you continue to push forward, you will undoubtedly reach the end.
Your Thesis Writing Does Not Have to Start Out Perfectly
When you start writing, you may have a tendency to rewrite the same sentence, paragraph or section over and over and over. However, this can make you more stressed when you start thinking about how much time you are spending on the same sentence or paragraph or section. Don’t do this!
Take a step back and redirect your energy using the mantra, done is better than perfect. Commit yourself to writing your thesis with the same rule. This means no erasing, or rephrasing, just a free flowing of your thoughts on paper (sounds simple). Just get the idea on paper before you start editing. This helps you to stay within your planned writing schedule.
Thesis Writing is Only One Part of Your Graduate School Journey
I think it is very important to realize that thesis writing is only one part of your graduate school journey, the last piece of the puzzle. To get to this stage of your graduate program, I’m sure that you have already overcome many other challenges while in graduate school. Draw your strength from those previous struggles that you overcame. Hang in there and you will complete this phase of the journey as well. Take it one minute at a time, one experiment at a time, and in the case of thesis writing, one page at a time. Before you know it, you will have a complete thesis (a collection of words that together give a summary of part of your graduate school journey). Maybe even ahead of your deadline!
I urge you to just keep pushing forward and looking at the light at the end of the tunnel. After all, you have already come a long way.
Best of luck!
P-value abuse directly contributes to one of the biggest problems facing the scientific community: the prominence of false-positive results in the published literature. Contrary to popular interpretation, the p-value doesn’t indicate the likelihood that the observed result was due to chance. There are important qualifications to p-value interpretation. Moreover, the p-value cannot directly speak to…
If there is one profession that benefited from globalization, it is the medical writer. While the university research groups shrink and global biomedical companies fire their research stuff, medical writing companies are expanding, providing stable jobs with good salaries. The American Medical Writers Association (AMWA) reported in 2011 that the median salary of an experienced…
You have just finished your undergraduate studies, or perhaps you have been working in the field for a while, you are full of energy and zest and you want to prove to the world that you are carved from the right stone to pursue PhD studies. Going to graduate school is a very important, potentially…
I remember when I first learned about plagiarism during my undergraduate course. The lecturers were so firm in telling us that if we got caught plagiarizing we would face serious repercussions and that all our work, especially our dissertations, would be vigorously checked by plagiarism detecting software. I was so panicked that I would inadvertently…
Let’s face it, when you leave the lab for the day, your mind is still racing with ideas and questions about your experiment: how to fix this or what went wrong or what does this data point even mean. It can be difficult to actually shut down and decompress when you walk out of the…
10 Things Every Molecular Biologist Should Know
The eBook with top tips from our Researcher community.
