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Here Are Some Successful Ways to Defend Your Thesis

Thesis writing is an intensive activity. But your PhD defence is an all the more intensive task. What does it take to give a successful PhD defence? There can be ways to prepare successfully, keep your stress levels in control and ensure that you have high chances of success. The experience of everyone’s PhD defence is unique and unpredictable. Your presentation and talk would only be as good as you want it to be. Know that if you have written a good quality of thesis, you can be confident and reassured that you would get good results.

1. Do not underestimate and do a lot of practice talks: if you want to give a good thesis talk, know that you have to practice multiple number of times. It isn’t a good idea to cram it up all, just right before you talk. You need to have a lot of practice talks. This does not mean that you have to mug up each and every word in your thesis but it is important to be well polished. It helps to time your talk so that it is neither too lengthy and nor too draggy and you leave enough time to take care of the questions.

2. Hear other theses defence talks: it is a very good way to familiarise yourself with your defence practice, to hear as many defence talks as you can. You would be very lucky if you get some defence samples in your subject area. You would get a very good idea whether the other scholars were energetic, enthusiastic, assertive, rough, and nervous. What were their key areas of preparation or loop holes that you can pick up your practice from?

3. Do a mock drill with your friends/relatives: all those who are familiar with your topic can be of great help to you by asking you questions that can be unexpected or unpredictable. It helps to build up your confidence and it may so happen sometimes that your lab mates may ask you questions that may truly come up in the defence.

4. Have a list of your own questions: Even if you have read your thesis up teen number of times, you need to read it with a perspective that you are able to create for yourself a list of questions that the committee could ask you. With that perspective you would be able to read it with complete in-depth understanding of the topic and an eye for detail like the committee is going to be having.

All this and some more is what is required to be sure that your oral defence is nothing but a smooth sail and leads you towards becoming a doctor.

How to Become a More Effective Writer

Writing is a skill that we all learn through practice, not all are born to become writers but PhD scholars have not much choice but to be good at writing. But the good news is that it isn’t very difficult to be a good writer. There are some areas on which you would have to necessarily focus so that your writing depicts what you intend to.

Realise and console yourself that you aren’t the only person who is struggling with finding enough time or motivation for writing. Almost everyone sails in the same boat and that is very reassuring. The way to deal with it is give yourself an appointment with writing and make sure it isn’t an easy one to cancel.

Know that when you sit to write, you got to be writing only. You will be amazed that a lot of work gets done when you know that while you are sitting to write, that is the only thing you are doing. You work average would improve significantly and you would see great productivity coming out of your dedicated and consistent efforts.

Become a spectator of other dedicated writers. You will see that it works wonders. Seeing other people do creative work brings out your own creative juices flowing. Joining a writing group for this can also be a great and a very useful idea. You would compulsively be involved in creative writing just for the reason that you don’t get or feel left out.

Have for yourself fixed writing session. Structuring your work around writing sessions can help to enrich the productivity of your work.

Join a writing group that gives you a mixed excitement. Where you not just look forward to writing initiatives and motivation but also discussions, blogging and sometimes even celebration is important.

It is ok to ask for advice and sharing ideas and tips. Become more open to this as it is one of the greatest means of learning new ideas, concepts and techniques of writing.

Organise for yourself those hide and write sessions. It will take you some time but you would soon and surely start enjoying the “me” time and the kind of productive output it gives you. Don’t forget to reward yourself for the small accomplishments you get in the journey.

Eventually, remember that it is your own journey and it doesn’t need to be compared to anybody. Your success is a measure of your growth from your starting point. Keeping that in mind, move forward and see yourself getting better and a more seasoned writer.

Is Your Dissertation Methodology Your Most Difficult Chapter? Here Is How to Make It Easy!!

Are you looking for a way to simplify your methodology chapter and don’t know how to do it? I am sure looking at these tips you could get cues on how to deal better with the most difficult chapter of your thesis:

Problem: The base of the methodology chapter is derived from the previous chapter focussing on the Literature Review. Hence, at the onset, to regain focus, it is important that you di a quick recap of the research question of your dissertation. Have a very clear and precise definition of the problem that you are wanting to address through your research.

Approach: Next you need to have the approach in place for taking up the primary research. Not only would this help you but the reader also would be able to simplify the understanding by being able to contextualise the methodology. The approach should target to clear all ambiguity in the mind of the researcher, in terms of rationale, justification, sampling etc. so that both you as well as the reader has no confusions whatsoever about the methodology section of the chapter.

Description of technicalities: A good research opens up to the challenge of the research community to take up the same research and reproduce the results. A confident and authentic research would have all technicalities explained in detail to help those who wished to work on reproducing the same results.

Validation: It is necessary to give sound reasoning for choosing the methods that you have adopted to take up the research. More so if the methodology that you have chosen is novel or unique from the previous research that has been conducted in your area. In that case at every stage there should be a valid and strong justification for the methodology adopted by you. Also deal with all concerns linked to the reliability and validity of your research. Be particular about giving importance to small but important issues such as accuracy, precision, Scope of error, statistical significance etc. They add a lot of weight to your research.

Sampling technique adopted: Even I you have brought up sampling under validity and reliability issue, it is important enough to be given special attention. The sample size has aggregate role in defining the statistical significance of your results.

Do We Have Someone Like a Dynamic Writer?

Scholars before venturing into their PhD programme get a lot of warning and guidance about brushing up their statistical knowledge. Research knowledge is something that scholars think is the only thing that would be required from them to sail through the PhD journey. But still things don’t seem to be working fine for most of the scholars. There is something that is needed to get desired results and that is to be a dynamic and productive writer and not just a great researcher. This would ensure that you don’t struggle with consistency in your writing attempts. What is it that you can do to get those dynamic writing skills in your tasks? Well!! Nothing special and out of the box is needed. Some commonly predictable traits such as discipline, consistency and meticulous planning are easy to guess and can be worked around if one has a high level of perseverance. There are some modifications that you need to make in your day to day life and writing pattern that could surprise you with productivity in writing that you could imagine before:

1. Set for yourself short term plans: A researcher isn’t any less than an organisation in himself. He has to function as a moving organisation that has for itself set objectives which are obtainable, realistic and clear so that to achieve those objectives he can have designated tasks. Note here that if your objectives are way too long term, you would find yourself getting lost somewhere midway. Getting a doctoral degree is a long term objective which would be a compilation of many short term objectives. Do not over stretch yourself and be fair and realistic here and see that how the short term challenges can greatly influence the way you plan your writing and depict productivity in it.

2. Do not surrender in front of circumstances: Are you one of those who feels that circumstances control the way you function? If yes, I need to tell you that it isn’t the way you can be achieving what you have set out to. Circumstances are more often than not uncontrollable but the way you react to them is purely your own decision and largely responsible for the outcome that you get out of them. You can do this by modifying the way you give time to your writing so that you can minimise the impact it has on the consistency of your work.

Become a meticulous planner and plan your writing in a way that you would plan any other important task and see yourself and see the results coming out.

Study Tips That Every PhD Scholar Should Know Of!

PhD isn’t as simple as a walk in the park. All scholars have their fair share of struggles and to get some productivity and constructive outcome from their journey. If you are an avid reader and are fortunate enough to have an inspiring and encouraging mentor then you would have some good advice to simplify your journey. Hope some of these tips can help you in your journey:

Begin writing as soon as you can start: Writing often is the only way to learn how to write well. A consistent progress in your document would help you to deal with the obstacles as and when they get created. My suggestion to begin writing as early as possible in the course of your PhD is to improvise on your writing skills and become a seasoned writer by the time you are ready to deal with a full-fledged research paper. In addition, you collect content and re use at the subsequent stage of your course. Not only would it save your time when you sit to write your papers but it would also augment the quality of your document.

Read more than you can: For anyone who has told you that you need to read only research and topic related to your study, I wouldn’t support it. Reading a lot of papers gives you a very clear overview of your field of study and understand the important research done in your area but also gives you the understanding to avoid duplication of existing work and reinvention of the wheel but at the same time research is not the only challenge for a PhD scholar. There are challenges and hiccups related to non-academic issues such as time management, creativity, motivation and so on. Reading material that aids your dealing with such issues is a very good idea. It would help you to grow as a student and give you practical tips for development of essential soft skills required for the journey and the career ahead.

Look at the small signs of progress: It would become easier to lose motivation to continue working if you looked at only the bigger achievements as they would be only few and countable in the entire duration of the course. However, the small little accomplishments do pave the path for the bigger milestones an giving yourself a pat on the back for them now and then is a good idea to keep going ahead and moving forward.

Be generous with yourself, you and every PhD scholar deserves it.