You asked for them!
1. Choose your advisor carefully! If you are to successfully complete your dissertation, your advisor must be accessible, responsive, and willing to advocate for you. He/she must give you specific, detailed and written direction when you need it. Replace any advisor who is does not cooperate with you in the above ways.
2. Be careful with topic choice. Only consider topics which are "do-able", given the population you have available for empirical study.
3. Do the research first. No matter what your advisor says, you cannot prepare a Proposal without first having completed your Review of Literature. Identify, retrieve, copy your sources. Write Chapter II first!
4. Be assertive in dealing with your advisor and committee. Do not accept long waits for an appointment or for him/her to review work you submit. Let your advisor know up front what you will do to make the process easier, such as submitting drafts and meeting deadlines. Let your advisors know what you expect: the support, advice and direction for which they are paid.
5. Resolve to work on your dissertation every day. Read one article, write one paragraph-whatever you know is an achievable goal. Don't dwell on the time you have wasted in the past.
6. Protect yourself. Every interaction you have with advisor, committee and institution should be documented in writing. Communicate with your advisor via certified mail and email. Keep copies of everything you submit and of every critique, direction and comment. Insist upon written responses to your submissions.
7. Meet with your advisor regularly. Tape record all meetings and send your advisor a summary of each meeting via certified mail, within 24 hours. Include this statement: "The above is a summary of our discussion, and of the direction you have given me. If I have misunderstood or forgotten any of your directions, please let me know by return mail. If I do not hear from you I will make the revisions indicated and re-submit (insert time frame)."
8. Talk with your family and friends and enlist their support. Let them know that you need their help during this stressful time. Present the dissertation process as a life/career goal with a finite end. Let them know when you are feeling stressed and overwhelmed.
9. Take control. Understand that this dissertation is your project, undertaken by you for a purpose. Examine that purpose. Is your goal still clear? Why are you stuck? If your advisor is holding you back, get a new one. If your own procrastination is the problem, figure out the cause. Accept that only you have the power to put the dissertation process back on track.
10. Get help. Are you stuck because you don't know how to start? Do you need assistance with research or writing or editing? Do you lack a solid support system? Consider reaching out to sympathetic professors, colleagues, friends. Enlist the help of organizations like dissertation.net.
Okay, I said 10, but here is one more. It might be the most important:
11. Don't believe the myths. "My dissertation topic must be totally original." "My dissertation must be perfect." "Everyone knows that advisors and committees put you through hell....it's part of the deal." Clients come to me every day with these misconceptions. Here are the truths: No dissertation topic can possibly be entirely original. If it was, there would be no research base. Successful dissertations deal with relatively common topics. The original work comes from your specific empirical study. There is no such thing as a perfect dissertation! The successful dissertation writer works until the document is as good as it can be. She submits her work for review even though it isn't perfect, and expects helpful feedback from her advisor. When the dissertation is finished it will be good....perhaps great.....but it will never be perfect. As to the last, and perhaps most damaging myth- it is based on an outmoded concept. Traditionally, the dissertation "process" involved more than the research and writing of a document. It was seen as a rite of passage involving constant demands for rewrites and revisions and even total changes in topic. Enlightened academic institutions no longer permit advisors to force doctoral candidates through an unnecessary series of hoops simply to prove their worthiness to enter the rarified realm of PhD's. You should demand honest, professional, timely, rational and relevant feedback and direction from your advisor. If you don't get it, get a new advisor and make sure that your institution knows why you are insisting on a the change. Remember that you are a consumer of the university's services and that you have the right to effective advisement.
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Diane Kennedy's Top 10 Dissertation Strategies
