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A lot of writing advice may be just futile for scholars. Why?

PhD students have a huge amount of writing advice available to them. There are large number of books, blogs and articles that are going around and increasing in numbers to extend advice to PhD writers so that they can handle it easily. However most of that advice is similar and does not come to much help to the writer.

Some of the most commonly found tips are:
1.You must write every day, from the beginning of your PhD
2.Do not think too much while writing as this may obstruct the flow of ideas
3.It is better to have the work done rather than have perfect work
4.Rewriting is an integral part of writing and need not be taken as a separate pressure or load.

Most of these tips are known by all they should work for all but despite knowing them a lot of scholars are found badly stressed with the writing process. This is because advice that is common to all may not necessarily be sufficient for all.

All those people who usually give writing advice are writers themselves and mostly they would be applying those tips in their own lives. But writing is not a straight path. It is a process of immense complexity and narrowing it down a single statement advice is actual oversimplification of the complexity of the process.
The reason I think these tips do not work is that you need to incorporate a skill to apply those tips in a customised manner for your own benefit. You need to leave the simplification of the advice and the subtlety behind to be able to make it useful for you.

When you read advice from various corners, you may find a lot of theoretical models that bring skill development but it is your expertise end of the day that will determine the amount of effort you have taken. When you are an amateur, there is a lot of concentration wanted in each element of writing, but to a seasoned writer, most of the things come without any conscious effort.

This principle is not just applicable in sports coaching, but it flows equally well in creative activities also that to come in the flow of doing things effortlessly, you must have high level of expertise. However, you being good at something doesn’t necessarily makes you a good advisor too. It is ultimately the writer who has to polish and surface out those skills to be able to adopt and adhere to the tips given by the advisors.

General tips for writing a good conclusion

A lot of scholars think that a conclusion is nothing but just a summary of the key points or the restatement of the thesis. This may not be the only objective of writing a conclusion. The main objective is to remind the reader that the evidence you have presented has contributed to the thesis. Conclusion isn’t written without critical thinking as it should present the significance of what you have written and also clearly put across some conclusive thoughts on the larger implications of your argument.

The length of your c conclusion can be determined from the length of your essay. It can range from anything between one paragraphs to two or three paragraphs.

Being able to write an interesting and effective conclusion may require you to take care of few things particularly. If you also want to look at the conclusion as something that is beyond just mere summarization of the key points, here are few things you should take care of:

1.If the topic you have covered is emphasizing on current and contemporary problems, you must conclude by sending cautious signals to readers about the problem and its effects.
2.Give focused course of action for taking care of the problem
3.It is advisable to add an expert opinion or a powerful and applicable quote to the conclusion as it increases its weight
4.If you have the scope to accommodate personal references, include them with your own interpretation and personalised view
5.Link it up with the introduction and the statements you have mentioned here
6.Brief about any further possibility or scope for research and what avenues are available.

The field of your study does have an impact on the introduction and conclusion that you put up. Usually there is more scope to play around with the beginning or the end if you are working in the field of social sciences where exploratory and argumentative content can be incorporated. In some of the genres of academic writing where a lot of factual information is to be out across sand no scope of arguments is there conclusions may not be needed at all. You must know the specifications associated with your area of study so that you can plan around hat kind of an ending you should give to your academic document. Remember how apt and well-connected your ending is a clear reflection of your understanding and involvement in your topic

Think before you jump into a PhD

A lot of PhD students get lured into PhD programmes only because it appears to them as a very interesting and appealing field which they see many in their social circle and they feel that having a doctor degree would give them plenty of employment opportunities in both academics as well as industry.

Often to lure students into a PhD programme coordinators and universities may tempt them by saying that there would be up teen employment opportunities available for them and how there package would at the least, double up by the time they complete their thesis. You may even here a lot if examples related to this often. However, even if you want to believe this or even if the statistics may be true, know that it would take at least 5 to 6 years for your PhD to complete you programme and the similar market analysis may not be applicable then and your industry may have altogether different demands or requirements which may not line up with your PhD.

In addition, if you see statistics with people climbing up the ladder of success after completing PhD, you may also find statistics about people who quit their PhD midway but still end up getting phenomenal success and start earning good even at the time you are busy completing your dissertation to be able to earn well in the future.

The gist of the matter and discussion here is never enrol into s PhD programme because you think it is a hot topic now, you never know how “hot” it would remain in the future by the time you have completed it.

So don’t go into a field just because it is hot right now. It may be very cold in a few years from now.
Every industry, topic and field if study has a life cycle like all other things. The wise scholars are those who jump into a particular research when they feel that it is still at a nascent stage and they can predict and foresee it becoming a more relevant and hot topic in the times to come. Whatever contribution they make in this area remains to be novel and innovative. So they become the ones who exploit the opportunity as compared to those who enter late.
Success though is a contribution of luck and insight but being proactive is very important and you must only enter into a tough and challenging PhD programme when you feel that you have enough time in this field to show your mettle and use the degree to your materialistic and intellectual intellect.

Keep self-care as priority in 2016

It is the first quarter of the New Year and many of us began the year with resolutions. It is trend that can be proved by statistics that most of these resolutions are meant to be broken. But now that it is the second month of the year already, you must have made and broken many a resolutions by now and like every year, perhaps given up on making new ones. But there is this one promise you can make for yourself, even if you feel it is too late, you won’t find it difficult to keep up to it. It is to make 2016 a year of self-care.
For a long time now, I feel I have never had a break that has been away from the grind. It sometimes gets very overwhelming to feel sailing amongst deadlines of projects and assignments to be completed, leave along family and other professional and social obligations.

Irrespective of what my schedule and routine is, I have decided that in this year I am going to resolute to care for myself, other than caring for others things.
I have devised for myself, my own perception of self-care and the definition may have subjectivity for each one as for each one the priorities for self can be different. For me self-care is coming back to my place early and alone and sit back with a cup of coffee and my favourite book. Treating myself to my favourite coffee in my favourite company is also self-care.

Making time for ourselves for the small little things we need to be doing to ensure that we stay happy and healthy not just physically but also emotionally and psychologically is perhaps the most practical and applicable definition of self-care in today’s time. And these small little minuscule efforts among the other herculean tasks can go a long way in restoring the fun and positivity in your life.
I suggest and insist that in this New Year, you find both big and small ways to take care of yourself and yourself only without any other interest involved. This can and has to be done among all other chaos that exists in your life and will continue to exist simultaneously.

So, do you think to have self-care in your agenda for the week? What are your goals and themes related to that? It will be good to know all the diversity in preferences here!

How to write good and effective topic sentences?

The body of a research dissertation includes a lot of paragraphs whereby each one discussed new topics that add value to the content of the thesis. So every time that you start writing a paragraph, you must have a topic sentence that unifies the content of the paragraph and also makes sure that the paragraph has discussed the topic coherently.
Know that a topic sentence is a single sentence and it unifies that states a single idea or topic in the paragraph. It must always be the face of the paragraph, as in the first sentence of each paragraph so that the reader gets an idea about the theme of the paragraph and the way it will be discussed in the paragraph. In addition, it also helps the reader to prove the thesis statement and specify the order of the paragraph content. The reader with the development from each thesis statement is able to understand the smooth flow of the thesis with a consistent flow. If the thesis statements don’t establish the connectivity between the paragraphs, it appears as illogical or sudden shifts.
Once the topic sentence has been presented the writer can give the background information followed by the in depth discussion on the facts, arguments and analysis. The final leg of the paragraph should be the wrap up connection between the discussion in the paragraphs, the topic sentences and the main analysis so that the gist of the information does not get diluted somewhere in the middle and stays within the readers mind. The writer must have the tact to transition smoothly from one topic to the next so that the reader can clearly understand why a new topic is being discussed. Some connecting words can be used in the topic sentence to establish the connectivity in the paragraphs and make the reader believe that he is reading a document that is transiting him to a better level of understanding holistically.
A seasoned writer is the one who knows how to correctly and effectively use topic sentences so that he does justice to the document and the content of the document and facilitates the comprehension of the reader. For those who fail to use these topic sentences, particularly in lengthy documents often cause the reader to lose grip of reading somewhere through the journey because they feel lost and unconnected in the journey.