Have you been waiting for an invitation to work on your dissertation? Dr. Wendy Carter-Veale is your “Head Coach.” We cordially invite you to join us on our Dissertation Writing blog! You’ve arrived at the right place. This is your page for making the most of your time here. You can finish your dissertation in 2022 if you make daily progress.
To begin, we’d like to congratulate all of our recent PhD graduates!
You can participate in the online Dissertation Writing Retreat from anywhere in the world. Students from various states in the United States and countries around the world attend the Dissertation Writing Retreat (DWR).
Our pre-registered participants are required to blog daily during their time at the Dissertation Writing Retreat and are encouraged to continue doing so until their dissertations are finished.
Please click here to join us online.
Introduce yourself by leaving a comment below (name, school, department.) You may use your real name or an alias. If you have a blogger ID, you may use it, but you do not need a username or password to participate.
Inform us about the project you’re working on and your objectives for today or the next few days. Blog every day, preferably twice a day (morning and afternoon/evening), to report on your daily goals, daily accomplishments, and daily goals for the next day.
We’ll repeat something we said before because it’s both important and true: Our graduates and participants pushed themselves (literally) to finish sections, get advisor approval for chapters, finish drafts, pass proposals, pass defenses, and turn in their final documents. These graduates have gone on to become professors, work in non-profit organizations, industry, and government agencies, and hold postdoctoral positions all over the world (e.g., France, South Africa, Egypt.)
Please return if you previously joined us and are still working on your document. We’re still here, and we’ll stay a part of the community that will support you! Make a list of your four-month goals and post them on this page. Online, you are not alone; this is your community. Concentrate on completing the task. “A good dissertation is a done dissertation” says coach Dr. CV.
Wendy Carter-Veale Ph.D. 
Thank you for this space! My name is Gabrielle and I am a Candidate in the Department of Sociology at University of Michigan.
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Thanks for considering the Michigan Dissertation Writing Retreat! We are your partners in accountability. We will hold you accountable if you say you will do something.
Please introduce yourself (you don’t even have to use your real name; make something up like “PhDbound22″) and discuss your goals for the next four days.
We will prepare the meals for the next four days. All you have to do is show up and make good use of your time.
Here are some pointers.”
1.Divide your tasks into small, manageable chunks.
2. Determine how many journal papers you intend to read and summarize over the next four days.
3. Think about what you consider to be your best writing environment. When are you at your most creative?
4. It does not have to be either/or. What else can you do to move forward if you are not writing?
5. If you create a table or figure, please write one paragraph describing it.
My goal for the next 4 day is to meet with each student twice and help you working through your schedule to completion.
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Hello, my name is Devin Willis. I am a 3rd year student in the Counseling Psychology program at WMU. This morning I was able to finish the my “easy” edits for my method section. This afternoon I will be reviewing the dissertation cookbook and working on my problem statement before beginming to work on my “medium level” edits.
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Welcome to day two of the DWR… Yesterday, it was a pleasure speaking with you. Continuing to make those “simple” modifications will develop your confidence for the “tough” ones.
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Hello, my name is Adrian J. Hernandez. I am a fourth-year student in the counseling psychology program at WMU. Today, my goal is to learn more about the IRB process and to figure out what all I need to submit to get my study up and running. I have spent the last few hours getting documents together (including scripts, informed consent documentation, etc.). My goal this week is to get this submitted so I can start data collection as soon as possible. After I finish that, I would like to revise my third and first chapter. I suspect that will take me through the week.
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Adrian, Welcome to day two of the DWR… IRB can be a daunting process but I am sure you are up to the challenge. Keep moving forward.
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Hello, my name is Stephen Carney. I am a 6th year student in Cancer Biology graduate program at UofM. This morning I was able to begin outlining my table of contents. This afternoon, I got clarification on the formatting of the dissertation from the Rackham Handbook. I set a realistic goal for the workshop, switching from the literature review to Chapter 3. I will began transferring data and outlining Chapter 3 with the intentions to finalize it by the end of the workshop.
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LastSprint, “oh yeah Stephen”, Welcome to day two of the DWR… You are making good progress. Lets plan on getting through Chapter 3 and back to the Lit review as soon as possible.
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The goal for Day 2 is to begin transferring figures that have been completed for my manuscript in regards to the regulation of my gene interest.
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I am almost completed with Chapter 3 to incorporate the intro, results, and discussion sections from my manuscript. Tomorrow, I will finish incorporating the data figures and legends from our paper.
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Thank you so much for making this opportunity available to us! I have exactly one week until I need to turn in my dissertation to my committee, so I’m hoping that I can get the draft I have in to good shape to do that over the next 4 days. I will be focusing on: conforming it OARD standards, addressing the feedback that I’ve gotten from my advisors, working on areas that need to fleshed out, cutting and focusing other areas that need it, editing and revising overall.
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FinalCountdown. Tick Tock. You can get it done. Welcome to day two of the DWR… Yesterday, it was a pleasure speaking with you. Continuing to make those changes. A good dissertation is a done dissertation.
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You got this…Today is day three and you have made great progress. Keep pressing on.
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My goal for the morning was to make a methods section outline. It was suggested I use a spreadsheet so I could rearrange the order because of the number of conditions and types of experiments. I was able to successfully complete an outline of this type.
In the afternoon, I plan to create a spreadsheet of literature articles with columns for differences between papers. (I simulate malaria blood and simulations can use different computational techniques for the plasma and the cell, different surface activity, different numbers of cells, different flow types, etc.) For now, I want to use the abstract to get the main points of the 50 or so articles I know I want to include recorded on the spreadsheet and then determine which articles need to be read more deeply this week.
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Christina, Welcome to day two of the DWR… Good for your for taking the suggestion and running with it. Well done. Keep moving forward.
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Today, I will focus on my case site and methods chapter of my dissertation. I will respond to Advisor 1’s feedback by adding a section on specific research questions and my interview guides and revising the history of the case site to make it more clear where I am leading the reader throughout it. I will also write a 2-3 paragraph sub-section that still needs to be completed and edit the chapter as a whole.
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Thank you for organizing this! It’s really helpful to have so much uninterrupted writing time. Over the next four days, I’m hoping to finalize the survey for my experimental chapter and finish revising my qualitative chapter, with an emphasis on focusing the theory and literature review to that specific section of the dissertation, performing a couple of additional analyses on my interview data, and incorporating smaller grammatical edits. I’m also hoping to write up a plan for managing my research assistants this summer. This morning I programmed my survey experiment in Qualtrics and this afternoon I plan to work on a plan for RA mentorship, followed by starting on the easier grammatical edits to the qualitative chapter.
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Today I completed my two smaller tasks (the survey experiment and mentor plan). However, I realized I need to take a step back and do some bigger picture outlining. So I’m going to start on that tonight and plan to pick it up tomorrow. My hope is to have a full timeline of my dissertation plan and a detailed outline for my methods chapter by EOD tomorrow.
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Each activity should be broken down into little, manageable chunks, as you suggest, Sara. Reading a journal article requires four steps: locating the article, downloading it, reading it, and then summarizing it.
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So far so good. There’s always a bit of challenge kickstarting after being away for a while but I was able to get going. Created the template(s) as recommended and gathered the info needed from the various pieces of legislation that was needed. Moving on to the congressional records which will require a bit more time but the goal of collecting pertinent information surrounding the three pieces of legislation outlined within the state goals this morning remain.
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Day two is a continued focus on completing filling in the templates to help better organize what I’m seeing in the congressional record. I found the Literature Review discussion to be helpful and adapted some practices for my own to help better synthesize information.
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Yesterday after our chat I engaged in some Zombie tasks, including correcting in-text citations and smaller grammatical errors. I then revisited the ProQuest Congressional to identifying, review, and notation of relevant documents surrounding the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917.
For today, I will focus on the feedback offered during our one-on-one sessions on my problem statement and continue to source and notate relevant to documents to prepare for analysis.
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Hello EG,
Congratulations on kickstarting after being away from your dissertation. Great job getting reacquainted. This is a time to commit to making significant progress. The Proposal Cookbook in the participant drive can be helpful moving things along. How is the Problem Statement coming? Perhaps you can have that done in time for your meeting today. As you source and notate those documents, time yourself so you have a sense of how long you take to complete one document. Use that information to help you get a rhythm. We have kickstarted now we can pick up momentum.
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My second conversation with Dr. CV was very impactful. She provided some very much needed feedback that I knew I needed to hear but perhaps avoiding seeking it before. With that, I shifted from the analysis, which I made pretty substantial progress on because of this retreat to strengthening my problem statement (and other sections) with more evidence. I’ve been reviewing the proposal cookbook and has be VERY helpful. Though there has been shifts in goals, this is leading to a much stronger proposal all together.
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Hello Everyone!
I am excited to be here. I am at the end of my program, passed my proposal defense, and have been granted candidacy. I just have my dissertation and internship left to complete (relocating this June from Michigan to Florida, go Gators!). My goals for the next four days are to:
1. Finish putting my study on qualtrics and run a pilot
2. Create a T.O.C. for my dissertation
3. Complete a first draft of the methodology chapter
3. Find and read (5) more articles to add to my sense of belonging variable for the lit. review
4. Update the education statistics on Black undergraduates for the introduction
I anticipate being able to get my complete study on qualtrics by the end of today (saving the piloting for tomorrow am) and create a T.O.C. for my dissertation.
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After the conclusion of the first day, I have completed a draft of my T.O.C. While I didn’t finish uploading my study on qualtrics, I am more than halfway done. My main goal during tomorrow morning’s session is to complete my survey input on qualtrics and my afternoon goal is to update/expand on my lit. review, implementing feedback from my first 1on1 with Dr. CV. If I have time, I will also update my education statistics in the introduction.
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5/10 goals:
My goal before lunch is to finish my survey input on qualtrics (1 measure left, consent form, and raffle components)
My goal after lunch is to start the expansion of my lit. review (reviewing what literature I already have and setting up my excel sheet that Dr. CV shared during yesterday morning’s session)
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Dr. Lassii Yesterday, it was a joy to speak with you. I am pleased to see that you have a very clear strategy for today. Best of luck eliminating items from that list.
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As we come to the conclusion of day 2, I spent more time getting my study onto qualtrics than I anticipated (practically all day) but it is now up on qualtrics so I can cross that task off my list. I will be piloting the study tomorrow first thing after the morning session. For the remainder of today I will be doing some zombie tasks starting with updating the education statistics for my introduction.
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Goals for day 3:
1. Pilot my study on qualtrics to review the layout and also get an estimate on how long it takes to complete the survey in real time
2. Look for articles/statistics that discuss differences in graduation rates of Blk college students attending PWIs vs. HBCUs
3. Work on changing the language/wording of my hypotheses and research questions
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Dr. Lassii BIG CONGRATULATION on advancing to candidacy !!!!! These are very clear goals. How long do you think it will take to get the data back from the pilot? Please remember to reward yourself for achieving these goals as you go along. All the best to you.
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Today I will be working on finalizing and formatting my survey instrument and I hope to put it into qualtrics but might not get there today. The literature review tables were very helpful, Im considering taking some time this week to organize some of my literature using the tables.
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Hello all,
Today I focused on the data analysis. I had these 27 interviews that I had to go through and It took me a couple of hours to go through 21/27 and I am very proud. If I wasn’t here today, I would have not even started it. I am very grateful to Toney, Dr. Cater, Dr. Joseph, and graduate college to motivate me to start my data analysis.
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Hi all,
My name is Karen and I’m a 5th year Chem PhD student. My goals for the next four days are to create 2-3 tables (for my intro and for chapter 2) and begin working on the methods section for Chapter 2. I wrote an outline for my methods section and have written out a draft. I will continue working on it tomorrow and add more detail/sections I might have left out. I am finishing up with editing a table I had previously done and it should be completed early tomorrow. Thank you for providing the space and food. I hadn’t written in a few months and now look at me! 🙂
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I’m feeling really good about what I got done today! So much more than I would have just working from home. I responded to all of Advisor 1’s feedback on Chapter 3. Tonight, I will draft the 2-3 paragraphs that I need to on gentrification and one paragraph on white working-class growing traditions, which will complete the work that I need to get done on Chapter 3. Tomorrow, I will address Advisor 1’s comments on chapter 4, as well as fleshing out interviewees’ visions for land use. I will also add the revisions I made to Appendix 1, and, if I have time, do general line-by-line editing of chapters 4, 1, and 2.
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I did well with outlining my methods section, but the process of reviewing papers is going very slowly.
I thought I would skim the papers and sort them by methods for a review, but I’m doing a lot of detailed reading. I am getting helpful information for justifying my methods and choosing specific parameters, but I only went through 4 papers this afternoon. I have about 50 articles I would love to sort through this week, so I will continue to work on reviewing literature tomorrow.
My goal is to categorize 20 papers and choose the 3 most important to read in detail.
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The easy goal for the day — spend one hour outlining my introduction — is done. Still finishing the data chapter, on pace to have it nearly complete by tonight. Tomorrow I will start the day by reviewing (and/or finishing if necessary) the data chapter. The goal for tomorrow is to finish drafting the background section of the introduction and the motivation section for one of my research chapters.
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Hello all,
Today, I planned for all four days and presented my anticipated goals for this retreat in the groups. The presented plan covers three main tasks. First, I plan to search and summarize about ten more sources regarding Islam, campus climate, and classroom diversity. Second, I will be writing the first chapter, introduction that is. Third, the literature review organization, editing, weaving all the works and producing first draft.
After sharing my topics and goals of the retreat, I had a one on one meeting with Dr. Carter. It was a special meeting where we discussed the project in details. We planned on how I can organize my work around literature review.
I have started to work on the articles and I just learned that Dr. Carter has a template which would help me finish this task sooner.
Thank you ☺️
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Today, I finished changing the verb tenses from future to past tense. I also created the Lit. Review table with the guidance of Dr. Carter. Tomorrow, I will figure out how long it takes to analyze one interview. Before I start the analysis, I need to write a reflection on my experience with the phenomenon (Epoche). I will dedicate 30 minutes to that maximum. I will also create a word document listing the themes I find in that first transcript to add comments about them while conducting the rest of the analysis (log trail).
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Hello, my name is Viola Sawyer. I am a 5th year PhD student in the Sociology program at WMU. My goals for these four day is to complete my historical background chapter and, if I finish that ahead of schedule, to begin outlining my theory chapter. This afternoon, I made some progress towards that goal, as I’ve been able to write a couple of pages for this chapter. Tomorrow, I plan to start with summarizing U.S. Supreme Court cases that are pertinent to my dissertation topic, and continue writing through the afternoon and evening.
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This morning I started with an initial goal, and I am so happy I shared it because I got a chance to really think about what would be most helpful from this week. After receiving some feedback, I decided to reorient my initial goal as a smaller-priority task and shifted my focus for the week on my most challenging task: literature reviews. My initial goal was to work on participant information and my contingency plan was to review my literature and connect it with themes from the participants. I wanted to make a list of my respondents and review transcripts to write robust paragraphs on the themes they elucidated. After sharing with Dr. Carter-Veale she recommended that I spend less time reviewing prior data for insights and instead focus on my contingency plan.
I decided to spend the morning listing the respondents and sharing some biographical information. As I scrolled through the prospectus document, I remembered that last week I wrote an entire plan for reading the literature. Adding to my decision to pivot from the participants back to my literature plan, we had a great presentation on organizing our literature review during the afternoon workshop. I decided to use Dr. Carter-Veale’s advice for writing the literature review – list the question; identify categories/themes from literature that your question focuses on; answer the question, why is this important? – and focused on some quick responses to the prompts. I believe working on this really showed me the parts of my prospectus that were less focused, and also saved me a lot of time writing about participants in a way that was not helpful to the study. I am now stepping away from this writing session with better research questions, a clearer focus on my goals with reading this literature that I planned out last week, and a draft of my “why is this important” answer to the question. I happily concluded my afternoon writing session by sending an email with my questions and topic of interest to the departmental librarian to get access to more literature. I look forward to continuing with this schedule and chipping away at my goals daily.
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Alright, I am ready to blog out. Today was fantastic. I was very tired at the end but I accomplished a lot. All my interviews were analyzed and I am ready to go home and join my family.
My plan for tomorrow is to work on excel and develop a data set from my data analysis. I am looking forward to getting a lot done tomorrow.
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Checking out for the first day. I was able to submit my IRB paperwork! One major goal accomplished. I began a dissertation template/outline as well. I want to continue working on this tomorrow and begin to revise chapter three.
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My day didnt go exactly as planned. I intended to begin working on my medoim level edits for my method section but instead after reviewing the cookbook and beginning to draft my purpose statement, I paused to read an article relates to one of my variables. I think im changing from a moderation study back to a mediation so intend to flesh this out more tomorrow. Step one tomorrow will be working on the easy level edits for the lit review section. I anticipate this will take aprx 1 hour. Then I plan to finish my purpose statement based on the cookbook recommendations. I anticipate this will take aproximately 30 mins. Following this would I like to begin working on my medium level edits for the methods section. I’m not sure how long this will take but would like to spend no more than 2.5 hours. After this I will move on to fleshing out what my X and Y variables will look like in a mediational study. The X and M is already fleshed out and the M to Y is generally clear.
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Hello! My name is Paulina and I am a 6th year PhD Candidate at the School of Education. Today was a good organizational day for me to clearly name the goals I want to accomplish for this week during this writing retreat. I’ve learned I work best in time blocks with built in breaks instead of one long working session, so the pomodoro technique works best for me. Today was a little difficult because of the mental stamina and endurance of working long hours today, but it was still very productive. I was able to organize the different protocols I need to complete this weekend and created separate formatting tables for each of them (observations, archives and interviews). I read through and summarized the most important feedback from my committee members on a memo I created. And finally, I got through drafting my initial interview questions for my interview protocol after adhering to some feedback from my advisor. I still need to edit and finalize the rest of my interview protocol so I will work on that tomorrow with the goal of getting my observations protocol started by the end of the day.
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Thank you for joining us for another session of the Dissertation Writing Retreat. The new day has begun, and you can always choose to start over on a new day. As long as you keep moving forward, even baby steps are still steps in the right direction.
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Good Morning,
I am so thankful to be here and start a new day. My plan for today is to focus on creating excel for my data. lots of coffee and a lot more data analysis.
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Asi, Kudos to you as we move forward to completing the degree.
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I was able to complete all of my goals yesterday, which feels miraculous given how things have been going at home the last few weeks! Today, I am going to focus on addressing Advisor 1’s feedback on Chapter 4. This will mostly involve giving more information about differences between interviewees, especially across race and class. I brought my NVIVO project with me and may need to go to a computer lab to dig more into the interviews, but am hoping that I’ll be able to make the revisions that I need to just based on my notes. If I have extra time, which I think that I will, I will finish/start doing a general edit of chapters 4, 3, 2, and 1 in that order. If I’m in need of some zombie tasks, I will work on formatting the dissertation to match OARD standards.
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Good Morning!
I’m very proud with what I completed last week and am ready to keep going at my goals. Today I will finish one of my tables, prepare an info sheet of required information for my methods section (microscope details, reagents, etc), and I also wanted to run some analysis and plot some data for Chapter 2 I collected this month. If I need a break or change in work, I was planning at submitting a job application and/or ordering some materials for my project.
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Excellent plan. Welcome back to day two! If you build a table, don’t forget to include one paragraph describing its contents.
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Good morning! This morning, I’m going to work on the easier grammatical edits to my third chapter. Then in the afternoon I’m doing to edit the introduction to better flow with the first two chapters and shorten the theory section, per comments from my advisor.
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Hi all! This morning looks like a lot reading for me. My goals are to get through the majority opinions and dissents of 2-3 cases, out of 5 U.S. Supreme Court cases I plan on writing about for my dissertation, and to write up a summary of those cases for my historical background chapter. For the afternoon, I plan to continue reading through the remaining cases and writing up those summaries as well.
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Hello all,
Originally, I had planned to start the introduction this morning but it turns out that my newer journals, from yesterday, that will go into the literature review need to be completed first. I am confident that I will finalize these by lunch and then I will dedicate the rest of the day to write the introduction.
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For day 2, I want to shift gears a little and work on a figure I realized I need to determine some fitted conditions for the methods section.
I want to continue my literature review, but since it is causing a lot of anxiety about how much information I still need to process, I don’t want to try and do that all day. I want to spend one hour in the morning and an hour in the evening reviewing literature and then spend the rest of my time working on producing the components I need to apply to a conference next month. (I wasn’t sure I could have results for the conference, but this workshop encouraged me.)
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Today My plan is to finish inputting my protocol into qualtrics ( I started yesterday) and to start some organizing work on my lit review using the lit review tables that were shared with us. This process will help me complete a larger task of mine which is to refine my lit review and address advisor comments.
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RP congratulations on getting that survey into qualtrics. Will you be testing it? As you organize your tables be sure to consider your specific questions. This is awesome. Get job.
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Great Job ..
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Checking in for day two. Yesterday was a very productive day, I think in part because I had such clear goals laid out in terms of what was expected for an IRB submission after I started to look into it. Now that I have that done, today I want to focus on outlining my dissertation document. I think I will start with the easier tasks that were discussed this morning like creating the TOC and then I want to move into revising chapter three. That will be my big goal for today.
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Adrian, Good moving that IRB doc off your desk! As you do your TOC consider doing outlines of the chapters as well to help keep you focused. Keep Pressing on!
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I had the honor of attending a working meeting with Dr. Carter-Veale.
I am working on my literature review, but first I want to write my problem statement. I am trying to think broadly beyond my field about what the issue is that unions/collectives address. I had a conversation with my Aunt and Grandma about my research last night. My Grandma said, “it takes a lot to make a child survive in this world”. It reminded me of the concept of motherwork, which talks about working Mothers’ focus on survival, power, and identity for their children (Collins: 2000). I would like to spend some time thinking about this question as it pertains to broader issues that compel Blafk women to mobilize in the school system.
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Minority Motherhood Project, As you think about these sage comments remember to put your ideas on paper.
Grandma comment is so true. As you define the problem statement you would better be able to focus those thoughts. Keep pressing on!
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Today, I will be working on finalizing the rest of my interview questions by adding headings and subheadings to organize the thematic grouping of my questions. And I am aiming to finish my interview protocols by the end of today.
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Thus far today I spent time outlining the methods chapter and building a timeline for making the additions I need to make there, as well as a broader outline for getting to next summer. I then went back and wrote the introduction to chapter 3 (my qualitative chapter) and am hoping to spend the evening and tomorrow morning tightening the theory of this chapter. Tomorrow, I will then make the 3 figures requested by my advisor as part of his edits and a longer description of the organizations I interviewed.
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I was able to solidify my outline of the literature review (ch 1) and continued to make progress drafting it throughout the day. I hope to push this next writing session to get a complete draft, and then focus on minor edits tomorrow and begin editing chapter 2
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So far, I am still running analysis on data for Chapter 2 since my advisor wanted an update today. I am close to starting to plot it – it will definitely be done before I leave here today. It was one of the “harder” tasks since I ended up going through 9 experiments, but I was motivated to tackle it since the table and info sheet of required information for my methods section (microscope details, reagents, etc) are “easy” and I got stuck on the table this morning. By the end of today I plan to have these 3 items completed and tomorrow I would like to work on the second table and perhaps add some figures to my introduction.
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I decided that the literature review will take longer than this retreat, so I will continue to work on it as a backup task, but an impactful task I can finish in the next two days is my methods extended outline and rough draft. I have the barebones outline, and I am now going back and adding details in bullet point format. After confirming my collaborators and advisor approve the content, I plan to start writing a rough paragraph draft.
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Like with all my writing, I tend to spend a long time at it. For the 2nd day of the DWR, I have the final sections of the data chapter written and, pending a re-read, am ready to send to my advisor for feedback. But, that took about twice as long as I anticipated. Still, there was time today to start on re-writing the introduction. For the rest of this evening and tomorrow, I will continue to re-write the introduction and fill in the motivation sections.
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Checking out for day two. I have been focusing on formatting and revising chapter three. Formatting is not as easy as I thought it would be with technology difficulties, but I hope to get this done tomorrow so I can focus on finishing the chapter three edits. That will be my big goal for day three.
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Hi,
I accomplished to following:
1. Prepare the data collection instruments, survey, and interviews.
a. I revised my survey questions and entered the survey in Qualtrics data collection.
b. I edited my survey and interview invitations.
c. I prepared my email list for the interview’ invite.
d. I edited the interview protocol.
Today, I will start cleaning my email list to be able to disseminate the survey. Tomorrow I plan to start expanding my email list.
I was making progress!
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I feel like I made quite a bit of progress today. I read through the Supreme Court cases that I had originally planned to this morning, and I’ve written summaries for each. I was able to add those summaries into the chapter and will continue writing that chapter this evening. After meeting with Dr. Carter-Veale today, I received feedback on both my statement of the problem and my historical background chapter. As a result, I’m planning on reading through another case to determine whether it fits into this chapter, and edit my statement of the problem, tomorrow.
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I got a lot of the work done addressing my advisor’s feedback on Chapter 4, but then as part of that I discovered a whole literature related to my findings that has appeared in the 3 years since I defended my proposal that I haven’t been citing. This threw me for a loop, and I spent the evening reviewing and downloading relevant articles within this literature. Tomorrow, I’m going to skim through them and figure out how to integrate them into what I already have without too much additional labor/upset. Then, I can finish the edits to chapter 4 and send to my advisor with notes on how I addressed the feedback. I estimate that that will take me at least a few hours, so I’m going to devote the whole morning and, if needed, part of the afternoon to that tomorrow, after which I’ll move onto addressing the edits that I know I need to make to Ch. 5.
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Hello all,
(morning blog – I think I forgot to click post on it)
Originally, I had planned to start the introduction this morning but it turns out that my newer journals, from yesterday, that will go into the literature review need to be completed first.
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Blogging out – end of the day.
Hi everyone,
Dr Carter advised me to look for some specific journals, related to a portion of my research question. I have searched, selected, and summarized several of the total 15 journals. These will go into my literature review, interview protocol, and introductions.
I have saved these into my referencing database as well, with some key search tags to locate them.
Finally, I have started to work on my table of contents. On the first page still for this one.
Thank you Dr Carter, Tony, Admin, support staff, and students.
Best Regards
Hafiz
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Officially changed study to mediation including research questions. Finished easy edits for methods and lit review which took alot longer than anticipated. Began medium edits for method section. Started drafting study implications, limitations and future directions. Did not work on purpose statement but can now be more clear after settling on mediation study. Tomorrow plan to start with medium method edits and work until lunch. Then, take a break with the purpose statement and TOC before getting back to medium method edits.
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Devin you are making great progress. Welcome back to Day 3 of the DWR
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Welcome to day 3 of the Dissertation Writing Retreat
Each and every one of you who have returned today, I congratulate you. It is essential that you work daily on your dissertation. Your dissertation expresses gratitude for your resolve to finish what you started. It’s not easy but that is not what you signed up for when you applied to graduate school.
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Good Morning,
Yesterday was a success. I completed my first data analysis, met and talked with Dr. CV, and dug into my theoretical framework. I found more than ten articles. My plan for today is to summarize ten research articles about my theoretical framework and transfer my data to NVivo.
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Asi, congratulations why to go completing the first data analysis. A spreadsheet as discussed yesterday really helps with the Literature Review. Keep at it Asi you are doing great!
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Yesterday, the workshops about talking to family about the time I need for writing directly applied to me. I have been dealing with a variety of interruptions from family who believe their concerns are more urgent than my writing. Not wanting to take further time away from my writing, I have had to pause a couple of times and make up for the time later. I am thus grateful for the advice to have serious conversations about what I need in order to limit these distractions, though I admit it is frustrating when people just assume I’m “busy”. This work takes time, and because I am the first social scientist in my family overall, and a first-generation Ph.D. on my maternal side part of the protection of that time will require firmer boundaries. I am grateful for these writing sessions because these obstacles became clearer when I had an external pressure to remain committed to my writing. I did not post my blog yesterday because I was frustrated that I did not do more than one task with these distractions, but I woke up today realizing that one task catapulted me in the right direction with a variety of projects. In spending time reading the Proposal Cookbook and responding to the prompts to write my statement of purpose, I feel more confident about the organization for the rest of my proposal. I also reviewed the cookbook “ingredients” and just listed out in one-sentence, the answers to the prompts. After the afternoon workshop, I used the advice about working with an advisor to write a detailed memo about how the AGEP writing retreat helped me workshop my research question and how I plan to approach the next draft of my prospectus. I feel like my adviser will know that my work is not just deductive theorization, but now focused around stronger research questions.
Today I will finish reading the cookbook and answering the questions. I used the table of contents exercise by Dr. Carter-Veale to make a “Post-AGEP prospectus draft”. In the afternoon, I will use p. 84 as a guide to add details to the prospectus document. On Thursday and Friday, I will spend some time reviewing the transcripts of my research, and some notes in order to write broadly about examples from the data that answer my research question about collectives. I believe addressing these items will fill gaps from my “Pre-AGEP prospectus draft” and give insight into how I plan to continue editing the document.
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Keep pressing on!
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Good morning. I still have a couple pages of my theory to tighten, which I’m hoping to finish before my meeting at 11:15. Then this afternoon I can work on the summary of organizations and hopefully also the 3 figures I need to make.
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Sara these goals are very focused. Keep up that focus.
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