PhD Thesis Writing Epiphany
I have been trying to write a coherent draft of chapter 2 of my thesis for a couple of months at least. I’ve made some progress and have a first draft completed, but it’s still very much a first draft. The major criticisms of it by my supervisors have been a lack of clarity in the narrative, in that I’m not leading the reader explicitly enough.
So, I have been asked to write an argument plan for the chapter, to state my arguments and positions throughout the chapter. It has been an excellent, if not brain aching, exercise because it has forced me to look at the very nature of my research.
The epiphany I’m talking about happened about 5 minutes ago as I was working on that argument plan. For a start, that plan IS my thesis, and I hadn’t seen it like that before. Secondly, that writing a PhD thesis is about some very deep thought. I realise that this might sound a bit flippant or obvious, so I’ll try to clarify.
For me, most academic tasks are about thinking - and everything in my academic life, from school to Masters degree was relatively easy provided I was interested enough in it to think about it. PhD level work requires a level of thinking that is imho significantly higher than a Masters - exponentially so. So whereas my lazy brain previously could think its way out of any hard work, it just isn’t sufficient for a PhD. Yep, epiphany = wake up call…
For me this now means that I have to increase my daily time revisiting the same issues and arguments, repeatedly until there is greater clarity in my mind than there is now. This is the deeper level of thinking that I’m talking about - almost like a long deep contemplation of the issues….a PhD meditation even. What I do know is that I have been wrong in thinking that I had spent sufficient time considering these arguments at any level deeper than a few references.
The real PITA is that I want/need to get back to the experiment and get some data in, but it seems like I’m being dragged back to the drawing board by Mr Miyagi…
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