Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day: A Guide to Starting, Revising, and Finishing Your Doctoral Thesis
by Joan Bolker
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Book Summary Information
Author: Joan BolkerEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1998-08-15
ISBN: 080504891X
Number of pages: 184
Publisher: Owl Books
Book Reviews of Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day: A Guide to Starting, Revising, and Finishing Your Doctoral Thesis
Book Review: An essential book for grad students in the humanities
Summary: 5 Stars
I believe that this is one of the most helpful guides to writing a dissertation ever published. If you are in the humanities, it is the first book to buy when you enter your program. (The second should be "Professors as Writers" by Boice).
Bolker suggests that students write early and often as they shape their dissertations. And she'll help you find ways to write early and often. Keeping the critic away from the creator is a key element of her program for daily writing. Her hints, especially the concept of a "zero draft" (an even rougher, looser, beginning phase that preceeds the "first draft") will help you avoid or overcome procrastination.
She has useful suggestions for finding a topic, setting up a dissertation support group, choosing and working with your advisor, and taking stock of your process along the way. She will help you take a more practical, supportive stance towards yourself and to stay on task and get finished.
The content of the book is especially useful for students in the humanities. It will be very useful to those in the social sciences as well. However, I believe that this book is comparitively unhelpful for those in the hard sciences or other fields where the structure of the dissertation is a series of two or three journal articles. Her advice about finding a topic is superb for those who must create their own path and have a huge range of choices in subject matter, but doesn't really apply to students working in a lab or with a pre-determined, pre-existing data set. In a related fashion, her advice about choosing advisors is extremely helpful in cases where choices can be made in part on the basis of personality fit but doesn't really apply when it is a specific advisor's grant support and research project that is supporting your doctoral studies. (For students in the sciences, I would strongly recommend starting with "A Ph.D. Is Not Enough".)
Bolker's writing is clear and graceful. Her professional authority comes from years of experience as the cofounder of the Harvard Writing Center. Great credential, eh? Perhaps because of her experience as a counselor, she has more psychological saavy than almost anyone I've read who writes about the academic career path. There is compasion in the tone of her words. Her personal history also explains her empathetic stance -- she began and failed one doctoral degree but went on to later complete a dissertation and get an Ed.D.. She is personally motivated to help prevent people from experiencing the difficulties she once faced.
I'm a clinical psychologist who coaches grad students, post-docs and faculty, and this is one of the first books I recommend (www.successfulacademic.com). I also teach graduate students at UNC -- courses like "Publish not Perish" and "Graduate Student Survival Skills." Students who buy this book at my recommendation almost invariably thank me for introducing them to Bolker's work.
If you can't afford to hire a personal coach, if you are blocked, or just want to proceed even more effectively, this is a great place to start.
More Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day: A Guide to Starting, Revising, and Finishing Your Doctoral Thesis reviews:
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Summary of Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day: A Guide to Starting, Revising, and Finishing Your Doctoral Thesis
Expert writing advice from the editor of the Boston Globe best-seller, The Writer's Home Companion
Dissertation writers need strong, practical advice, as well as someone to assure them that their struggles aren't unique. Joan Bolker, midwife to more than one hundred dissertations and co-founder of the Harvard Writing Center, offers invaluable suggestions for the graduate-student writer. Using positive reinforcement, she begins by reminding thesis writers that being able to devote themselves to a project that truly interests them can be a pleasurable adventure. She encourages them to pay close attention to their writing method in order to discover their individual work strategies that promote productivity; to stop feeling fearful that they may disappoint their advisors or family members; and to tailor their theses to their own writing style and personality needs. Using field-tested strategies she assists the student through the entire thesis-writing process, offering advice on choosing a topic and an advisor, on disciplining one's self to work at least fifteen minutes each day; setting short-term deadlines, on revising and defing the thesis, and on life and publication after the dissertation. Bolker makes writing the dissertation an enjoyable challenge.
Dissertation writers need strong, practical advice, as well as someone to assure them that their struggles aren't unique. Joan Bolker, midwife to more than one hundred dissertations and co-founder of the Harvard Writing Center, offers invaluable suggestions for the graduate-student writer. Using positive reinforcement, she begins by reminding thesis writers that being able to devote themselves to a project that truly interests them can be a pleasurable adventure. She encourages them to pay close attention to their writing method in order to discover their individual work strategies that promote productivity; to stop feeling fearful that they may disappoint their advisors or family members; and to tailor their theses to their own writing style and personality needs. Using field-tested strategies she assists the student through the entire thesis-writing process, offering advice on choosing a topic and an advisor, on disciplining one's self to work at least fifteen minutes each day; setting short-term deadlines, on revising and defing the thesis, and on life and publication after the dissertation. Bolker makes writing the dissertation an enjoyable challenge.
"Fifteen minutes!" you say. "That's too good to be true!" Okay, author Joan Bolker admits she gave her book the title Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day to get the reader's attention. And she admits that it's unlikely you'll actually finish a dissertation at that speed. As she tells her clients, however, a mere 15 minutes is much better than no writing at all when they're stuck. As a clinical psychologist who cofounded the Harvard Writing Center, Bolker has helped hundreds of writers complete their dissertations. She offers suggestions on how to create a writing addiction so that you feel incomplete if you don't write every day and stresses the need to set reasonable goals and deadlines for yourself to keep from getting discouraged. She also offers strategies for dealing with both internal and external distractions and for fending off writer's block. Even more important is the advice on some of the more awkward issues related to dissertation writing, such as how to choose your adviser carefully. (For example, when faced with the tradeoff between a famous advisor who is inaccessible and a less famous advisor who is willing to make time for you, Bolker advises, "If choosing a politically advantageous, famous advisor makes it unlikely that you'll complete your degree, it's clearly not worth it.") The book even includes a helpful appendix for advisers that could become the basis for an honest discussion of what student and adviser can expect from each other. Throughout this excellent book, Bolker acts as a therapist, cheerleader, and drill sergeant, all rolled into one.
While some of the book's advice is of interest only to dissertation writers, much of the information--on battling writer's block, for instance--is valuable to anybody engaged in writing. Rather than being filled with rules defining how to become a great writer, Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day is about finding the process by which you can be the most productive--it's a set of exercises that you can use to find out more about you and the way you write. Along the way, you'll do a bit of writing. And that's what matters, especially when you experience writer's block--as Bolker says, "Write anything, because writing is writing." With its helpful advice and supportive tone, Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day should be required reading for anyone considering writing a dissertation. --C.B. Delaney
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