50 Things to Think About When Writing a Thesis: Paving Your Own Path to Submission

✍ Scribed by Donna Starks, Margaret J. Robertson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2023
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 136
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Moving away from a traditional ‘one size fits all’ approach, this thesis guide encourages readers to find their own path to submission, demonstrating that the process of writing is as unique as the individual candidate.

This book shows thesis writers how to embrace the individual nature of writing, bringing their own unique identities and skillsets to their thesis. Each idea is presented as one that has multiple solutions, depending on who the readers are and what they want to achieve. The book guides the reader on identifying their own ways of working, their own particular strengths, as well as their unique voice and how to use these as tools to navigate the process of writing and surviving the thesis. It also provides practical guidance on elements such as the literature review and methodology, considerations around language and how to deal with life after submission.

Offering a unique perspective on the process and experience of completing a thesis, this book will be an essential companion for students completing a thesis at Honors, Master's or PhD level.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Acknowledgement to Country
Table of Contents
List of Figures
Preface
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1: Preliminaries
Overview
Why this book?
What each chapter in our book offers
How to use this book
References
Chapter 2: Understanding yourself and preparing yourself for the journey ahead
Overview
1. Understanding yourself: A pathway to success
Understanding your ways of knowing
Understanding your ways of being and doing
Understanding your ways of communicating
2. Staying healthy
Physical health
Emotional health
3. Nurturing your personal relationships
4. Developing your academic support networks
Notes
References
Chapter 3: Understanding your identities as a researcher, supervisee, and thesis writer
Overview
5. Your emerging researcher identities
6. Planning for your professional self – post degree
7. Seeing yourself as a supervisee: your requirements for a supervisor
8. Seeing yourself as a supervisee: assessing your requirements for supervision sessions
9. Developing your thesis writer identities
10. Are you prepared for the writing journey? Your initial drafts
11. Are you prepared for the writing journey? Revisions
12. Are you prepared for the thesis writing journey? Patience
13. How useful is it to replicate your supervisor’s style?
14. Engaging further with imagined researcher and thesis writer identities
Notes
References
Chapter 4: Organizing the larger pieces of your thesis
Overview
15. Your front matter
16. Your introduction
17. What’s the big deal with definitions?
18. Creating your research question
19. Asserting yourself in your literature review
20. How you can write up your research methodology
21. Writing up your findings and discussion?
22. What’s your conclusion?
23. Which referencing style is for you?
24. Is a thesis by/with publication for you?
Notes
References
Chapter 5: Writing yourself into your thesis in small but important ways
Overview
25. Your headings
26. What about paragraph length?
27. What is so important about topic sentences?
28. Be wary of summary sentences
29. Footnotes and appendices to tuck away information
30. Tips on writing sentences for impact
31. Is your thesis reporting on the past or engaging in the present?
32. Your words matter! Nouns: the fewer, the better, but choose them wisely!
33. Verbs: Powerful friends, horrible enemies
34. Being an expert: using modal verbs for effect (words such as ‘can, may, might’)
35. Being cautious and being assertive: Adjectives and adverbs
36. Authorship: when to use a personal pronoun, ‘I/we’
37. Gendered pronouns and the political self
38. Things that don’t ‘really’ matter (that much)!
Words, spelling
Grammar
Punctuation
Other language issues
Notes
References
Chapter 6: What could possibly go wrong?
Overview
39. Your personal life is a mess!
40. Supervision
41. Your timetable is out of sync!
42. You are struggling to see yourself as a researcher
43. Feedback!
44. It’s not the right time for your thesis
Notes
References
Chapter 7: Finally done!
Overview
45. Take a moment to celebrate your achievement
46. So what happens now? The postpartum void
47. Welcome to the next step on your professional journey
48. A heads up for writing in a different genre
49. Traps for the unwary
50. Getting your examination results
Notes
References
Index