Y'all I just finished the conclusion.
My PhD dissertation is completely drafted.
Still have refining to do, but I will send the whole thing off to my adviser tomorrow.
I did it.
Sometimes, we find solace in our writing. It doesn't have to be academic - you can write out how you feel, too. 500 words of journaling is still 500 words. #Christchurch#SaoPaulo#selfcare#amwriting
Grateful to journals (and journal editors) who are perfectly fine with "I". I did the research, I wrote the article. I am very, very tired of the passive voice and of assigning agency to articles. The article doesn't say, I do.
After 3 years, I'm about to finish my 250-page dissertation and I still find dangling modifiers, incorrect semicolons + em dashes, run-ons, comma splices, not mention just some atrocious sentences in general. I keep that in mind when grading my students. Writing is a process.
There's nothing wrong with admitting our failures as academics. I often feel insecure; that my writing is not good enough, that I'm not articulate enough and that I'll never be fully accepted in academia. Surely everyone feels like that...at least some of the time, don't they?
Writing a dissertation is hard. It’s really easy to get stuck.
One way I’ve helped my students get unstuck is to find a model dissertation and color code it.
GREEN = data
BLUE = data analysis
ORANGE = cites to the literature
PINK = author’s original argument
Try it out! 🙂