You Are Here

Tag: thesis

Nathan

Two Thesis Book Clubs

Daily Post

Two ideas that popped into my mind at a Viva Survivor workshop last week:

  1. If you and some colleagues are currently writing: go exploring in your department’s thesis collection. See what people have submitted in the last few years. Meet once a month to discuss what you’ve found. Perhaps you could all read a thesis per month or take it in turns. You might find something interesting but your goal should be to look at style, formatting, layout and argument construction. As a group, create a list of helpful thoughts for your own work. How can you best layout your thesis? How can you setup a good structure? and so on. Use this to make writing up better.
  2. If you’ve submitted and are preparing for the viva: invite some colleagues into a very special book club. Only one book involved: yours. If you have time, get them to read and think about a chapter per week, then invite them to ask you questions. If there isn’t time for a regular meeting, you could arrange a one-off event. Your friends get a copy of your thesis in advance to read, you give a short overview of your research at the start and then take questions.

As option two is geared solely around your thesis you might have to pay for some refreshments – but that’s a small investment compared to the benefits of valuable questions from your colleagues!

Nathan

Two Truths

Daily Post

Truth Number One: If you get corrections it means your thesis isn’t perfect.

Truth Number Two: Nobody’s thesis is perfect and examiners aren’t expecting yours to be.

Typos can be fixed. Clunky paragraphs can be changed. Ideas can be added. References can be amended.

Just submit the best thesis you can, then go to the viva ready to talk about what you did and what you wrote.

Nathan

Love Letter For Your Thesis

Daily Post

Viva coming up? For one day, pause your usual preparation. Don’t analyse the contribution in each chapter. Don’t frantically search for typos. Don’t read through and worry what your examiners will say about this chapter or that choice.

Just take a page and write down what you love about your thesis.

What do you really love about it? What ideas do you adore? How does it make you happy? (it’s OK if “it’s done!” is the answer!)

What are you grateful for in your thesis? What inspires you? What can’t you wait to show others?

Find all the good stuff, and use that to motivate you for the rest of your prep and the viva.

Nathan

Easter Eggs

Daily Post

Not the chocolate kind, the DVD extras. The secrets. The small, special things that only certain people will look for or notice.

My thesis had a few Easter Eggs. As a mathematician, it was about proving much stronger results than I needed for my theorems. As a metaphor, I needed to boil an egg, but what I did was write a cookbook called Everything Eggs: An Infinite Recipe Book With Yolks.

On a few occasions in my thesis I was able to include little things that were much more impressive once you looked closer. Little things, nice, but not necessary, but a contribution in their own way.

What are the things you’re proud of in your work even if others might not find them or know to look? Where are they hidden? Why did you do them? What do they mean?

Your thesis and research Easter Eggs could help or delight lots of people if they find them. Don’t forget them when you review your progress. They add something special to your research journey.

Nathan

The Extra Mile

Daily Post

During my PhD I didn’t have to extend my algorithm to consider the HOMFLY polynomial…

…but I thought it was more useful than just writing it was possible in a discussion section.

I didn’t have to produce tables of plait presentations in my thesis…

…but I knew that no-one else had done it before and thought it might be helpful to someone.

When have you gone the extra mile in your PhD? When have you done something, big or small, that maybe wasn’t essential but which helped?

Make a list of what and why. Don’t play them down. They can show others your drive to do something valuable for your field.

Nathan

New

Daily Post

A thesis has to have something new. It’s not just a collection of words. Ideas, facts, interpretation – whatever you could summarise it as, there’s something new in there. Something that wasn’t there before your PhD. Maybe something that could never have been done until now. Maybe something that could never have been done until YOU came along.

Don’t undersell the contribution you’ve made. It only exists in your thesis because of your efforts. As you prepare for the viva, take time to unpick the novelty of your work.

Nathan

Paper Armour

Daily Post

Your thesis is armour to protect your ideas. Well-conceived, long-considered and oft-checked.

But it’s still just paper. Flaws can make it on to the page. It’ll be good, but it won’t be perfect. There’ll be nothing terribly wrong probably, but your research needs something else to protect it in the viva. Your thesis needs someone to help it shine.

A champion. Skilled, trained, clever, capable, someone who can make ideas move.

Sound like anyone you know?

Nathan

Skimming

Daily Post

It’s really tempting to only read the good parts of your thesis.

When you’re done and you’re preparing for your viva, it’ll feel good to read the parts you’re most proud of. The chapter where you reach your amazing conclusions. The masterful description of your methodology. And then within those chapters, you’ll know that there are sections which are superb. You zero in on your favourite paragraphs.

You glance at the rest, because, yeah, you know what’s in your thesis, you wrote it after all. You are in a good position to know what is most important, most valuable, in your thesis. But it’s all necessary. Everything in your thesis has a reason or a purpose or a value, otherwise it wouldn’t be there.

So don’t skip. Don’t skim. Read it all. That could be hard, but read it all at least once after submission – if for no other reason that you can then be sure about what is there. You don’t have a false memory of a chapter or section.

Don’t skip the “bad” stuff because you need to know what’s there. Don’t skip the good stuff because everything can be reinforced and made better.

Nathan

Best Bit

Daily Post

My favourite thing in my thesis is on pages 33 and 34. I struggled for a couple of weeks on a single detail that I needed in order to prove the most important result in my research. I couldn’t get it. I knew what I needed and I knew intuitively it was true, but I couldn’t see the step.

And one day I took a break, and realised that the result I was aiming for was far bigger than what I needed. I was trying to slice bread with a chainsaw, but couldn’t get the damn thing to start.

As I realised that I needed a much smaller result to prove what I needed, I knew exactly how to prove it! It was a huge feeling of elation after a string of disappointed days. As I wrote down my proof, I realised that this tiny result could also be generalised: I’d spotted the blockage on the chainsaw, and now had the stronger result that I’d not been able to get.

I had a brief tug of war between satisfaction and frustration; thankfully satisfaction won out.

Three-and-a-half questions:
What’s the smallest meaningful result in your thesis?
What are you most satisfied or frustrated by in your research?
What’s the best bit of your thesis? Why?

Stepping back when doing research is important. Stepping back afterwards helps you grow.

1 … 3 4 5