Your Literature Review Doesn’t Have to Be a Yawn “A literature review?” I thought bedazzled as I came out of my thesis supervisor’s office. Why would he ask me to write a literature review for a prestigious journal when I hadn’t published any scientific papers yet? My initial surge of adrenaline wore off as I envisioned […]
Writing and Publishing
How to Motivate Yourself to Write a Thesis When You’d Rather Scrub Your Bathroom
How Do You Get Motivated to Write a Thesis When You’d Rather Do Anything Else? I was awakened from my day dream by a loud knock on my door. I rinsed the bathroom disinfectant off my hands and went to open the door It was another grad student from the dorm returning a casserole dish […]
How to Stay Focused on Your Thesis When You Just Wanna Finish Grad School
I was back to square one in the beginning of my sixth year in graduate school. After a 2 hour discussion, my three committee members concluded that about 80% of the data I had generated up to that point was not suitable for my thesis. Several of my cell cultures had been contaminated with yeast which compromised […]
To Finish Your PhD You Need a New Strategy
Working Harder Is Not The Key To Finish Your PhD “I have no idea what I need to do to finish my PhD” “Feeling completely stuck in graduate school! Is it even worth staying?” “I work all the time, but I make no progress on my Dissertation” These are phrases I have heard from PhD […]
How You Can Overcome Dissertation Writer’s Block Even If You Feel Really Stuck
How Writer’s Block Sneaks Up on You While Working on Your Dissertation Do you every struggle with writer’s block with your Dissertation? Those days when you just stare at the computer screen not and the words just aren’t coming? I went through a period of writer’s block last February. For weeks I was trying to come […]
Don’t Let Your Thesis Proposal Keep You Stuck in Grad School
What does an ideal thesis proposal look like? My friend, Marc, a PhD in electrical engineering, described graduate school as being thrown into the Atlantic Ocean with a paddleboat. I love this analogy, because it captures how so many graduate students feel: struggling to keep their head above the water with no one in sight […]