An Expert Manual on Completing a PhD Dissertation

You may be turning into the home stretch of your graduate career. That doctorate you worked so hard for is coming into view and you have to finish up your dissertation. There are some ideas for completing the work in a very organized way.

• Write Your Formal Introduction Last of All. You should naturally have a draft of that introduction prepared but writing the formal one is the last thing. The reason simply is during your research you may have discovered things that were not considered in the first introduction. Doing the formal one again permits you to do some revisions.


• Double Check Your Guidelines .You have worked very hard on this document and you do not want it tossed back at you for revision. This will happen if you have not paid attention to the original guidelines. Be sure you check them as you complete the work.


• Have Somebody Else Proofread the Dissertation. It is not just a case of you having tired eyes. You are too close to the material and you have spent a lot of time going over the content. You can easily forget or ignore some mistakes. Another pair of eyes to pick up a rather quickly.


• Respond to Unanswered Questions in the Conclusion. There can still be some points to ponder which you have not fully addressed in the body of the doctoral work. It is understandable this could happen. Use the conclusion to address those.


• Keep Your Eyes on the Forest and not the Trees. Please accept the reality your dissertation is not going to be the greatest work of research you’ll ever do. That is yet to come. What you’re writing is the document which will allow you to move into your profession as a recognized authority. That great scholarly piece of work will be something develop later on.

Check your time on all of this as well. You may have just a few weeks left on the work, or perhaps a few months. Nevertheless, the end is coming into sight, and the hard work and the sacrifice of all your free time is about to be made all worthwhile. Just as a runner coming towards the finish line that final burst of energy is all you really need. You are about to cross the finish and put an end to a long period of very hard work. The last few yards simply need to be covered.