As of 1:01 PM my dissertation draft has been mailed off to my committee. Six years of work written down onto 200 pages. Yes 200, exactly. It feels surreal to not be working on it right now. I have been consumed with writing, proof reading, and re-writing for the past month. This is what I learned about thesis writing that everyone told me, but I didn’t quite believe until I sat down to write my one myself.

My thesis when it was 172 pages, just 3/4″ tall. They grow up so fast, don’t they?

It will take at least six months to just write your thesis.

I figured using excerpts from a few polished papers as the bases for my thesis would help cut down on the time it takes to write the thesis, but it read like excerpts from separate published papers. It takes time to combine ideas behind several papers into one narrative.

I had a sketch of my thesis last winter. It may sound silly, but I would occasionally spend time tweaking my table on contents to make sure my thesis narrative was clear. I wanted my committee members to be able to gleam not only the problem space and my approach, but also my contributions from the table of concepts, like one might from an abstract. The last few weeks I focused on the cross references, and making sure the hypothesis brought up in the conclusion section of one chapter would be explored in another.

Solid writing isn’t a replacement for solid content. Poor writing, however, can make it difficult for your committee to understand your contributions. It takes time to write well.

A Thesis is Never Done. But it can be done enough.

One my mentors at Microsoft told me that at some point you just have to decide it’s done enough. It can always be better.

A dissertation is supposed to represent very deep knowledge in a single problem. You want to address questions your reading committee might have before they have a chance to have them. When ever you reach a conclusion, you try and think of the implications, the holes. What are the questions my committee will ask? You then come up with experiments to address these ideas, but that begets new ideas and new conclusions that warrant further exploration. There are always more avenues to explore.

One of my committee members suggest writing a “sufficient” thesis, one that is good enough to graduate and not to stress about making it perfect. Her thinking: conference papers and journal articles are more likely to be read, and a good published thesis trumps a near perfect draft.

It’s not about intelligence, it’s about tenacity.

Once you have the green light to write from your adviser you will graduate if you stick with it, it just may take time.

When I started writing my thesis I wasn’t certain that I would graduate. The whole process just seems so daunting. It wasn’t until I was about two thirds done that I really started appreciating all the work that had lead me to this point. At some point during the writing process it just sort of dawns on you that yes, you really are the expert on this topic.

Your committee members will undoubtedly have ideas on how to improve your thesis, and they may want to see changes before they are willing to sign off on it. If you’ve reached this point, however, it’s just a matter of sticking through to the end. You will graduate. I will graduate.

My stress level has been probably the highest it’s been in over a decade. Last week I had a near constant stress induced migraine. The stress wouldn’t let me sleep, making me more and more tired, but the fatigue was preventing me from being as productive as I needed to be and I’d fall farther behind and stress out more. Last Wednesday I went to bed a little past midnight and could not fall asleep until 6:15 in the morning! Enough.

I ended up changing my approach to my thesis. I had been trying to perfect each chapter at a time. I kept thinking about all the unfinished sections, and I think that was contributing to my stress level. So I decided no more worrying about writing well, just write. I have some sections that are pretty rough, but I have a draft!

My current thesis draft by the numbers
– 111 References
– 135 Pages (92 are the actual thesis, the rest are references, boiler plate and appendices)
– 8 Chapters
– 2 Appendices
– 14 Figures
– 11 Tables

I know it’s those numbers are rather meaningless, it’s the quality of the content and not the quantity of content, but they give me a sense of accomplishment. Not that long ago my thesis was only 122 pages, and before it reached 135 I dropped it down to 106 by removing extraneous content and tangential references. I want from 72 references, down to 61 and back up to 111 in a couple of weeks, and I have more to add! I have accomplished a lot, even if it doesn’t always feel that way. And if I can do all that, surely I can finish.

And now, I’m off to what I hope is the first of many good nights of sleep.