Crashes and Dissertations
On July 16, 1994, Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 began it’s week-long assault on the planet Jupiter. It didn’t work out well for the comet. And, it tends not to work out well for dissertation students when they do the same thing…
I started graduate school in Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Chicago just a few months after Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 was making news in the popular media for crashing into our solar system’s largest planet.
Being more than a bit of a science geek, I just couldn’t resist bringing this up today and drawing some parallels with the plights of many dissertation students.
Have you ever felt that your dissertation chair was wrong and that you have to argue your point in order to make any headway? Crash!
Have you ever thought that you have to defend your choice of dissertation topic and that your committee just doesn’t get it? Crash!
Have you ever felt that no one could possibly understand what your committee wants? Crash!
Have you ever argued that your dissertation should be expanded to include more elements in order to completely explore your topic? Crash!
Have your ever felt that you will never be able to come up with a dissertation topic? CRASH!
Dissertation students crash into all sorts of things: their chairs, their committees, their topics, but most often…themselves!
There are three things you should keep in mind while working on your dissertation: clarity, simplicity, and detachment.
First, you should be clear about exactly what your dissertation will entail and why you are doing it. For most students, the reason why you are working on a dissertation is to earn your doctoral degree. Not to end hunger, cure cancer, or bring about world peace. So, don’t choose a topic that makes it virtually impossible to graduate.
Second, keep it simple. Far too many students add more and more complexity their studies as they go along. Your goal should be to removeextraneous elements from your study, not add extraneous elements to your study!
Finally, you must maintain a certain professional detachment from your study. Don’t go to war with your chair or other committee members over your topic, your research questions, or your research design. Wars are never clean and seldom quick. Remember that you’re in this to graduate. And, you will not graduate until your committee is happy with your dissertation.
While Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 was actually drawn into its crash with Jupiter by the immense pull of Jupiter’s gravity, doctoral students have a choice. You can choose to be flexible, rather than intractable. You can choose to accept your chair’s reccomendations, rather than butt heads. You can choose to simplify, rather than complicate.
