Resubmit! The book – Page 4 – Love Your Dissertation

August 30, 2017

Understanding our place on the research continuum

Some students seem to start writing at the top of the paper and grind out page after page, until they get to the bottom of the last page, where they stop and type “In conclusion.” That is how they know they are almost done. Along the way, they write whatever comes to mind. Citations are rare. These students seem to assume that the only thing that matters is their opinions on the topic. Undergrads often write like this. However, for doctoral candidates, this writing approach is a massive red flag. Maybe this approach comes from a belief that now they are ABD (all but dissertation), reviewers actually care what they think.

If your approach is similar to what I just described, I ask you, What is the point of researching anything? You apparently already know all the answers. What more is there to learn? I hope you can see the problem with this self-focused approach. When you pursue a doctoral degree, you join the big wide wonderful world of academic research. That means you are not an isolated researcher conjuring opinions out of the ether. You are part of a continuum.

What is the “research continuum”?

Humans tend to be self-centered. I’m sure it’s a survival trait, passed down to us from our ancestors who saw a stick in the path and didn’t wait to find out if it was a stick or a snake. I’m out of here, stage right! In our efforts to survive, we moderns may forget that we are the product of generations who lived before us.

The same idea is true in our conception of research. We think our study is on the cusp of something unique and remarkable. We think we are the cutting edge, the culmination of a grand and memorable idea the world has never seen before. Well, maybe you are, maybe your research will be world changing. However, most of us must be content to contribute our little container of coleslaw to the world party. The key word here is contribute. Like those who have gone before us, we offer our findings to the body of knowledge, and then we fade away.

Well, we don’t entirely fade away. People who come after us may cite our study, just as we cite the studies of those who came before us. This is the continuum of research. It began when someone looked at the world and asked, “Why?” I imagine it will go on until humans no longer have inquiring minds. (Some may say that time has already come, but we know better, don’t we? I hope so.)

Sorry, your opinions are not that important

I know what you are thinking: My opinions are not important!? Sorry if that offends you. I know, ouch. We don’t want to hear that our opinions aren’t important. My intention is not to be disrespectful. I’m sure your opinions are full of pithy insight. I’d love to read them someday, when you finally get your massive tome published.

The challenge that trips us up is forgetting that we are part of the research continuum, tossing our little piece of knowledge into the vast knowledge pool. We spout, in depth and at length, to show how much we know and to explain to our readers that we have the answers. Often we drone on (oh, sorry, I mean, we write eloquently) in our Literature Review, gushing our opinions rather than actually reviewing the literature! I see this tendency to offer opinions with some frequency in the papers I edit. This problem can delay your proposal approval.

Right now, I’m sorry to say, nobody cares about your opinions. When you are writing your proposal, you haven’t yet earned the right to have an opinion. After you collect and analyze your data, then you can have an opinion—about your findings, that is. You can’t just spout unsubstantiated claims and expect to get away with it. And, certainly, your opinions don’t belong in the Literature Review. That is the place for other researchers’ opinions. Remember the continuum of research!

I edit many papers. Sometimes I come upon uncited assertions in the first three chapters—for example, “Teachers should give their students more homework.” Or: “The world will fall apart if XYZ is not implemented immediately. Therefore, we should do XYZ right away!” These are recommendations that come from the dissertator’s heart, I get that. But writing these uncited statements leaves these dissertators hanging out in the short branches with no support and a long way to fall.

Unsupported statements sneak in when we are unclear in our thinking. Unclear thinking leads to unclear writing. To combat this very human tendency, create the structure of your argument and do not stray from it, no matter how tempting each verdant tangent may seem. Stick to the bones of your argument and avoid the fat. Your reviewers will be more likely to approve your proposal if they can see the elegant skeleton underlying your project. Then they can see that all the elements fit in satisfying alignment.

Beware the frothy emotional appeal

Dissertators sometimes write with passion (drama! and who cares about citations when you are beating your favorite righteous drum?). I understand the temptation to get on the soapbox, even if it is to convince some university reviewer that your proposal merits approval. However, reviewers spot the unsupported appeal a mile away—the dissertator’s argument is short on substance and long on froth. Usually, it’s a sign the dissertator has not fully grasped some basic research concepts or is more interested in expressing his or her wrath than in finding objective reality.

More reading is the antidote to the lack of understanding about concepts. The solution to the anger thing requires some self-awareness, a little soul-searching, and a commitment to finding and telling the truth as it exists, not as you perceive or desire it to be.

Be specific. Be concise. Be objective. If you want to make a passionate point, make sure you have lots of company (that means provide solid sources to cover your backside). Save your impassioned recommendations for your discussion chapter (and make sure you base them on your research findings). Don’t assume your view is the only view. Cultivate a little humility. Find all sides of your argument, and cite your sources. Be a fair, honest, and objective scholar. Welcome to the continuum of research!

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July 7, 2017

Feel like you can’t? Get busy and get it done

I can come up with a gajillion excuses why I can’t. Can’t what, you say? Can’t anything. Ask my mother, I bet she will say I was born moaning “I can’t!” Usually the thing I think I can’t do requires things I think I don’t have—typically, time, money, or energy. Rarely is the problem as simple as I don’t know how. Almost always, I’m bound up by my fear that I will fail. Here’s what to do when you are struck with a case of the “I can’ts” as you are struggling to get your dissertation proposal approved.

I can’t [fill in the blank]

When I was working on my doctorate, my sad refrain to my long-suffering colleagues was “Woe is me, I can’t finish this monstrosity!” While I was writing my first book, I whined frequently “I’ll never get it done!” to anyone who would stand still long enough to listen. I seem to be genetically disposed to complaining that I can’t do something, when the evidence implies otherwise.

The fact is, I did finish my doctorate. I did write that book. I can’t very well point to my track record and say, “See, Carol? You didn’t . . . so you can’t.” Because I did. So clearly, I can. If you get my drift. I confess, I was a Negatron long before there was such a thing. The good news is, it doesn’t matter! Let me repeat: positive attitude or negative attitude, or anywhere in between—it doesn’t matter.

Confidence is nice but not essential

You may be an expert on the power of positive thinking. If so, yay for you. If you don’t tend to look on the bright side, welcome to the club! The good news is, you don’t have to. Confidence is nice but not essential to completing your proposal. All the confidence on the planet is not going to earn approval if your grammar is subpar or you are missing critical citations. Just saying. In fact, I think confidence might be overrated. Confidence can become arrogance in a heartbeat. Arrogance can lead us to assume that our work is stellar when really it’s a big hairy mess.

Some people are naturally confident. I’m not one of them. Lacking natural confidence might sometimes be a good thing. For example, if I were naturally confident, I might say something breezily self-centered like “Feel your fear and do it anyway!” I might say “Go boldly in the direction of your dreams” without noticing you are hiding under the covers. I might say “Hey, all you have to fear is fear itself.” Blah blah blah. But I’m not naturally confident. I’m naturally terrified. You can diagnose me with low self-esteem, personality disorder, whatever. I’m here to tell you, none of that matters. I lack confidence, and I still earned my doctorate—it can be done!

There were times in my 8-year doctoral journey that I seriously doubted my ability to perform to a high enough standard to achieve my dream. When things got intense (meaning, when I was terrified out of my wits that I would fail), I narrowed my focus to the tiny piece of action in front of me: the chapter, the paragraph, the sentence. After I typed each sentence, I stopped to make sure what I was writing was on track and in alignment with my overall purpose and plan.

Sometimes I was too scared to write. Naptime! Right up until the end of the defense, I lacked confidence. As I wrote my book, I lacked confidence. As I write this blogpost, I lack confidence! Argh! However, if you are reading these words, I rest my case!

Action is the magic word

Lately my plaintive cry is “Alas, I can’t be creative. I can’t be successful. I can’t be successful being creative.” It is so much easier to complain about how my dreams daily fail to materialize . . . while ignoring the embarrassing fact that I’m doing practically nothing to help them happen. I spend a lot of time dreaming and fretting and not much time doing. (I can’t because . . . )

What do you worry about? Probably we worry about similar things. Here are a few of my worries: My work isn’t good enough. My topic is stupid. It’s been done. It’s already obsolete. It’s incoherent gibberish. I’ll never get done. This is costing me a fortune. I usually finish up with something like Alas, alackaday, woe is me [place back of hand on forehead].

We don’t need positive thinking, and we can’t sit around doing nothing. It’s all about action, people. Any action. You don’t have to believe in it, you just have to do it (obligatory kudos to Nike’s tagline, forever embedded in the American zeitgeist). It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to get done. This isn’t the culmination of your career, it’s just the beginning. You have lots and lots of road ahead of you to get it right.

Some words on the paper is better than zero words, even if they are incoherent gibberish. That’s how this blogpost came to be. Bla bla bladdy bla and next thing I know, I’ve got something done. Not perfect. Who cares. Sometimes, yes, the good is the enemy of the best, but perfectionism is the enemy of good enough. Nobody gets it right all the time. The ones who win (you define winning) are the ones who don’t quit, no matter what.

Here’s my suggestion: Work on your outline first. Get it on paper (that means type it up). Figure out what sources support which subsections. Then you can take a nap.

If you need some help, check out my book.

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May 16, 2017

How to insert a table of contents in Word

A table of contents is an essential element of your proposal. All long documents must have a table of contents. It is placed in the front matter of the paper, before that crucial section break that separates the front matter from the body of the paper. We (Microsoft Word and I) fondly call it the TOC.

Let me say right now, never type a TOC! Let Word do the work for you. Seriously! I’m not joking. I don’t care what your institutional guidelines say. You can break the links later and format it to meet the institutional standard, but first, let Word do the heavy lifting. Once you’ve set all your headings and subheadings with Word styles, it only takes a few seconds to generate the TOC. If you try to type it, it will be rife with errors as you continue to work on your paper. We are only human, after all, and Word is, well, Word is Word.

Before you insert a TOC, though, you must do one very important thing: set the Word styles for your headings and subheadings.

Step 1: Apply Word styles

Your TOC is based on Word styles. Word styles are rich, complex … and mysterious, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore them. We need Word styles. You need them, I need them, all academic writers need them. If you can bring yourself to learn the basics of Word styles, then maybe you won’t have to fork over $500 to get your dissertation formatted by a professional editor like me. I know learning Word styles doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun, but it might not be as bad as you fear.

In the upper right corner of your Word window, in the STYLES command group, look for a dinky barely visible arrow ( Figure 1). Click it.

Figure 1. Open Word’s Style task pane.

A task pane will open along the right side of your Word window. It might look similar to the one in Figure 2, although it might show more or fewer styles, depending on the number of styles in your document and how your task pane is configured.

Figure 2. Word’s Style task pane (yours may look different).

Some heading styles are “built-in” to Word, but you can modify them. Heading levels start with Heading 1 (the highest level in your TOC). I’m not sure how many heading levels you can have, but I guarantee, for a typical dissertation, you will probably need only four. Maybe three, depending on how your institution guidelines determine the heading levels.

To apply a heading style, click anywhere in a line of text (or select the text) and click the heading level you want in the Style task pane. If you see some but not all the heading levels you want, click the Options button in the lower right corner of the Styles task pane and choose “Show next heading when previous level is used.” Word will always show you one level higher than the last level you applied.

Figure 3 shows a sample page of heading levels.

Figure 3. A sample page of Word heading levels

After you have applied your heading levels (Heading 1, 2, 3, and so on), Word can generate an accurate TOC. Open the Navigation pane (Click “Find” or Control+F). The Search pane has three tabs: Navigation is the tab on the left. You should see an outline view of all your main headings and subheadings (usually levels 1 and 2; see Figure 4). This is a preview of your TOC!

Figure 4. The Navigation pane shows main heading levels

Now finally, you are ready to insert your Table of Contents!

Step 2: Insert the Table of Contents

Before you insert your Table of Contents, note this: Wherever your cursor is, that is where your Table of Contents will appear, so make sure you insert it on the right page.

Find the TABLE OF CONTENTS button over on the left side of the REFERENCES RIBBON (Figure 5). You can just click it, but for most dissertations, that won’t be good enough (incorrect formatting).

Figure 5. Inserting the TOC—step 1

Click the DROP-DOWN ARROW and choose INSERT TABLE OF CONTENTS (Figure 6).

Figure 6. Inserting the TOC—step 2

The Table of Contents dialog box appears. Unless you have special formatting requirements, leave everything checked (show page numbers, right-align page number, show tab leader dots, from template, show three levels, and use hyperlinks instead of page numbers). If you set the heading styles correctly, you won’t need to click the OPTIONS button. Instead, choose MODIFY (Figure 7).

Figure 7. Inserting the TOC—step 3

Figure 8 shows a cascade of dialog boxes. Don’t freak out. This is the process we use to set the formats for each TOC level, one at a time.

The box at the far right is the original box shown in Figure 7. When you click MODIFY, the box in the middle comes up. This is where you choose what level you want to modify, starting with TOC 1. Click MODIFY.

The box on the left should be familiar if you have ever formatted a paragraph in Word. This is the place where you modify styles—line spacing, alignment, paragraph spacing—all that good stuff.

Your institution will have specific line spacing guidelines. This is where you can set double-spacing or single-spacing with a set amount of paragraph spacing before or after. Follow your institution’s guidelines.

Figure 8. Inserting the TOC—step 4

Figure 9 shows a typical format for TOC level 1.

Figure 9. Inserting the TOC—step 5

Now you are ready to format TOC level 2. When you click OK, you are returned to the middle box from Figure 7. Choose TOC 2. Click MODIFY (Figure 10). Set the indent for the second level of your TOC. Many institutions require a half-inch indent for each level. Some only require a quarter inch. Follow your institution’s guidelines.

Figure 10. Inserting the TOC—step 6

Remember, wherever your cursor is, that is where your Table of Contents will appear, so make sure you insert it in the right place. If you aren’t happy with it, follow the steps from Step 1 (insert Table of Contents) and go through the process again. Word will ask you if you want to replace the existing TOC. Say yes, otherwise you’ll end up with two. Figure 11 shows a finished TOC, with nonprinting characters showing so you can see how Word automatically inserted leader dot tabs and right-aligned all the numbers.

Figure 11. The finished Table of Contents (with nonprinting characters showing)

If you are feeling confident with styles, to save some time, you can choose TOC 1, TOC 2, TOC 3, etc. (one at a time) in the Styles task pane, right click on the style, and choose MODIFY to modify the formatting of each level. Formatting changes are immediate.

To update your Table of Contents

Pagination happens. To update your TOC to reflect revisions to your headings and page numbers, click anywhere in your TOC and press F9 (or right-click, choose UPDATE FIELD). Update often, and don’t forget to update the TOC before you submit your paper.

To delete your Table of Contents

Select the entire TOC and press the DELETE button.

You can find more information about using Word to format your dissertation in my book.

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