fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2984 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2984 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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18. [ SPOILERS for Pitch Black]

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19. [ SPOILERS for Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister ]

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Notes:

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'll take advice, sure! :D

Okay. :)

Find out your very first semester how your department deals with your dissertation timeline.

I have a Ph.D. in English and my experience is not unusual for humanities people. I did not have a particular timeline other than, "You must earn your degree in X amount of years." My advisor did not impose deadlines on me, either; she pretty much left me to flounder and flounder I did.

My sister-in-law is getting a Ph.D. in psychology (in one of those five year Ph.D. programs where you get an MA a couple years in). From the first semester, she knew when she had to defend her prospectus, when she had to take her comps, when she had to start submitting chapters of her dissertation. She had to immediately chose a dissertation advisor who took an active role in imposing deadlines, etc. She is not floundering.

Find a dissertation advisor as quickly as possible. Ask this person to take an active role in shepherding you through the program. If your program does not lay out firm deadlines for meeting each milestone, set them for yourself and have your advisor keep you to them.

It is so easy to become overwhelmed by the enormity of writing a dissertation. It is so easy to just flounder or to give up entirely. I've known many people who completed their coursework and just gave up at the dissertation level because they didn't have enough external motivation. I was almost one of them!

I don't say any of this to scare you; I just wish somebody had told me this stuff in my first year.

I know you will do awesome, Nonnie. Congrats to you again!

Thanks very much for your advice! I'm not scared, but I'm glad to have this information. I believe the way that PhD candidates are let into the program is if there is someone on the staff who will accept that student and their proposed research as their advisee. So as far as I know, I'm assigned to a staff member as soon as I start off in the program.

(I'm not sure who it is yet, but I'm confidant with all of the staff that I know, that they can help me stick to dissertation deadlines. :D)

I'm pretty practiced at being self motivated for research projects that turn into massive writing projects. For my MA I was plunked onto an engineering/communications research project that I had entire purview over re: the communications side. This turned out to be my thesis, and I got an A on this, and it later morphed into a 40-page academic journal article that I submitted this past Feb.

But I definitely thank you for the heads up on how the dissertation is a new beast to deal with. I'll have to see how I can tackle it constructively, when I get there.

Nonnie, you sound like you are on top of your game. :)

And that your program is structured for optimal student success.

You are going to rock this thing.

[ SECRET POST #2984 ]

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