Why is Writing a Dissertation So Scary? When Aileen, a Chemistry PhD student, started graduate school, she didn’t think that writing a Dissertation would be a challenge. She passed her PhD candidacy exam with perfect grades and had a great relationship with her PhD thesis supervisor. Fast forward several years… As Aileen was beginning her […]
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7 Reasons Why Bright Students Drop Out of Grad School
Dropping Out of Grad School Is A Silent Epidemic Dropping out of grad school has a high financial and emotional cost for students and their families. Every year about 50% of grad students drop out of doctoral programs. But, none of my professors told me this when I decided to apply to a PhD program. In fact, […]
Getting Into the Flow of Writing a Doctoral Dissertation
Writing a doctoral dissertation is a time-consuming process even if that is all that you do. But the reality is that almost no one does it in a vacuum. Life goes on at a fast pace. You have personal relationships with your family and significant other, finances, a household to manage (not to mention heaping […]
Elements of a Successful Thesis Proposal
The first time I went to a thesis defense was the summer before my sophomore year, when I worked in a Chemistry lab . Alice (not her real name) defended her thesis after 6 six years in graduate school (average for department), and her defense went so well that no one realized how much hardship […]