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Defending Your Dissertation: A Guide

A woman in front of a bookshelf speaking to a laptop

Written by Luke Wink-Moran | Photo by insta_photos

Dissertation defenses are daunting, and no wonder; it’s not a “dissertation discussion,” or a “dissertation dialogue.” The name alone implies that the dissertation you’ve spent the last x number of years working on is subject to attack. And if you don’t feel trepidation for semantic reasons, you might be nervous because you don’t know what to expect. Our imaginations are great at making The Unknown scarier than reality. The good news is that you’ll find in this newsletter article experts who can shed light on what dissertations defenses are really like, and what you can do to prepare for them.

The first thing you should know is that your defense has already begun. It started the minute you began working on your dissertation— maybe even in some of the classes you took beforehand that helped you formulate your ideas. This, according to Dr. Celeste Atkins, is why it’s so important to identify a good mentor early in graduate school.

“To me,” noted Dr. Atkins, who wrote her dissertation on how sociology faculty from traditionally marginalized backgrounds teach about privilege and inequality, “the most important part of the doctoral journey was finding an advisor who understood and supported what I wanted from my education and who was willing to challenge me and push me, while not delaying me.  I would encourage future PhDs to really take the time to get to know the faculty before choosing an advisor and to make sure that the members of their committee work well together.”

Your advisor will be the one who helps you refine arguments and strengthen your work so that by the time it reaches your dissertation committee, it’s ready. Next comes the writing process, which many students have said was the hardest part of their PhD. I’ve included this section on the writing process because this is where you’ll create all the material you’ll present during your defense, so it’s important to navigate it successfully. The writing process is intellectually grueling, it eats time and energy, and it’s where many students find themselves paddling frantically to avoid languishing in the “All-But-Dissertation” doldrums. The writing process is also likely to encroach on other parts of your life. For instance, Dr. Cynthia Trejo wrote her dissertation on college preparation for Latin American students while caring for a twelve-year-old, two adult children, and her aging parents—in the middle of a pandemic. When I asked Dr. Trejo how she did this, she replied:

“I don’t take the privilege of education for granted. My son knew I got up at 4:00 a.m. every morning, even on weekends, even on holidays; and it’s a blessing that he’s seen that work ethic and that dedication and the end result.”

Importantly, Dr. Trejo also exercised regularly and joined several online writing groups at UArizona. She mobilized her support network— her partner, parents, and even friends from high school to help care for her son.

The challenges you face during the writing process can vary by discipline. Jessika Iwanski is an MD/PhD student who in 2022 defended her dissertation on genetic mutations in sarcomeric proteins that lead to severe, neonatal dilated cardiomyopathy. She described her writing experience as “an intricate process of balancing many things at once with a deadline (defense day) that seems to be creeping up faster and faster— finishing up experiments, drafting the dissertation, preparing your presentation, filling out all the necessary documents for your defense and also, for MD/PhD students, beginning to reintegrate into the clinical world (reviewing your clinical knowledge and skill sets)!”

But no matter what your unique challenges are, writing a dissertation can take a toll on your mental health. Almost every student I spoke with said they saw a therapist and found their sessions enormously helpful. They also looked to the people in their lives for support. Dr. Betsy Labiner, who wrote her dissertation on Interiority, Truth, and Violence in Early Modern Drama, recommended, “Keep your loved ones close! This is so hard – the dissertation lends itself to isolation, especially in the final stages. Plus, a huge number of your family and friends simply won’t understand what you’re going through. But they love you and want to help and are great for getting you out of your head and into a space where you can enjoy life even when you feel like your dissertation is a flaming heap of trash.”

While you might sometimes feel like your dissertation is a flaming heap of trash, remember: a) no it’s not, you brilliant scholar, and b) the best dissertations aren’t necessarily perfect dissertations. According to Dr. Trejo, “The best dissertation is a done dissertation.” So don’t get hung up on perfecting every detail of your work. Think of your dissertation as a long-form assignment that you need to finish in order to move onto the next stage of your career. Many students continue revising after graduation and submit their work for publication or other professional objectives.

When you do finish writing your dissertation, it’s time to schedule your defense and invite friends and family to the part of the exam that’s open to the public. When that moment comes, how do you prepare to present your work and field questions about it?

“I reread my dissertation in full in one sitting,” said Dr. Labiner. “During all my time writing it, I’d never read more than one complete chapter at a time! It was a huge confidence boost to read my work in full and realize that I had produced a compelling, engaging, original argument.”

There are many other ways to prepare: create presentation slides and practice presenting them to friends or alone; think of questions you might be asked and answer them; think about what you want to wear or where you might want to sit (if you’re presenting on Zoom) that might give you a confidence boost. Iwanksi practiced presenting with her mentor and reviewed current papers to anticipate what questions her committee might ask.  If you want to really get in the zone, you can emulate Dr. Labiner and do a full dress rehearsal on Zoom the day before your defense.

But no matter what you do, you’ll still be nervous:

“I had a sense of the logistics, the timing, and so on, but I didn’t really have clear expectations outside of the structure. It was a sort of nebulous three hours in which I expected to be nauseatingly terrified,” recalled Dr. Labiner.

“I expected it to be terrifying, with lots of difficult questions and constructive criticism/comments given,” agreed Iwanski.

“I expected it to be very scary,” said Dr. Trejo.

“I expected it to be like I was on trial, and I’d have to defend myself and prove I deserved a PhD,” said Dr Atkins.

And, eventually, inexorably, it will be time to present.  

“It was actually very enjoyable” said Iwanski. “It was more of a celebration of years of work put into this project—not only by me but by my mentor, colleagues, lab members and collaborators! I felt very supported by all my committee members and, rather than it being a rapid fire of questions, it was more of a scientific discussion amongst colleagues who are passionate about heart disease and muscle biology.”

“I was anxious right when I logged on to the Zoom call for it,” said Dr. Labiner, “but I was blown away by the number of family and friends that showed up to support me. I had invited a lot of people who I didn’t at all think would come, but every single person I invited was there! Having about 40 guests – many of them joining from different states and several from different countries! – made me feel so loved and celebrated that my nerves were steadied very quickly. It also helped me go into ‘teaching mode’ about my work, so it felt like getting to lead a seminar on my most favorite literature.”

“In reality, my dissertation defense was similar to presenting at an academic conference,” said Dr. Atkins. “I went over my research in a practiced and organized way, and I fielded questions from the audience.

“It was a celebration and an important benchmark for me,” said Dr. Trejo. “It was a pretty happy day. Like the punctuation at the end of your sentence: this sentence is done; this journey is done. You can start the next sentence.”

If you want to learn more about dissertations in your own discipline, don’t hesitate to reach out to graduates from your program and ask them about their experiences. If you’d like to avail yourself of some of the resources that helped students in this article while they wrote and defended their dissertations, check out these links:

The Graduate Writing Lab

https://thinktank.arizona.edu/writing-center/graduate-writing-lab

The Writing Skills Improvement Program

https://wsip.arizona.edu

Campus Health Counseling and Psych Services

https://caps.arizona.edu

https://www.scribbr.com/

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Getting to the Finish: Completing your Dissertation

Getting to the Finish: Completing your Dissertation

By Dr. Pressley Rankin

Recently, I have been reflecting on the dissertation process as a whole.  Five years ago, I finished my dissertation. Since then, I have been advising other doctoral students on getting through the process.  Recently, two of the students for whom I chaired have graduated. Thinking about all that I have seen, I wanted to blog about what I have learned during these last five years and give students tips on getting through and finishing their dissertation. There are three areas of advice I offer: a) knowing when to stop reading, b) building an effective working relationship with your chair, and c) growing as a scholar in your field.

The Dissertation is Unique

A doctoral dissertation is the final step in students’ doctoral journey. It marks a change from being a student to becoming a professional.  It is during that change that many things come up for students that can stand in the way of finishing.

Note, professional development isn’t the same as instruction. There are no textbooks to tell you how to complete your particular dissertation project. Each dissertation is a unique exercise.  It is special, like a snowflake. While there are many books that can give you hints and tips, this is ultimately your journey. No two dissertation journeys are the same.

That being said, there are some challenges or struggles that I have found students have in common during this process, and that commonality forms the basis of my advice.

Knowing when you have read enough

The dissertation topic is something that grows during the research and reading you have done throughout the program. Once you narrow down the final topic for your dissertation, you will still have a lot more reading, researching, and drafting to do.  Connecting the dots and defining the literature takes time and a lot of reading. But, when do you stop reading?

In my experience, the process of reading about your topic is like following a rabbit down a rabbit hole. Each new batch of literature you find is exciting and will often lead you down new paths of discovery. Those paths, however, can lead to more rabbit holes. Those rabbit holes lead to others and then to others. Soon you are in a strange land utterly unrelated to your topic.

To save yourself from that fate, think of your topic as a mission statement. It is your guide through the literature.  As you are reading and jumping down rabbit holes, look back to the topic as a gage to see how far you ventured from it. If the topic starts to seem far away, it is time to stop and go back. Once you get to the point that everything is a new rabbit hole, you have read enough on your topic.

The relationship with your Dissertation Chairperson

The relationship between you and your chair on the dissertation journey is one of mentorship and guidance. The chair is your guide to help you navigate through this stage of your life. Your chair is not your instructor, your editor, your best friend, your mother or father, or your guru. The chair and ultimately your committee, are professionals who have completed the task you are attempting to complete. They are there to make sure you complete the task properly, professionally, and timely.

The relationship you form with your chair can last a lifetime. Your chair can help you publish, find jobs, navigate the politics of academia, develop a consulting practice, or give you advice about moving up the corporate ladder. Stay on your chair’s good side and here are some tips:

  • Don’t ignore your chair’s advice. Listen and be open-minded.
  • Don’t expect your chair to edit your work or to decipher your rough draft. Always give your best work to your chair.
  • You are responsible for building an effective communication channel. Don’t expect your chair is going to hunt you. They have full-time jobs and other commitments.
  • As above, you are responsible for timelines. If you submitted work and haven’t heard back in the required amount of time, follow-up. Don’t be shy.
  • If you disagree with something, ask about it, but you must have a valid research-supported point. Let the research do the talking not your opinion.
  • Your chair, committee, and others will have feedback for you. At different times, they may ask you to remove something, then later ask you to add it back. The dissertation draft is a living thing. Changing one word or one idea can change a lot more.
  • Expect you will go back and forth several times until it is right. Think of it as a learning roller-coaster and sit back and enjoy the ride.

CityU works hard to hire and train the best possible people to be chairs and committee members for our students.  We pride ourselves on creating processes that make the dissertation as easy as something so life changing can be. We are committed to getting your finished.

You are a scholar

The dissertation journey is a journey of scholarship. You are learning not only how to think but how to create new knowledge. Contributing to knowledge creation is a magical thing. It is special. It will make you crazy.

An important part of being a scholar is to be fully grounded in all aspects of your study.  It is not enough to rely on the textbooks or the comments of others– you must truly know the why, the what, and the how. For example, if you are going to interview 10 people for your study, you should know:

  • why 10 people and not more or less;
  • why are you interviewing instead of a conducting a survey;
  • why are the 10 people you are interviewing going to be the right ones to interview;
  • how will the interviews be conducted;
  • what will you ask them;
  • why are you asking them that;
  • how do you expect they will respond to you asking them questions?

In short, you are the expert, or at least you will be. Therefore, if someone asks, you must have an answer for all of those questions.  You must have a research-based answer of all of those questions.  Know the why, what, and how.

The dissertation journey will affect your life

Creating is tough work. The scholarship is tough work. Professional development is tough work.  Do you see a theme here? The dissertation will be hard. It will be work. It is going to affect your life. There are no breaks, no summers off, no life crises that you get to put everything on hold for. You have several years from the time you started the program to finish. That is it.  You have worked too hard and invested so much NOT to finish.

You are going to have to take time for this project away from your friends, your family, your normal life. You may have to use vacation time to get away to research and write. You may have to miss family events to write. You will have to give up personal time to get this done.

So what is the good news?  You will get this done.  You will finish. You will be a doctor, and, I know you won’t believe it, but you will look back and be happy you did it.

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Ten things I wish I'd known before starting my dissertation

The sun is shining but many students won't see the daylight. Because it's that time of year again – dissertation time.

Luckily for me, my D-Day (dissertation hand-in day) has already been and gone. But I remember it well.

The 10,000-word spiral-bound paper squatted on my desk in various forms of completion was my Allied forces; the history department in-tray was my Normandy. And when Eisenhower talked about a "great crusade toward which we have striven these many months", he was bang on.

I remember first encountering the Undergraduate Dissertation Handbook, feeling my heart sink at how long the massive file took to download, and began to think about possible (but in hindsight, wildly over-ambitious) topics. Here's what I've learned since, and wish I'd known back then…

1 ) If your dissertation supervisor isn't right, change. Mine was brilliant. If you don't feel like they're giving you the right advice, request to swap to someone else – providing it's early on and your reason is valid, your department shouldn't have a problem with it. In my experience, it doesn't matter too much whether they're an expert on your topic. What counts is whether they're approachable, reliable, reassuring, give detailed feedback and don't mind the odd panicked email. They are your lifeline and your best chance of success.

2 ) If you mention working on your dissertation to family, friends or near-strangers, they will ask you what it's about, and they will be expecting a more impressive answer than you can give. So prepare for looks of confusion and disappointment. People anticipate grandeur in history dissertation topics – war, genocide, the formation of modern society. They don't think much of researching an obscure piece of 1970s disability legislation. But they're not the ones marking it.

3 ) If they ask follow-up questions, they're probably just being polite.

4 ) Do not ask friends how much work they've done. You'll end up paranoid – or they will. Either way, you don't have time for it.

5 ) There will be one day during the process when you will freak out, doubt your entire thesis and decide to start again from scratch. You might even come up with a new question and start working on it, depending on how long the breakdown lasts. You will at some point run out of steam and collapse in an exhausted, tear-stained heap. But unless there are serious flaws in your work (unlikely) and your supervisor recommends starting again (highly unlikely), don't do it. It's just panic, it'll pass.

6 ) A lot of the work you do will not make it into your dissertation. The first few days in archives, I felt like everything I was unearthing was a gem, and when I sat down to write, it seemed as if it was all gold. But a brutal editing down to the word count has left much of that early material at the wayside.

7 ) You will print like you have never printed before. If you're using a university or library printer, it will start to affect your weekly budget in a big way. If you're printing from your room, "paper jam" will come to be the most dreaded two words in the English language.

8 ) Your dissertation will interfere with whatever else you have going on – a social life, sporting commitments, societies, other essay demands. Don't even try and give up biscuits for Lent, they'll basically become their own food group when you're too busy to cook and desperate for sugar.

9 ) Your time is not your own. Even if you're super-organised, plan your time down to the last hour and don't have a single moment of deadline panic, you'll still find that thoughts of your dissertation will creep up on you when you least expect it. You'll fall asleep thinking about it, dream about it and wake up thinking about. You'll feel guilty when you're not working on it, and mired in self-doubt when you are.

10 ) Finishing it will be one of the best things you've ever done. It's worth the hard work to know you've completed what's likely to be your biggest, most important, single piece of work. Be proud of it.

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The Writing Center • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Dissertation Strategies

What this handout is about.

This handout suggests strategies for developing healthy writing habits during your dissertation journey. These habits can help you maintain your writing momentum, overcome anxiety and procrastination, and foster wellbeing during one of the most challenging times in graduate school.

Tackling a giant project

Because dissertations are, of course, big projects, it’s no surprise that planning, writing, and revising one can pose some challenges! It can help to think of your dissertation as an expanded version of a long essay: at the end of the day, it is simply another piece of writing. You’ve written your way this far into your degree, so you’ve got the skills! You’ll develop a great deal of expertise on your topic, but you may still be a novice with this genre and writing at this length. Remember to give yourself some grace throughout the project. As you begin, it’s helpful to consider two overarching strategies throughout the process.

First, take stock of how you learn and your own writing processes. What strategies have worked and have not worked for you? Why? What kind of learner and writer are you? Capitalize on what’s working and experiment with new strategies when something’s not working. Keep in mind that trying out new strategies can take some trial-and-error, and it’s okay if a new strategy that you try doesn’t work for you. Consider why it may not have been the best for you, and use that reflection to consider other strategies that might be helpful to you.

Second, break the project into manageable chunks. At every stage of the process, try to identify specific tasks, set small, feasible goals, and have clear, concrete strategies for achieving each goal. Small victories can help you establish and maintain the momentum you need to keep yourself going.

Below, we discuss some possible strategies to keep you moving forward in the dissertation process.

Pre-dissertation planning strategies

Get familiar with the Graduate School’s Thesis and Dissertation Resources .

Learn how to use a citation-manager and a synthesis matrix to keep track of all of your source information.

Skim other dissertations from your department, program, and advisor. Enlist the help of a librarian or ask your advisor for a list of recent graduates whose work you can look up. Seeing what other people have done to earn their PhD can make the project much less abstract and daunting. A concrete sense of expectations will help you envision and plan. When you know what you’ll be doing, try to find a dissertation from your department that is similar enough that you can use it as a reference model when you run into concerns about formatting, structure, level of detail, etc.

Think carefully about your committee . Ideally, you’ll be able to select a group of people who work well with you and with each other. Consult with your advisor about who might be good collaborators for your project and who might not be the best fit. Consider what classes you’ve taken and how you “vibe” with those professors or those you’ve met outside of class. Try to learn what you can about how they’ve worked with other students. Ask about feedback style, turnaround time, level of involvement, etc., and imagine how that would work for you.

Sketch out a sensible drafting order for your project. Be open to writing chapters in “the wrong order” if it makes sense to start somewhere other than the beginning. You could begin with the section that seems easiest for you to write to gain momentum.

Design a productivity alliance with your advisor . Talk with them about potential projects and a reasonable timeline. Discuss how you’ll work together to keep your work moving forward. You might discuss having a standing meeting to discuss ideas or drafts or issues (bi-weekly? monthly?), your advisor’s preferences for drafts (rough? polished?), your preferences for what you’d like feedback on (early or late drafts?), reasonable turnaround time for feedback (a week? two?), and anything else you can think of to enter the collaboration mindfully.

Design a productivity alliance with your colleagues . Dissertation writing can be lonely, but writing with friends, meeting for updates over your beverage of choice, and scheduling non-working social times can help you maintain healthy energy. See our tips on accountability strategies for ideas to support each other.

Productivity strategies

Write when you’re most productive. When do you have the most energy? Focus? Creativity? When are you most able to concentrate, either because of your body rhythms or because there are fewer demands on your time? Once you determine the hours that are most productive for you (you may need to experiment at first), try to schedule those hours for dissertation work. See the collection of time management tools and planning calendars on the Learning Center’s Tips & Tools page to help you think through the possibilities. If at all possible, plan your work schedule, errands and chores so that you reserve your productive hours for the dissertation.

Put your writing time firmly on your calendar . Guard your writing time diligently. You’ll probably be invited to do other things during your productive writing times, but do your absolute best to say no and to offer alternatives. No one would hold it against you if you said no because you’re teaching a class at that time—and you wouldn’t feel guilty about saying no. Cultivating the same hard, guilt-free boundaries around your writing time will allow you preserve the time you need to get this thing done!

Develop habits that foster balance . You’ll have to work very hard to get this dissertation finished, but you can do that without sacrificing your physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing. Think about how you can structure your work hours most efficiently so that you have time for a healthy non-work life. It can be something as small as limiting the time you spend chatting with fellow students to a few minutes instead of treating the office or lab as a space for extensive socializing. Also see above for protecting your time.

Write in spaces where you can be productive. Figure out where you work well and plan to be there during your dissertation work hours. Do you get more done on campus or at home? Do you prefer quiet and solitude, like in a library carrel? Do you prefer the buzz of background noise, like in a coffee shop? Are you aware of the UNC Libraries’ list of places to study ? If you get “stuck,” don’t be afraid to try a change of scenery. The variety may be just enough to get your brain going again.

Work where you feel comfortable . Wherever you work, make sure you have whatever lighting, furniture, and accessories you need to keep your posture and health in good order. The University Health and Safety office offers guidelines for healthy computer work . You’re more likely to spend time working in a space that doesn’t physically hurt you. Also consider how you could make your work space as inviting as possible. Some people find that it helps to have pictures of family and friends on their desk—sort of a silent “cheering section.” Some people work well with neutral colors around them, and others prefer bright colors that perk up the space. Some people like to put inspirational quotations in their workspace or encouraging notes from friends and family. You might try reconfiguring your work space to find a décor that helps you be productive.

Elicit helpful feedback from various people at various stages . You might be tempted to keep your writing to yourself until you think it’s brilliant, but you can lower the stakes tremendously if you make eliciting feedback a regular part of your writing process. Your friends can feel like a safer audience for ideas or drafts in their early stages. Someone outside your department may provide interesting perspectives from their discipline that spark your own thinking. See this handout on getting feedback for productive moments for feedback, the value of different kinds of feedback providers, and strategies for eliciting what’s most helpful to you. Make this a recurring part of your writing process. Schedule it to help you hit deadlines.

Change the writing task . When you don’t feel like writing, you can do something different or you can do something differently. Make a list of all the little things you need to do for a given section of the dissertation, no matter how small. Choose a task based on your energy level. Work on Grad School requirements: reformat margins, work on bibliography, and all that. Work on your acknowledgements. Remember all the people who have helped you and the great ideas they’ve helped you develop. You may feel more like working afterward. Write a part of your dissertation as a letter or email to a good friend who would care. Sometimes setting aside the academic prose and just writing it to a buddy can be liberating and help you get the ideas out there. You can make it sound smart later. Free-write about why you’re stuck, and perhaps even about how sick and tired you are of your dissertation/advisor/committee/etc. Venting can sometimes get you past the emotions of writer’s block and move you toward creative solutions. Open a separate document and write your thoughts on various things you’ve read. These may or may note be coherent, connected ideas, and they may or may not make it into your dissertation. They’re just notes that allow you to think things through and/or note what you want to revisit later, so it’s perfectly fine to have mistakes, weird organization, etc. Just let your mind wander on paper.

Develop habits that foster productivity and may help you develop a productive writing model for post-dissertation writing . Since dissertations are very long projects, cultivating habits that will help support your work is important. You might check out Helen Sword’s work on behavioral, artisanal, social, and emotional habits to help you get a sense of where you are in your current habits. You might try developing “rituals” of work that could help you get more done. Lighting incense, brewing a pot of a particular kind of tea, pulling out a favorite pen, and other ritualistic behaviors can signal your brain that “it is time to get down to business.” You can critically think about your work methods—not only about what you like to do, but also what actually helps you be productive. You may LOVE to listen to your favorite band while you write, for example, but if you wind up playing air guitar half the time instead of writing, it isn’t a habit worth keeping.

The point is, figure out what works for you and try to do it consistently. Your productive habits will reinforce themselves over time. If you find yourself in a situation, however, that doesn’t match your preferences, don’t let it stop you from working on your dissertation. Try to be flexible and open to experimenting. You might find some new favorites!

Motivational strategies

Schedule a regular activity with other people that involves your dissertation. Set up a coworking date with your accountability buddies so you can sit and write together. Organize a chapter swap. Make regular appointments with your advisor. Whatever you do, make sure it’s something that you’ll feel good about showing up for–and will make you feel good about showing up for others.

Try writing in sprints . Many writers have discovered that the “Pomodoro technique” (writing for 25 minutes and taking a 5 minute break) boosts their productivity by helping them set small writing goals, focus intently for short periods, and give their brains frequent rests. See how one dissertation writer describes it in this blog post on the Pomodoro technique .

Quit while you’re ahead . Sometimes it helps to stop for the day when you’re on a roll. If you’ve got a great idea that you’re developing and you know where you want to go next, write “Next, I want to introduce x, y, and z and explain how they’re related—they all have the same characteristics of 1 and 2, and that clinches my theory of Q.” Then save the file and turn off the computer, or put down the notepad. When you come back tomorrow, you will already know what to say next–and all that will be left is to say it. Hopefully, the momentum will carry you forward.

Write your dissertation in single-space . When you need a boost, double space it and be impressed with how many pages you’ve written.

Set feasible goals–and celebrate the achievements! Setting and achieving smaller, more reasonable goals ( SMART goals ) gives you success, and that success can motivate you to focus on the next small step…and the next one.

Give yourself rewards along the way . When you meet a writing goal, reward yourself with something you normally wouldn’t have or do–this can be anything that will make you feel good about your accomplishment.

Make the act of writing be its own reward . For example, if you love a particular coffee drink from your favorite shop, save it as a special drink to enjoy during your writing time.

Try giving yourself “pre-wards” —positive experiences that help you feel refreshed and recharged for the next time you write. You don’t have to “earn” these with prior work, but you do have to commit to doing the work afterward.

Commit to doing something you don’t want to do if you don’t achieve your goal. Some people find themselves motivated to work harder when there’s a negative incentive. What would you most like to avoid? Watching a movie you hate? Donating to a cause you don’t support? Whatever it is, how can you ensure enforcement? Who can help you stay accountable?

Affective strategies

Build your confidence . It is not uncommon to feel “imposter phenomenon” during the course of writing your dissertation. If you start to feel this way, it can help to take a few minutes to remember every success you’ve had along the way. You’ve earned your place, and people have confidence in you for good reasons. It’s also helpful to remember that every one of the brilliant people around you is experiencing the same lack of confidence because you’re all in a new context with new tasks and new expectations. You’re not supposed to have it all figured out. You’re supposed to have uncertainties and questions and things to learn. Remember that they wouldn’t have accepted you to the program if they weren’t confident that you’d succeed. See our self-scripting handout for strategies to turn these affirmations into a self-script that you repeat whenever you’re experiencing doubts or other negative thoughts. You can do it!

Appreciate your successes . Not meeting a goal isn’t a failure–and it certainly doesn’t make you a failure. It’s an opportunity to figure out why you didn’t meet the goal. It might simply be that the goal wasn’t achievable in the first place. See the SMART goal handout and think through what you can adjust. Even if you meant to write 1500 words, focus on the success of writing 250 or 500 words that you didn’t have before.

Remember your “why.” There are a whole host of reasons why someone might decide to pursue a PhD, both personally and professionally. Reflecting on what is motivating to you can rekindle your sense of purpose and direction.

Get outside support . Sometimes it can be really helpful to get an outside perspective on your work and anxieties as a way of grounding yourself. Participating in groups like the Dissertation Support group through CAPS and the Dissertation Boot Camp can help you see that you’re not alone in the challenges. You might also choose to form your own writing support group with colleagues inside or outside your department.

Understand and manage your procrastination . When you’re writing a long dissertation, it can be easy to procrastinate! For instance, you might put off writing because the house “isn’t clean enough” or because you’re not in the right “space” (mentally or physically) to write, so you put off writing until the house is cleaned and everything is in its right place. You may have other ways of procrastinating. It can be helpful to be self-aware of when you’re procrastinating and to consider why you are procrastinating. It may be that you’re anxious about writing the perfect draft, for example, in which case you might consider: how can I focus on writing something that just makes progress as opposed to being “perfect”? There are lots of different ways of managing procrastination; one way is to make a schedule of all the things you already have to do (when you absolutely can’t write) to help you visualize those chunks of time when you can. See this handout on procrastination for more strategies and tools for managing procrastination.

Your topic, your advisor, and your committee: Making them work for you

By the time you’ve reached this stage, you have probably already defended a dissertation proposal, chosen an advisor, and begun working with a committee. Sometimes, however, those three elements can prove to be major external sources of frustration. So how can you manage them to help yourself be as productive as possible?

Managing your topic

Remember that your topic is not carved in stone . The research and writing plan suggested in your dissertation proposal was your best vision of the project at that time, but topics evolve as the research and writing progress. You might need to tweak your research question a bit to reduce or adjust the scope, you might pare down certain parts of the project or add others. You can discuss your thoughts on these adjustments with your advisor at your check ins.

Think about variables that could be cut down and how changes would affect the length, depth, breadth, and scholarly value of your study. Could you cut one or two experiments, case studies, regions, years, theorists, or chapters and still make a valuable contribution or, even more simply, just finish?

Talk to your advisor about any changes you might make . They may be quite sympathetic to your desire to shorten an unwieldy project and may offer suggestions.

Look at other dissertations from your department to get a sense of what the chapters should look like. Reverse-outline a few chapters so you can see if there’s a pattern of typical components and how information is sequenced. These can serve as models for your own dissertation. See this video on reverse outlining to see the technique.

Managing your advisor

Embrace your evolving status . At this stage in your graduate career, you should expect to assume some independence. By the time you finish your project, you will know more about your subject than your committee does. The student/teacher relationship you have with your advisor will necessarily change as you take this big step toward becoming their colleague.

Revisit the alliance . If the interaction with your advisor isn’t matching the original agreement or the original plan isn’t working as well as it could, schedule a conversation to revisit and redesign your working relationship in a way that could work for both of you.

Be specific in your feedback requests . Tell your advisor what kind of feedback would be most helpful to you. Sometimes an advisor can be giving unhelpful or discouraging feedback without realizing it. They might make extensive sentence-level edits when you really need conceptual feedback, or vice-versa, if you only ask generally for feedback. Letting your advisor know, very specifically, what kinds of responses will be helpful to you at different stages of the writing process can help your advisor know how to help you.

Don’t hide . Advisors can be most helpful if they know what you are working on, what problems you are experiencing, and what progress you have made. If you haven’t made the progress you were hoping for, it only makes it worse if you avoid talking to them. You rob yourself of their expertise and support, and you might start a spiral of guilt, shame, and avoidance. Even if it’s difficult, it may be better to be candid about your struggles.

Talk to other students who have the same advisor . You may find that they have developed strategies for working with your advisor that could help you communicate more effectively with them.

If you have recurring problems communicating with your advisor , you can make a change. You could change advisors completely, but a less dramatic option might be to find another committee member who might be willing to serve as a “secondary advisor” and give you the kinds of feedback and support that you may need.

Managing your committee

Design the alliance . Talk with your committee members about how much they’d like to be involved in your writing process, whether they’d like to see chapter drafts or the complete draft, how frequently they’d like to meet (or not), etc. Your advisor can guide you on how committees usually work, but think carefully about how you’d like the relationship to function too.

Keep in regular contact with your committee , even if they don’t want to see your work until it has been approved by your advisor. Let them know about fellowships you receive, fruitful research excursions, the directions your thinking is taking, and the plans you have for completion. In short, keep them aware that you are working hard and making progress. Also, look for other ways to get facetime with your committee even if it’s not a one-on-one meeting. Things like speaking with them at department events, going to colloquiums or other events they organize and/or attend regularly can help you develop a relationship that could lead to other introductions and collaborations as your career progresses.

Share your struggles . Too often, we only talk to our professors when we’re making progress and hide from them the rest of the time. If you share your frustrations or setbacks with a knowledgeable committee member, they might offer some very helpful suggestions for overcoming the obstacles you face—after all, your committee members have all written major research projects before, and they have probably solved similar problems in their own work.

Stay true to yourself . Sometimes, you just don’t entirely gel with your committee, but that’s okay. It’s important not to get too hung up on how your committee does (or doesn’t) relate to you. Keep your eye on the finish line and keep moving forward.

Helpful websites:

Graduate School Diversity Initiatives : Groups and events to support the success of students identifying with an affinity group.

Graduate School Career Well : Extensive professional development resources related to writing, research, networking, job search, etc.

CAPS Therapy Groups : CAPS offers a variety of support groups, including a dissertation support group.

Advice on Research and Writing : Lots of links on writing, public speaking, dissertation management, burnout, and more.

How to be a Good Graduate Student: Marie DesJardins’ essay talks about several phases of the graduate experience, including the dissertation. She discusses some helpful hints for staying motivated and doing consistent work.

Preparing Future Faculty : This page, a joint project of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, the Council of Graduate Schools, and the Pew Charitable Trusts, explains the Preparing Future Faculty Programs and includes links and suggestions that may help graduate students and their advisors think constructively about the process of graduate education as a step toward faculty responsibilities.

Dissertation Tips : Kjell Erik Rudestam, Ph.D. and Rae Newton, Ph.D., authors of Surviving Your Dissertation: A Comprehensive Guide to Content and Process.

The ABD Survival Guide Newsletter : Information about the ABD Survival Guide newsletter (which is free) and other services from E-Coach (many of which are not free).

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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How to Write a Dissertation | A Guide to Structure & Content

A dissertation or thesis is a long piece of academic writing based on original research, submitted as part of an undergraduate or postgraduate degree.

The structure of a dissertation depends on your field, but it is usually divided into at least four or five chapters (including an introduction and conclusion chapter).

The most common dissertation structure in the sciences and social sciences includes:

  • An introduction to your topic
  • A literature review that surveys relevant sources
  • An explanation of your methodology
  • An overview of the results of your research
  • A discussion of the results and their implications
  • A conclusion that shows what your research has contributed

Dissertations in the humanities are often structured more like a long essay , building an argument by analysing primary and secondary sources . Instead of the standard structure outlined here, you might organise your chapters around different themes or case studies.

Other important elements of the dissertation include the title page , abstract , and reference list . If in doubt about how your dissertation should be structured, always check your department’s guidelines and consult with your supervisor.

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Table of contents

Acknowledgements, table of contents, list of figures and tables, list of abbreviations, introduction, literature review / theoretical framework, methodology, reference list.

The very first page of your document contains your dissertation’s title, your name, department, institution, degree program, and submission date. Sometimes it also includes your student number, your supervisor’s name, and the university’s logo. Many programs have strict requirements for formatting the dissertation title page .

The title page is often used as cover when printing and binding your dissertation .

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The acknowledgements section is usually optional, and gives space for you to thank everyone who helped you in writing your dissertation. This might include your supervisors, participants in your research, and friends or family who supported you.

The abstract is a short summary of your dissertation, usually about 150-300 words long. You should write it at the very end, when you’ve completed the rest of the dissertation. In the abstract, make sure to:

  • State the main topic and aims of your research
  • Describe the methods you used
  • Summarise the main results
  • State your conclusions

Although the abstract is very short, it’s the first part (and sometimes the only part) of your dissertation that people will read, so it’s important that you get it right. If you’re struggling to write a strong abstract, read our guide on how to write an abstract .

In the table of contents, list all of your chapters and subheadings and their page numbers. The dissertation contents page gives the reader an overview of your structure and helps easily navigate the document.

All parts of your dissertation should be included in the table of contents, including the appendices. You can generate a table of contents automatically in Word.

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If you have used a lot of tables and figures in your dissertation, you should itemise them in a numbered list . You can automatically generate this list using the Insert Caption feature in Word.

If you have used a lot of abbreviations in your dissertation, you can include them in an alphabetised list of abbreviations so that the reader can easily look up their meanings.

If you have used a lot of highly specialised terms that will not be familiar to your reader, it might be a good idea to include a glossary . List the terms alphabetically and explain each term with a brief description or definition.

In the introduction, you set up your dissertation’s topic, purpose, and relevance, and tell the reader what to expect in the rest of the dissertation. The introduction should:

  • Establish your research topic , giving necessary background information to contextualise your work
  • Narrow down the focus and define the scope of the research
  • Discuss the state of existing research on the topic, showing your work’s relevance to a broader problem or debate
  • Clearly state your objectives and research questions , and indicate how you will answer them
  • Give an overview of your dissertation’s structure

Everything in the introduction should be clear, engaging, and relevant to your research. By the end, the reader should understand the what , why and how of your research. Not sure how? Read our guide on how to write a dissertation introduction .

Before you start on your research, you should have conducted a literature review to gain a thorough understanding of the academic work that already exists on your topic. This means:

  • Collecting sources (e.g. books and journal articles) and selecting the most relevant ones
  • Critically evaluating and analysing each source
  • Drawing connections between them (e.g. themes, patterns, conflicts, gaps) to make an overall point

In the dissertation literature review chapter or section, you shouldn’t just summarise existing studies, but develop a coherent structure and argument that leads to a clear basis or justification for your own research. For example, it might aim to show how your research:

  • Addresses a gap in the literature
  • Takes a new theoretical or methodological approach to the topic
  • Proposes a solution to an unresolved problem
  • Advances a theoretical debate
  • Builds on and strengthens existing knowledge with new data

The literature review often becomes the basis for a theoretical framework , in which you define and analyse the key theories, concepts and models that frame your research. In this section you can answer descriptive research questions about the relationship between concepts or variables.

The methodology chapter or section describes how you conducted your research, allowing your reader to assess its validity. You should generally include:

  • The overall approach and type of research (e.g. qualitative, quantitative, experimental, ethnographic)
  • Your methods of collecting data (e.g. interviews, surveys, archives)
  • Details of where, when, and with whom the research took place
  • Your methods of analysing data (e.g. statistical analysis, discourse analysis)
  • Tools and materials you used (e.g. computer programs, lab equipment)
  • A discussion of any obstacles you faced in conducting the research and how you overcame them
  • An evaluation or justification of your methods

Your aim in the methodology is to accurately report what you did, as well as convincing the reader that this was the best approach to answering your research questions or objectives.

Next, you report the results of your research . You can structure this section around sub-questions, hypotheses, or topics. Only report results that are relevant to your objectives and research questions. In some disciplines, the results section is strictly separated from the discussion, while in others the two are combined.

For example, for qualitative methods like in-depth interviews, the presentation of the data will often be woven together with discussion and analysis, while in quantitative and experimental research, the results should be presented separately before you discuss their meaning. If you’re unsure, consult with your supervisor and look at sample dissertations to find out the best structure for your research.

In the results section it can often be helpful to include tables, graphs and charts. Think carefully about how best to present your data, and don’t include tables or figures that just repeat what you have written  –  they should provide extra information or usefully visualise the results in a way that adds value to your text.

Full versions of your data (such as interview transcripts) can be included as an appendix .

The discussion  is where you explore the meaning and implications of your results in relation to your research questions. Here you should interpret the results in detail, discussing whether they met your expectations and how well they fit with the framework that you built in earlier chapters. If any of the results were unexpected, offer explanations for why this might be. It’s a good idea to consider alternative interpretations of your data and discuss any limitations that might have influenced the results.

The discussion should reference other scholarly work to show how your results fit with existing knowledge. You can also make recommendations for future research or practical action.

The dissertation conclusion should concisely answer the main research question, leaving the reader with a clear understanding of your central argument. Wrap up your dissertation with a final reflection on what you did and how you did it. The conclusion often also includes recommendations for research or practice.

In this section, it’s important to show how your findings contribute to knowledge in the field and why your research matters. What have you added to what was already known?

You must include full details of all sources that you have cited in a reference list (sometimes also called a works cited list or bibliography). It’s important to follow a consistent reference style . Each style has strict and specific requirements for how to format your sources in the reference list.

The most common styles used in UK universities are Harvard referencing and Vancouver referencing . Your department will often specify which referencing style you should use – for example, psychology students tend to use APA style , humanities students often use MHRA , and law students always use OSCOLA . M ake sure to check the requirements, and ask your supervisor if you’re unsure.

To save time creating the reference list and make sure your citations are correctly and consistently formatted, you can use our free APA Citation Generator .

Your dissertation itself should contain only essential information that directly contributes to answering your research question. Documents you have used that do not fit into the main body of your dissertation (such as interview transcripts, survey questions or tables with full figures) can be added as appendices .

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giving up on dissertation

Love Your Dissertation

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Love Your Dissertation

Giving up on your dissertation is not an option

For the past thirty days, I have been writing a long project. My goal was 50,000 words. I’m happy to say, I exceeded my word count goal within the allotted time. While I was writing, I hit multiple walls, contemplated giving up several times, and eventually came to understand that this was a job—a 30-day temp job.

Writing at this intense pace reminded me of writing my dissertation. I don’t have any magic medicine to offer you to help you accomplish your gargantuan dissertation task. However, I can offer you some insights from my writing process. In this post, I break down the thirty days into four phases.

Phase I: Denial: Surfing the pink cloud

When I started writing on Day 1 of my 30-day writing project, I was overflowing with enthusiasm. I had a good idea (it came to me in a dream). My outline made sense. My ducks were in a row, my planets were aligned, my support team members (friends and family) were shaking their pompoms. . . . What could possibly go wrong?

Nothing! I was eager to get started, and away I went. I dove in with conviction that this project was going to be great . Not just good, but great . After all, I’d had a dream about it! You can’t go wrong when you dream about your topic, right?

For the first two weeks, I wrote like a fiend, like a maniac, like a writing machine. I hardly took time to eat or sleep. I was on fire with the zeal of the writer who has grabbed a great idea by the tail and wants to cage it before it slinks back into the wild—or wherever it is ideas come from.

When I embarked on my dissertation, I had some similar pink-cloud moments. I thought I had a great idea. I studied all the articles in my field, I read all the books. I had a vision. My support team was in place, my direction seemed clear. I figured I would be done and defending in no time. Piece of cake.

Phase II: Horror: Bashing into the wall

Somewhere around Day 15 of my 30-day writing project, I hit the first wall. I’d just read what I’d written. I had the sinking realization that the structure of the project was flawed. My outline had steered me wrong! I started frantically rearranging sections according to a new outline. My daily average word count dropped like a rock. I saw my word count goal slipping away.

After crashing into the first wall and surviving (somewhat bruised), I clawed my way back on track, recouping my average daily word count. The next wall loomed in front of me a few days later. After reading what I’d written to that point, I realized, the structure was still wrong! Oh, the horror. At that moment, I felt like abandoning the project. I couldn’t see my way through. What had seemed like such a clear path from beginning to end had led me off the cliff into some snarled undergrowth. I was tangled in confusion and indecision. Which way to go? I couldn’t climb out of the ditch.

When I was working on my dissertation, I hit my first major wall when I was writing my dissertation proposal. I had a new chair; she was less enthused about my approach compared to my previous chair. I wrote draft after draft and couldn’t seem to get it right. Nothing made sense anymore. This was my long dark night of the soul. I could have quit, but I am not a quitter. I put my head down and kept trudging forward, which means I kept reading, writing, thinking, and writing some more.

Phase III: Acceptance: Realizing the impossibility of the task

Around Day 20 in my 30-day writing project, I was back on track with an outline I hoped would work, feeling extremely battered and not at all cocky. I didn’t know if I would be able to achieve my word count goal. It felt impossible. It probably was impossible. Yet I was not willing to give up. I could still see the bones of my project underneath my fumbling cloudy writing. I could still hear it begging to be born. I kept writing.

At that point, I took the leap of faith. I didn’t know what would happen or how it would happen if I finished my project; I just knew I had to keep going—even if I couldn’t fly, even if I crashed at the foot of the cliff (metaphorically speaking). I wanted my pink cloud back but I was older, wiser, and humbler now about my chances for success.   

When I was working on my dissertation, I crossed a similar threshold of acceptance. I thought there was a real possibility I would run out of time in my program. If I ran out time, I risked being dismissed from the Ph.D. program. Everything I had worked toward would have been lost. I’d invested years in this impossible journey. I closed my ears to my fears, hunkered down, and kept writing.

Phase IV: Commitment: Showing up for the work

Finally, I came to understand that I had committed myself to a 30-day temp job. Even though I was my own employer on this project, so to speak, I was required to suit up and show up, get the work done for the day with a minimum of drama, and come back the next day to repeat the task. At that point, the glamor had evaporated. The bubbly enthusiasm of the pink cloud was gone, but so were the fears: that my idea was dumb, that my project would never work, that I wasn’t good enough to succeed.

The fears were replaced with a deep sense of satisfaction with the process itself. Regardless of the outcome, I was having a blast puzzling out the best structure for my project. I was a detective following the clues. I could have fired myself from the temp job at any time, and once or twice, I almost did. But had I quit, I would have missed the gift of working like “a digger on the railroad,” as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, to bring my project into being.

There was a point in my dissertation writing that I knew I was going to make it. My idea was solid, my approach was logical, my data were robust, my analysis was thorough, and my write-up was valid. From that moment, it was as if I had crossed the field of poppies and I was running along the yellow brick road toward the Emerald City.

The approvals unfolded quickly. The defense happened. The pdf of the final manuscript was submitted to ProQuest. Some months later, my diploma arrived in the mail. I have it around here somewhere, I think. It’s a symbol, it’s evidence that I successfully navigated the long doctoral journey. I gained so much more than a diploma. I learned how to be a writer—from writing my dissertation.

What I learned

Other dissertators have different experiences. Some move along briskly, others not so much. I was a nontraditional dissertator at an online university. I received little support from my mentors and peers. I fell in multiple ditches, bashed into many walls, clawed my way out of brambles . . . it was not easy.

Nor should it be easy.

We build character by setting goals, making commitments, and showing up to fulfill them. We can change our minds, and sometimes we should. There’s no shame in pivoting away from a project that won’t help make the world better in some way. But sometimes the way to success is to roll up our sleeves, pick up that shovel (metaphorically speaking), and get busy digging that railroad.

Today I can say I dug my own personal railroad: Eighty-thousand words in thirty days.

Grad Coach

Dissertation Structure & Layout 101: How to structure your dissertation, thesis or research project.

By: Derek Jansen (MBA) Reviewed By: David Phair (PhD) | July 2019

So, you’ve got a decent understanding of what a dissertation is , you’ve chosen your topic and hopefully you’ve received approval for your research proposal . Awesome! Now its time to start the actual dissertation or thesis writing journey.

To craft a high-quality document, the very first thing you need to understand is dissertation structure . In this post, we’ll walk you through the generic dissertation structure and layout, step by step. We’ll start with the big picture, and then zoom into each chapter to briefly discuss the core contents. If you’re just starting out on your research journey, you should start with this post, which covers the big-picture process of how to write a dissertation or thesis .

Dissertation structure and layout - the basics

*The Caveat *

In this post, we’ll be discussing a traditional dissertation/thesis structure and layout, which is generally used for social science research across universities, whether in the US, UK, Europe or Australia. However, some universities may have small variations on this structure (extra chapters, merged chapters, slightly different ordering, etc).

So, always check with your university if they have a prescribed structure or layout that they expect you to work with. If not, it’s safe to assume the structure we’ll discuss here is suitable. And even if they do have a prescribed structure, you’ll still get value from this post as we’ll explain the core contents of each section.  

Overview: S tructuring a dissertation or thesis

  • Acknowledgements page
  • Abstract (or executive summary)
  • Table of contents , list of figures and tables
  • Chapter 1: Introduction
  • Chapter 2: Literature review
  • Chapter 3: Methodology
  • Chapter 4: Results
  • Chapter 5: Discussion
  • Chapter 6: Conclusion
  • Reference list

As I mentioned, some universities will have slight variations on this structure. For example, they want an additional “personal reflection chapter”, or they might prefer the results and discussion chapter to be merged into one. Regardless, the overarching flow will always be the same, as this flow reflects the research process , which we discussed here – i.e.:

  • The introduction chapter presents the core research question and aims .
  • The literature review chapter assesses what the current research says about this question.
  • The methodology, results and discussion chapters go about undertaking new research about this question.
  • The conclusion chapter (attempts to) answer the core research question .

In other words, the dissertation structure and layout reflect the research process of asking a well-defined question(s), investigating, and then answering the question – see below.

A dissertation's structure reflect the research process

To restate that – the structure and layout of a dissertation reflect the flow of the overall research process . This is essential to understand, as each chapter will make a lot more sense if you “get” this concept. If you’re not familiar with the research process, read this post before going further.

Right. Now that we’ve covered the big picture, let’s dive a little deeper into the details of each section and chapter. Oh and by the way, you can also grab our free dissertation/thesis template here to help speed things up.

The title page of your dissertation is the very first impression the marker will get of your work, so it pays to invest some time thinking about your title. But what makes for a good title? A strong title needs to be 3 things:

  • Succinct (not overly lengthy or verbose)
  • Specific (not vague or ambiguous)
  • Representative of the research you’re undertaking (clearly linked to your research questions)

Typically, a good title includes mention of the following:

  • The broader area of the research (i.e. the overarching topic)
  • The specific focus of your research (i.e. your specific context)
  • Indication of research design (e.g. quantitative , qualitative , or  mixed methods ).

For example:

A quantitative investigation [research design] into the antecedents of organisational trust [broader area] in the UK retail forex trading market [specific context/area of focus].

Again, some universities may have specific requirements regarding the format and structure of the title, so it’s worth double-checking expectations with your institution (if there’s no mention in the brief or study material).

Dissertations stacked up

Acknowledgements

This page provides you with an opportunity to say thank you to those who helped you along your research journey. Generally, it’s optional (and won’t count towards your marks), but it is academic best practice to include this.

So, who do you say thanks to? Well, there’s no prescribed requirements, but it’s common to mention the following people:

  • Your dissertation supervisor or committee.
  • Any professors, lecturers or academics that helped you understand the topic or methodologies.
  • Any tutors, mentors or advisors.
  • Your family and friends, especially spouse (for adult learners studying part-time).

There’s no need for lengthy rambling. Just state who you’re thankful to and for what (e.g. thank you to my supervisor, John Doe, for his endless patience and attentiveness) – be sincere. In terms of length, you should keep this to a page or less.

Abstract or executive summary

The dissertation abstract (or executive summary for some degrees) serves to provide the first-time reader (and marker or moderator) with a big-picture view of your research project. It should give them an understanding of the key insights and findings from the research, without them needing to read the rest of the report – in other words, it should be able to stand alone .

For it to stand alone, your abstract should cover the following key points (at a minimum):

  • Your research questions and aims – what key question(s) did your research aim to answer?
  • Your methodology – how did you go about investigating the topic and finding answers to your research question(s)?
  • Your findings – following your own research, what did do you discover?
  • Your conclusions – based on your findings, what conclusions did you draw? What answers did you find to your research question(s)?

So, in much the same way the dissertation structure mimics the research process, your abstract or executive summary should reflect the research process, from the initial stage of asking the original question to the final stage of answering that question.

In practical terms, it’s a good idea to write this section up last , once all your core chapters are complete. Otherwise, you’ll end up writing and rewriting this section multiple times (just wasting time). For a step by step guide on how to write a strong executive summary, check out this post .

Need a helping hand?

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Table of contents

This section is straightforward. You’ll typically present your table of contents (TOC) first, followed by the two lists – figures and tables. I recommend that you use Microsoft Word’s automatic table of contents generator to generate your TOC. If you’re not familiar with this functionality, the video below explains it simply:

If you find that your table of contents is overly lengthy, consider removing one level of depth. Oftentimes, this can be done without detracting from the usefulness of the TOC.

Right, now that the “admin” sections are out of the way, its time to move on to your core chapters. These chapters are the heart of your dissertation and are where you’ll earn the marks. The first chapter is the introduction chapter – as you would expect, this is the time to introduce your research…

It’s important to understand that even though you’ve provided an overview of your research in your abstract, your introduction needs to be written as if the reader has not read that (remember, the abstract is essentially a standalone document). So, your introduction chapter needs to start from the very beginning, and should address the following questions:

  • What will you be investigating (in plain-language, big picture-level)?
  • Why is that worth investigating? How is it important to academia or business? How is it sufficiently original?
  • What are your research aims and research question(s)? Note that the research questions can sometimes be presented at the end of the literature review (next chapter).
  • What is the scope of your study? In other words, what will and won’t you cover ?
  • How will you approach your research? In other words, what methodology will you adopt?
  • How will you structure your dissertation? What are the core chapters and what will you do in each of them?

These are just the bare basic requirements for your intro chapter. Some universities will want additional bells and whistles in the intro chapter, so be sure to carefully read your brief or consult your research supervisor.

If done right, your introduction chapter will set a clear direction for the rest of your dissertation. Specifically, it will make it clear to the reader (and marker) exactly what you’ll be investigating, why that’s important, and how you’ll be going about the investigation. Conversely, if your introduction chapter leaves a first-time reader wondering what exactly you’ll be researching, you’ve still got some work to do.

Now that you’ve set a clear direction with your introduction chapter, the next step is the literature review . In this section, you will analyse the existing research (typically academic journal articles and high-quality industry publications), with a view to understanding the following questions:

  • What does the literature currently say about the topic you’re investigating?
  • Is the literature lacking or well established? Is it divided or in disagreement?
  • How does your research fit into the bigger picture?
  • How does your research contribute something original?
  • How does the methodology of previous studies help you develop your own?

Depending on the nature of your study, you may also present a conceptual framework towards the end of your literature review, which you will then test in your actual research.

Again, some universities will want you to focus on some of these areas more than others, some will have additional or fewer requirements, and so on. Therefore, as always, its important to review your brief and/or discuss with your supervisor, so that you know exactly what’s expected of your literature review chapter.

Dissertation writing

Now that you’ve investigated the current state of knowledge in your literature review chapter and are familiar with the existing key theories, models and frameworks, its time to design your own research. Enter the methodology chapter – the most “science-ey” of the chapters…

In this chapter, you need to address two critical questions:

  • Exactly HOW will you carry out your research (i.e. what is your intended research design)?
  • Exactly WHY have you chosen to do things this way (i.e. how do you justify your design)?

Remember, the dissertation part of your degree is first and foremost about developing and demonstrating research skills . Therefore, the markers want to see that you know which methods to use, can clearly articulate why you’ve chosen then, and know how to deploy them effectively.

Importantly, this chapter requires detail – don’t hold back on the specifics. State exactly what you’ll be doing, with who, when, for how long, etc. Moreover, for every design choice you make, make sure you justify it.

In practice, you will likely end up coming back to this chapter once you’ve undertaken all your data collection and analysis, and revise it based on changes you made during the analysis phase. This is perfectly fine. Its natural for you to add an additional analysis technique, scrap an old one, etc based on where your data lead you. Of course, I’m talking about small changes here – not a fundamental switch from qualitative to quantitative, which will likely send your supervisor in a spin!

You’ve now collected your data and undertaken your analysis, whether qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods. In this chapter, you’ll present the raw results of your analysis . For example, in the case of a quant study, you’ll present the demographic data, descriptive statistics, inferential statistics , etc.

Typically, Chapter 4 is simply a presentation and description of the data, not a discussion of the meaning of the data. In other words, it’s descriptive, rather than analytical – the meaning is discussed in Chapter 5. However, some universities will want you to combine chapters 4 and 5, so that you both present and interpret the meaning of the data at the same time. Check with your institution what their preference is.

Now that you’ve presented the data analysis results, its time to interpret and analyse them. In other words, its time to discuss what they mean, especially in relation to your research question(s).

What you discuss here will depend largely on your chosen methodology. For example, if you’ve gone the quantitative route, you might discuss the relationships between variables . If you’ve gone the qualitative route, you might discuss key themes and the meanings thereof. It all depends on what your research design choices were.

Most importantly, you need to discuss your results in relation to your research questions and aims, as well as the existing literature. What do the results tell you about your research questions? Are they aligned with the existing research or at odds? If so, why might this be? Dig deep into your findings and explain what the findings suggest, in plain English.

The final chapter – you’ve made it! Now that you’ve discussed your interpretation of the results, its time to bring it back to the beginning with the conclusion chapter . In other words, its time to (attempt to) answer your original research question s (from way back in chapter 1). Clearly state what your conclusions are in terms of your research questions. This might feel a bit repetitive, as you would have touched on this in the previous chapter, but its important to bring the discussion full circle and explicitly state your answer(s) to the research question(s).

Dissertation and thesis prep

Next, you’ll typically discuss the implications of your findings? In other words, you’ve answered your research questions – but what does this mean for the real world (or even for academia)? What should now be done differently, given the new insight you’ve generated?

Lastly, you should discuss the limitations of your research, as well as what this means for future research in the area. No study is perfect, especially not a Masters-level. Discuss the shortcomings of your research. Perhaps your methodology was limited, perhaps your sample size was small or not representative, etc, etc. Don’t be afraid to critique your work – the markers want to see that you can identify the limitations of your work. This is a strength, not a weakness. Be brutal!

This marks the end of your core chapters – woohoo! From here on out, it’s pretty smooth sailing.

The reference list is straightforward. It should contain a list of all resources cited in your dissertation, in the required format, e.g. APA , Harvard, etc.

It’s essential that you use reference management software for your dissertation. Do NOT try handle your referencing manually – its far too error prone. On a reference list of multiple pages, you’re going to make mistake. To this end, I suggest considering either Mendeley or Zotero. Both are free and provide a very straightforward interface to ensure that your referencing is 100% on point. I’ve included a simple how-to video for the Mendeley software (my personal favourite) below:

Some universities may ask you to include a bibliography, as opposed to a reference list. These two things are not the same . A bibliography is similar to a reference list, except that it also includes resources which informed your thinking but were not directly cited in your dissertation. So, double-check your brief and make sure you use the right one.

The very last piece of the puzzle is the appendix or set of appendices. This is where you’ll include any supporting data and evidence. Importantly, supporting is the keyword here.

Your appendices should provide additional “nice to know”, depth-adding information, which is not critical to the core analysis. Appendices should not be used as a way to cut down word count (see this post which covers how to reduce word count ). In other words, don’t place content that is critical to the core analysis here, just to save word count. You will not earn marks on any content in the appendices, so don’t try to play the system!

Time to recap…

And there you have it – the traditional dissertation structure and layout, from A-Z. To recap, the core structure for a dissertation or thesis is (typically) as follows:

  • Acknowledgments page

Most importantly, the core chapters should reflect the research process (asking, investigating and answering your research question). Moreover, the research question(s) should form the golden thread throughout your dissertation structure. Everything should revolve around the research questions, and as you’ve seen, they should form both the start point (i.e. introduction chapter) and the endpoint (i.e. conclusion chapter).

I hope this post has provided you with clarity about the traditional dissertation/thesis structure and layout. If you have any questions or comments, please leave a comment below, or feel free to get in touch with us. Also, be sure to check out the rest of the  Grad Coach Blog .

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Psst… there’s more (for free)

This post is part of our dissertation mini-course, which covers everything you need to get started with your dissertation, thesis or research project. 

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36 Comments

ARUN kumar SHARMA

many thanks i found it very useful

Derek Jansen

Glad to hear that, Arun. Good luck writing your dissertation.

Sue

Such clear practical logical advice. I very much needed to read this to keep me focused in stead of fretting.. Perfect now ready to start my research!

hayder

what about scientific fields like computer or engineering thesis what is the difference in the structure? thank you very much

Tim

Thanks so much this helped me a lot!

Ade Adeniyi

Very helpful and accessible. What I like most is how practical the advice is along with helpful tools/ links.

Thanks Ade!

Aswathi

Thank you so much sir.. It was really helpful..

You’re welcome!

Jp Raimundo

Hi! How many words maximum should contain the abstract?

Karmelia Renatee

Thank you so much 😊 Find this at the right moment

You’re most welcome. Good luck with your dissertation.

moha

best ever benefit i got on right time thank you

Krishnan iyer

Many times Clarity and vision of destination of dissertation is what makes the difference between good ,average and great researchers the same way a great automobile driver is fast with clarity of address and Clear weather conditions .

I guess Great researcher = great ideas + knowledge + great and fast data collection and modeling + great writing + high clarity on all these

You have given immense clarity from start to end.

Alwyn Malan

Morning. Where will I write the definitions of what I’m referring to in my report?

Rose

Thank you so much Derek, I was almost lost! Thanks a tonnnn! Have a great day!

yemi Amos

Thanks ! so concise and valuable

Kgomotso Siwelane

This was very helpful. Clear and concise. I know exactly what to do now.

dauda sesay

Thank you for allowing me to go through briefly. I hope to find time to continue.

Patrick Mwathi

Really useful to me. Thanks a thousand times

Adao Bundi

Very interesting! It will definitely set me and many more for success. highly recommended.

SAIKUMAR NALUMASU

Thank you soo much sir, for the opportunity to express my skills

mwepu Ilunga

Usefull, thanks a lot. Really clear

Rami

Very nice and easy to understand. Thank you .

Chrisogonas Odhiambo

That was incredibly useful. Thanks Grad Coach Crew!

Luke

My stress level just dropped at least 15 points after watching this. Just starting my thesis for my grad program and I feel a lot more capable now! Thanks for such a clear and helpful video, Emma and the GradCoach team!

Judy

Do we need to mention the number of words the dissertation contains in the main document?

It depends on your university’s requirements, so it would be best to check with them 🙂

Christine

Such a helpful post to help me get started with structuring my masters dissertation, thank you!

Simon Le

Great video; I appreciate that helpful information

Brhane Kidane

It is so necessary or avital course

johnson

This blog is very informative for my research. Thank you

avc

Doctoral students are required to fill out the National Research Council’s Survey of Earned Doctorates

Emmanuel Manjolo

wow this is an amazing gain in my life

Paul I Thoronka

This is so good

Tesfay haftu

How can i arrange my specific objectives in my dissertation?

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School of Business

A. Gary Anderson Graduate School of Management

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Giving Students the Up-to-the-minute Knowledge They Need

Every year, Associate Professor of Marketing Ashish Sood shakes up about 20% of his curriculum.

“Why? Well, the marketing world doesn’t stand still, and neither should we,” says Sood. “I bring in the latest industry buzz and academic insights to keep my classes fresh and relevant. It’s all about giving my students the up-to-the-minute knowledge they need.”

This steadfast commitment to staying ahead of the industry is popular among his students, and they awarded him the 2022-2023 Golden Apple Award in two categories: one for graduate core courses and another for graduate elective courses.

In nominating Sood for the awards, various graduate students commented: “Dr. Sood is accessible and really cares about his students.” “He is a helpful professor with a passion for teaching and for job referrals.” “Wonderful learning experience.”

Another student commented, “He is a marketing guru and brings a lot of great insight and hands-on activities,” which reflects Sood’s teaching style.

Sood classes are not your typical sit-and-listen lectures: “We start with an hour of lecture, sure, but the rest of our three-hour session is all about getting your hands dirty with practical stuff,” says Sood, and his students don’t just learn the concepts; they live them.

The professor also brings in three to four guest speakers each quarter. “Many are former students who are out there making waves in different industries,” he says. “They share their real-world experiences, giving us a peek into how things work outside our classroom walls.”

This mix of fresh curriculum, interactive sessions, and insights from the field ensures MBA students get an education that’s not just about books and theories but about the real, ever-evolving world of marketing.  

Professor Ashish Sood in classroom 118 in Anderson Hall South

Another student supports this technique: “Dr. Sood is exceptional at what he does. He has made the class more interesting, interactive, and fun.”

Of course, MBA courses are not just about the basics, adds Sood. “Marketing has become increasingly data driven, and we dive deep into models, like regression analysis, classification models, and clustering techniques. It’s about turning these advanced analytics tools into something approachable and applicable.”

He also creates a classroom environment where it’s OK to experiment and even fail at first. “This hands-on, trial-and-error approach is vital for understanding the nuances of these analytical tools,” he says. “Every student has their own way of learning.”

Another nominating student wrote: “Dr. Sood’s teaching methods and interaction with the class helped us improve in that subject and made us curious to know more with his very interesting examples.”

Receiving the Golden Apple Awards is a humbling and genuinely rewarding experience, says Sood. “I want to see my students not just learning but actively preparing to navigate and lead in a data-driven marketing landscape.”

Another student underscored Sood’s teaching style with a short and to-the-point statement: “Simply the best.”

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President Biden wants to give homebuyers a $10,000 tax credit. Here's who would qualify.

By Aimee Picchi

Edited By Alain Sherter

Updated on: March 11, 2024 / 11:39 AM EDT / CBS News

Buying a home has become increasingly out of reach for Americans, who are grappling with a double whammy of high interest rates and surging home values. In his State of the Union address on Thursday, President Joe Biden proposed a new tax credit that would provide $10,000 to first-time home buyers. 

Biden is also proposing a separate $10,000 tax credit for current homeowners who sell their "starter home" in order to jump into a bigger house. That could help melt a real estate market in which homeowners who locked in low mortgage rates during the pandemic and are hesitant to move because they now face significantly higher mortgage rates. 

Biden's proposals — which must be enacted by Congress — were cheered by advocates of affordable housing, with National Housing Council CEO David M. Dworkin calling it "the most consequential State of the Union address on housing in more than 50 years." On a practical level, the tax credits would lower the cost of purchasing a home, an issue that affects Americans of all ages and stripes.

"Housing affordability has become a key issue for Americans spanning all demographics and political divides, and housing policy has mostly remained steady in recent congressional budgets," noted Moody's associate economist Nick Luettke in a report touching on Biden's efforts.

Here's what to know about the proposals. 

What are Biden's homebuying tax credits?

Biden is proposing two tax credits aimed at helping Americans buy homes at a time when housing affordability is near an all-time low .

Currently, Americans must earn a six-figure salary to comfortably buy a typical home, compared with $59,000 just four years ago. Home prices have surged about 27% since the start of the pandemic, while mortgage rates have spiked, making it costlier to purchase.

To help offset the cost of buying a home, Biden is proposing the following tax credits:

  • A first-time homebuyer tax credit of $10,000
  • A one-year tax credit of up to $10,000 to current homeowners who sell their starter homes

The tax credits are viewed as a bridge to help people afford a home while mortgage rates are high. As a result, they wouldn't be permanent, but instead would be offered for homebuyers who purchase properties in 2024 or 2025, a senior Biden administration official told CBS MoneyWatch.

The Federal Reserve is expected to cut its key interest rate later this year, which would ease the cost of borrowing for all types of loans, from mortgages to credit cards.

Who would qualify for the tax credits?

First-time homebuyers would qualify for an annual tax credit of $5,000 per year for two years, for a total of $10,000.

The one-year tax credit for current homeowners would be available to people who own starter homes, defined as homes below the median home price in their county. The owners would have to sell to another owner-occupant, rather than an investor, according to the White House. 

Both tax credits are geared toward "middle-class families," with the Biden administration official telling CBS MoneyWatch that the credits would be limited to households earning less than $200,000.

How would the tax credits impact the housing market?

The Biden administration said the tax credits would help unfreeze the real estate market and make homebuying more affordable for millions. 

The first-time buyer tax credit could help 3.5 million middle-class families buy their first home, with the tax credit providing an equivalent reduction of about 1.5 percentage point for two years on the median-priced home, the White House said in a statement. The homeowner tax credit would help about 3 million families buy a bigger home, it added.

"Many homeowners have lower rates on their mortgages than current rates," the White House said. "This 'lock-in' effect makes homeowners more reluctant to sell and give up that low rate, even in circumstances where their current homes no longer fit their household needs."

When would these tax credits go into effect?

That's unclear, because Congress would need to pass legislation to change the tax code — an uphill climb as Democrats and Republicans spar ahead of the November election. 

Passing tax credits could be "a particularly arduous task in an election year – though their inclusion in the address underscores the salience of the skyrocketing cost of housing for Americans nationwide," noted Luettke of Moody's. 

The White House wants to see Congress pass legislation to enact the tax credits this year, which would allow homebuyers and homeowners to receive the tax credits starting in the 2024 tax year. Homebuyers would receive the credit for a two-year period that they could claim on their tax returns starting with either the 2024 or 2025 tax year, the Biden official said.

Are there tax credits for building new homes?

Yes, Biden also proposed several new efforts to fund the construction of affordable homes and rental units. That includes a new Neighborhood Homes Tax Credit, which would provide an incentive to build or renovate so-called "starter homes," or properties geared for first-time homebuyers. 

The White House said the plan would lead to the construction of 2 million new units. 

Such proposals to build new homes and rental units may be more effective in dealing with the housing crisis than tax credits for homebuyers, some experts said. Because of underbuilding during the past decade, there is a severe  undersupply of housing across the U.S.

"Ultimately, the president's most substantial comments made about housing were those related to new construction," said LendingTree chief economist Jacob Channel in an email. "High home prices in the United States are largely a function of the fact that we simply do not have enough housing supply to meet demand and bring prices down."

  • Real Estate

Aimee Picchi is the associate managing editor for CBS MoneyWatch, where she covers business and personal finance. She previously worked at Bloomberg News and has written for national news outlets including USA Today and Consumer Reports.

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  • How to Write a Thesis Statement | 4 Steps & Examples

How to Write a Thesis Statement | 4 Steps & Examples

Published on January 11, 2019 by Shona McCombes . Revised on August 15, 2023 by Eoghan Ryan.

A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . It usually comes near the end of your introduction .

Your thesis will look a bit different depending on the type of essay you’re writing. But the thesis statement should always clearly state the main idea you want to get across. Everything else in your essay should relate back to this idea.

You can write your thesis statement by following four simple steps:

  • Start with a question
  • Write your initial answer
  • Develop your answer
  • Refine your thesis statement

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Table of contents

What is a thesis statement, placement of the thesis statement, step 1: start with a question, step 2: write your initial answer, step 3: develop your answer, step 4: refine your thesis statement, types of thesis statements, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about thesis statements.

A thesis statement summarizes the central points of your essay. It is a signpost telling the reader what the essay will argue and why.

The best thesis statements are:

  • Concise: A good thesis statement is short and sweet—don’t use more words than necessary. State your point clearly and directly in one or two sentences.
  • Contentious: Your thesis shouldn’t be a simple statement of fact that everyone already knows. A good thesis statement is a claim that requires further evidence or analysis to back it up.
  • Coherent: Everything mentioned in your thesis statement must be supported and explained in the rest of your paper.

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

The thesis statement generally appears at the end of your essay introduction or research paper introduction .

The spread of the internet has had a world-changing effect, not least on the world of education. The use of the internet in academic contexts and among young people more generally is hotly debated. For many who did not grow up with this technology, its effects seem alarming and potentially harmful. This concern, while understandable, is misguided. The negatives of internet use are outweighed by its many benefits for education: the internet facilitates easier access to information, exposure to different perspectives, and a flexible learning environment for both students and teachers.

You should come up with an initial thesis, sometimes called a working thesis , early in the writing process . As soon as you’ve decided on your essay topic , you need to work out what you want to say about it—a clear thesis will give your essay direction and structure.

You might already have a question in your assignment, but if not, try to come up with your own. What would you like to find out or decide about your topic?

For example, you might ask:

After some initial research, you can formulate a tentative answer to this question. At this stage it can be simple, and it should guide the research process and writing process .

Receive feedback on language, structure, and formatting

Professional editors proofread and edit your paper by focusing on:

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Now you need to consider why this is your answer and how you will convince your reader to agree with you. As you read more about your topic and begin writing, your answer should get more detailed.

In your essay about the internet and education, the thesis states your position and sketches out the key arguments you’ll use to support it.

The negatives of internet use are outweighed by its many benefits for education because it facilitates easier access to information.

In your essay about braille, the thesis statement summarizes the key historical development that you’ll explain.

The invention of braille in the 19th century transformed the lives of blind people, allowing them to participate more actively in public life.

A strong thesis statement should tell the reader:

  • Why you hold this position
  • What they’ll learn from your essay
  • The key points of your argument or narrative

The final thesis statement doesn’t just state your position, but summarizes your overall argument or the entire topic you’re going to explain. To strengthen a weak thesis statement, it can help to consider the broader context of your topic.

These examples are more specific and show that you’ll explore your topic in depth.

Your thesis statement should match the goals of your essay, which vary depending on the type of essay you’re writing:

  • In an argumentative essay , your thesis statement should take a strong position. Your aim in the essay is to convince your reader of this thesis based on evidence and logical reasoning.
  • In an expository essay , you’ll aim to explain the facts of a topic or process. Your thesis statement doesn’t have to include a strong opinion in this case, but it should clearly state the central point you want to make, and mention the key elements you’ll explain.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

  • Ad hominem fallacy
  • Post hoc fallacy
  • Appeal to authority fallacy
  • False cause fallacy
  • Sunk cost fallacy

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A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . Everything else you write should relate to this key idea.

The thesis statement is essential in any academic essay or research paper for two main reasons:

  • It gives your writing direction and focus.
  • It gives the reader a concise summary of your main point.

Without a clear thesis statement, an essay can end up rambling and unfocused, leaving your reader unsure of exactly what you want to say.

Follow these four steps to come up with a thesis statement :

  • Ask a question about your topic .
  • Write your initial answer.
  • Develop your answer by including reasons.
  • Refine your answer, adding more detail and nuance.

The thesis statement should be placed at the end of your essay introduction .

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McCombes, S. (2023, August 15). How to Write a Thesis Statement | 4 Steps & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved March 12, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/academic-essay/thesis-statement/

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U.s. climate envoy john kerry is giving up the job title — but not the fight.

Ari Shapiro

Ari Shapiro

William Troop

Kai McNamee

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John Kerry says "we can win this fight" against climate change. Sean Gallup/Getty Images hide caption

John Kerry says "we can win this fight" against climate change.

John Kerry has been a U.S. senator, a presidential candidate and a secretary of state, all after receiving three Purple Hearts for his military service in Vietnam. Now, at the age of 80, he is stepping down from what's likely his last full time job in government: the president's special envoy for climate.

Joe Biden created the position for his old friend right after taking office three years ago. And since then, Kerry has been all over the world trying to rally governments and corporations to curb the worst impacts of climate change.

A new satellite will track climate-warming pollution. Here's why that's a big deal

A new satellite will track climate-warming pollution. Here's why that's a big deal

All Things Considered host Ari Shapiro spoke with Kerry about his tenure in the Biden administration, how another Donald Trump presidency could impact the fight against climate change, and how he remains hopeful.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Ari Shapiro : Could you begin by just choosing one number, a specific, narrow figure that you think represents some of the broader accomplishments of your time as a climate envoy?

John Kerry : I think the one number is 1.5 degrees Celsius, which has now become the north star of the world for trying to deal with the climate crisis. In 2018, the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change], told us point blank, we have 12 years within which to make and implement the critical decisions to avoid the worst consequences of the climate crisis. And in order to do that, you have to try to get as close as you can to 1.5.

State of the Union special coverage.

Shapiro : And yet right now the world is on track to warm the planet by twice that many degrees by the end of the century. And last year, like many recently, was the hottest in recorded history . Global emissions keep going up. It would seem that although you have worked so hard to keep the potential for 1.5 within reach, the reality is far from that.

Kerry: Well, it's not far from that. I mean, point blank: we are heading towards about 2.5 degrees right now. But we know – given what we achieved in Glasgow and Sharm el-Sheikh, and now most recently the UAE consensus – if we implemented all the initiatives and all of the targets that were set by those various meetings, we could actually hold the earth's temperature to about 1.7 degrees. When I took this job on, we were headed towards four degrees. And now we're heading towards 2.5.

Getting off fossil fuels is hard, but this city is doing it — building by building

Getting off fossil fuels is hard, but this city is doing it — building by building

Shapiro : I want to follow up on something you said, which is that things look really good if we keep the promises we've made – if countries stick to their pledges. Dubai was by you and your team considered a great success because for the first time, the world agreed that we need to move away from fossil fuels . But at the same time, China is building more coal fired power plants . In the U.S., emissions are not falling fast enough to meet American climate goals. So what leads you to believe that these promises will be kept?

Kerry: Yes, China has about 360 gigawatts of coal fired power that is slated to come online, and that would be catastrophic if that's what happens. But China is, I think, to some degree hedging against the reality of what their economy needs as a backstop. But they're constructing and deploying more renewables than all of the rest of the world put together. China is looking at something like 2,500 to 3,500 gigawatts of power that's going to be created over the course of the next six years. Now that's game changing if that happens. We still have to see China massively reduce coal-fired power, we have a lot of work to do together to advance that. But happily, we had a major negotiation with China in Sunnylands California for four days, and China agreed, for the first time, to put all greenhouse gasses on the table as they revise their goal for what they're going to achieve over the next round of reductions.

giving up on dissertation

John Kerry, left, listens to Xie Zhenhua, Special Envoy for Climate Change for China, during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in 2022. Markus Schreiber/AP hide caption

John Kerry, left, listens to Xie Zhenhua, Special Envoy for Climate Change for China, during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in 2022.

Shapiro: I want to ask you about corporations, because you've often talked about the role that private industry plays in the transition away from carbon. Just this week, the CEO of ExxonMobil, Darren Woods, told Fortune magazine that the world is not on track to reach net zero emissions by 2050. And he blamed the public for that, saying: "The people who are generating those emissions need to be aware of and pay the price for generating those emissions." Secretary Kerry, when you hear those words coming from the head of the largest publicly traded oil company, blaming the public for a lack of climate progress, how do you conclude that corporate America is marching alongside you?

There's a new 'Climate Reality Check' test — these 3 Oscar-nominated features passed

Oscars 2024

There's a new 'climate reality check' test — these 3 oscar-nominated features passed.

Kerry: Well, I haven't suggested that everybody is. I've said to you that there are many corporations that are doing unbelievable things right now.

Shapiro: But ExxonMobil is a pretty big one.

Kerry: ExxonMobil is an oil and gas producer that has not yet joined in some of the larger initiatives that we need in order to achieve our goal. And ExxonMobil did step up in Dubai, but we need them to do more. That's why the UAE consensus is actually so important, because for the first time ever in our history, oil and gas was at the table. They agreed to do certain things and they all signed on to a transition away from fossil fuel. We're seeing a pace of penetration of renewables around the world: China is at about 31% now, electric vehicles; Europe is at about 21% electric vehicles; the United States is at 4%. So we have to speed up. That's one of the reasons why I'm transitioning out of this particular job, because I think that now the private sector is going to be the key to our ability to be able to win this battle.

Farms fuel global warming. Billions in tax dollars likely aren't helping - report

Farms fuel global warming. Billions in tax dollars likely aren't helping - report

Shapiro: So you're giving up the job title, but you're not giving up the fight?

Kerry: Correct. I am going to be directly involved in trying to help deploy the financing, which will accelerate this transition. All the finance reports say if you want to achieve net zero by 2050, then it's going to cost about $2.5 to $5 trillion a year for the next 30 years. No government in the world has that money put on the table, but the private sector does.

Shapiro: Can the push to achieve net zero by 2050 survive a second term of Donald Trump as president if he wins the election in November?

Kerry: When Donald Trump was president, even though he pulled out of Paris, more than a thousand mayors in the United States kept on track to meet the Paris agreement requirements. 37 governors out of our 50 states, Republican and Democrat alike, continued to adhere to the renewable portfolio laws of each of their states. We actually saw 75% of the new electricity in America during Donald Trump came from renewables. It does matter who is president, but no one prime minister, one king, one president anywhere in the world is able to stop what the marketplace of the world is now moving towards.

New York sues beef producer JBS for 'fraudulent' marketing around climate change

New York sues beef producer JBS for 'fraudulent' marketing around climate change

Shapiro: You have been involved in climate and environmental efforts for more than 50 years, since at least 1970. So what do you do when you have a day of despair or hopelessness?

Kerry: I kick myself in the ass and go back to work. We can win this fight. And if we don't do what we need to do between now and 2030, there is no net zero 2050. And I refuse to believe that that's what we're left having to accept.

  • environment
  • climate change

Trump clinches delegate majority for GOP nomination, NBC News projects, setting up Biden rematch

Donald Trump Holds Campaign Rally In Rome, GA

Former President Donald Trump has secured enough delegates to seal the Republican presidential nomination, NBC News projects, setting up a 2024 rematch with President Joe Biden, who NBC News proje c ted earlier Tuesday night has c linched the Democratic nomination .

Trump went into Tuesday's contests in Georgia, Hawaii, Mississippi and Washington as the presumptive nominee after he vanquished all his primary opponents, while Biden faced little opposition in his primaries. Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley ended her bid for the Republican nomination last week after she won just one state on Super Tuesday.

Trump's projected victories Tuesday night pushed him over the 1,215-delegate mark — the "magic number" needed for a majority at the GOP's July convention in Milwaukee. Those delegates will be bound by party rules to support him, even as he faces looming court cases in four separate indictments.

The general election starts with Biden’s favorability having dip ped below 40% in a spate of recent polls , below Trump, who also remains unpopular . While Biden ran ahead of Trump in virtually every major poll in 2020, recent polls have shown the race virtually tied or with Trump holding a slight edge , with voters raising concerns about Biden's age and Trump's legal woes.

While Biden ran virtually unopposed on the Democratic side, Trump steamrolled through a Republican primary field that included a handful of prominent politicians. He won all but two contests (in Vermont and Washington, D.C.) through Tuesday and retained his grip on the Republican primary electorate in the process.

Candidates who ran against him as vocal critics — such as former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and former Rep. Will Hurd of Texas — couldn't get traction. Those looking to brand themselves as Trump 2.0 — such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy — couldn't break Trump's hold on the party.

His former vice president, Mike Pence, found himself unable to get out of his shadow but also unable to appeal to Trump supporters after he defied Trump's wishes and didn’t move to block the certification of the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021.

Haley eventually turned her campaign into a destination for the share of Republican voters who desperately want their party to change course away from Trump, but her standing among Republican voters overall f e ll as she stepped up the anti-Trump rhetoric.

At times, it seemed like two GOP presidential primary contests were playing out in parallel — one with Trump largely refusing to engage with the rest of the field as the heavy favorite and another featuring the rest of the field scrambling for a distant second place.

Initially, some Republicans thought Trump could be beaten. DeSantis, a popular general in the GOP culture wars who in 2022 notched the largest victory in a Florida governor's race since 1982, briefly led Trump in hypothetical one-on-one contests. DeSantis and his supporters believed that he could snatch support from Trump, particularly after Trump-backed candidates underperformed in the same 2022 midterms that DeSantis dominated.

But DeSantis' campaign stumbled out of the gate and never truly recovered his standing in the polls, in part because of early attacks from the Trump team aimed at preventing his rise. Questions about the campaign's strategy and finances emerged just months into his bid, he replaced his campaign manager over the summer, and his well-funded super PAC clashed both internally and with the campaign .

Haley's campaign started off slow, but her stock steadily r o se heading into this year. Capitalizing on that momentum, the Haley campaign waited until the fall to start spending big, and she vaulted into the second tier of candidates, finishing just 2 percentage points behind DeSantis in Iowa.

Unable to garner momentum in Iowa, DeSantis suspended his campaign, elevating Haley into a one-on-one battle against Trump. But she continued to poll poorly with Republican voters , relying heavily on support from self-identified independents and Democrats in states that allowed them to participate in GOP nominating contests, a dynamic that vastly limited her ceiling even as she gave voice to many voters' discontent with Trump.

All the while, Trump didn't participate in a single GOP presidential primary debate. His campaign even called on the Republican National Committee to cancel the debates last fall.

Four indictments — over allegations from making hush-money payments to an adult film actress to mishandling of classified documents to efforts to overturn the 2020 election — and civil judgments for business fraud and defamation related to a rape allegation from an author didn’t prevent Trump from maintaining his grip on the GOP primary electorate (and they may have helped Republicans rally around him ).

After his victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, then-RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel said on Fox News that she believed voters had sent a "clear" message that Trump would be the nominee, even though Haley was still an active candidate.

And despite those words, and her long history of supporting him, Trump called for McDaniel's resignation as leader of the party shortly afterward. Trump's preferred picks — former North Carolina GOP Chairman Michael Whatley and the former president's daughter-in-law Lara Trump — took the reins of the RNC this month as chair and co-chair, respectively, as Trump once again takes over as the Republican Party's presidential nominee and its singular standard-bearer.

giving up on dissertation

Ben Kamisar is a deputy political editor in NBC's Political Unit. 

NFL

Bengals pay up for Sheldon Rankins because his presence was desperately needed

CINCINNATI, OHIO - NOVEMBER 12: Joe Burrow #9 of the Cincinnati Bengals is sacked for a fumble by Sheldon Rankins #98 of the Houston Texans during the third quarter at Paycor Stadium on November 12, 2023 in Cincinnati, Ohio. (Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images)

The Bengals finally addressed their top offseason priority Wednesday, adding to the interior defense by agreeing to terms with former Texans defensive tackle Sheldon Rankins , according to a team source. The deal is for two years and $26 million, according to multiple reports.

Rankins will turn 30 next month and be on his third team in three seasons, but he’s been a consistent pass rusher inside. Rankins is No. 132 on Randy Mueller’s list of 150 free agents .

How he fits

Just call him the new Larry Ogunjobi . When Bengals 3-technique B.J. Hill was at his best, he split time with Ogunjobi and even worked alongside him in passing situations. The last two years, the Bengals had to lean extensively on Hill to carry the load without a suitable backup. Hill played 75 percent of the snaps the past two seasons combined after not topping 50 percent the previous three seasons. Rankins is an animal as a pass rusher — just ask Alex Cappa — who was 10th among interior defenders in pass rush win rate last season. Suddenly, a push up the middle lacking juice gets a $26 million infusion of it. It could also provide less-is-more productivity from Hill.

Live updates: Free-agent news from across the NFL FA tracker: New teams and contract details for the top 150 free agents Best available players: Who’s still on the market? Grades: Best and worst of free-agent deals

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2024 impact

The Bengals’ pass rush up the middle last year, outside of DJ Reader, was nowhere near good enough. Too often the pass rush was Trey Hendrickson or bust. With Rankins flushing the quarterback, it could provide more opportunities for Hendrickson, who had 17.5 sacks last season.

Take a look at the PFF metrics on last year’s defensive tackles up against Rankins. It includes pass-rush productivity (PRP) and true pass set win percentage (TPSWIN%).

Likely, the lean to Rankins will come on passing downs as he didn’t grade so well against the run. Part of that was the Texans’ system of pass rush first and not worrying much about the run. For his career, Rankins has been more than solid against the run. Defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo’s philosophy could allow him to regain that level.

This wasn’t the first time the Bengals courted Rankins. They’d tried in two prior offseasons to land him, but Houston and the Jets ended up signing him. The Bengals wouldn’t be denied this time. Which was apparent by how far they went out of their comfort zone. Not only is Rankins far older than they typically sign in free agency, but he’ll be one of three 30-year-olds on the roster next year, they also went beyond the upper reaches of his expected market. At $13 million per season, it’s a hefty price for a rotational 3-technique. Value the Bengals found with other signings in free agency along with a healthy amount of cap space allowed them to go all the way up the financial ladder to land him.

Without knowing the specific cap hit for this year, the Bengals are likely to have around $30-$35 million remaining. But in reality, about two primary signings. There’s more than enough room to add a right tackle and the other defensive tackle spot as DJ Reader visited Detroit on Wednesday and target Teair Tart is still on the board.

Impact for 2024

His price tag tells the story. The Bengals knew they absolutely had to add pass rush on the inside. They couldn’t come away empty. Landing Rankins for a 500- to 600-snap split with Hill is exactly what the defense needs to cut down on so many explosive plays allowed and third-and-longs converted.

(Photo: Andy Lyons / Getty Images)

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Paul Dehner Jr.

Paul Dehner Jr. is a senior writer and podcast host for The Athletic. He's been covering the Bengals and NFL since 2009, most notably, for six seasons with The Cincinnati Enquirer. He's born, raised and proudly Cincinnati. Follow Paul on Twitter @ pauldehnerjr

IMAGES

  1. Giving up on your dissertation is not an option

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  2. Writing a Dissertation: A Complete Guide

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  3. 10 Things to Know Before Writing your Dissertation

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  4. How to Write Dissertation Writing? A Step by Step Guide & Citations

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  6. Dissertation Write Up Process In 5 Easy Steps » Uniresearchers

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VIDEO

  1. Giving up first class #travel #dad #love #meta

  2. How to Write a Dissertation Introduction

  3. Dissertation Writing 101: Why You Have To Let Go #shorts

COMMENTS

  1. Defending Your Dissertation: A Guide

    Jessika Iwanski is an MD/PhD student who in 2022 defended her dissertation on genetic mutations in sarcomeric proteins that lead to severe, neonatal dilated cardiomyopathy. She described her writing experience as "an intricate process of balancing many things at once with a deadline (defense day) that seems to be creeping up faster and faster ...

  2. Surviving the Dissertation: Tips from Someone Who Mostly Has

    Next time someone asks you to go for a beer, close your computer and say yes. Carve out little bits of writing time. As I mentioned in my previous post, dissertation writing is a marathon, not a sprint. Writing often happens in little bits spread out over time. No matter how busy you are, take the time to write for half an hour a day.

  3. Getting to the Finish: Completing your Dissertation

    A doctoral dissertation is the final step in students' doctoral journey. It marks a change from being a student to becoming a professional. It is during that change that many things come up for students that can stand in the way of finishing. Note, professional development isn't the same as instruction.

  4. The Thesis Whisperer

    Think about whether a PhD will in fact help you get a job you want. If it isn't leading you in the direction you want to go in and/or if it is just piling you with debt, then you might be wasting time. Similarly, if you are doing it because you think having "Dr" in front of your name will get you a job and/or other benefits, that isn't ...

  5. Ten things I wish I'd known before starting my dissertation

    8) Your dissertation will interfere with whatever else you have going on - a social life, sporting commitments, societies, other essay demands. Don't even try and give up biscuits for Lent, they ...

  6. What Is a Dissertation?

    The introduction serves to set up your dissertation's topic, purpose, and relevance. It tells the reader what to expect in the rest of your dissertation. The introduction should: Establish your research topic, giving the background information needed to contextualize your work; Narrow down the focus and define the scope of your research

  7. The Not-So-Secret Guide to Dissertating

    The Not-So-Secret Guide to Dissertating. By Jenny J. Lee. January 8, 2018. IStock. A s a professor for nearly 15 years, I have advised more doctoral students than I care to count. I've had my ...

  8. Dissertation Strategies

    Skim other dissertations from your department, program, and advisor. Enlist the help of a librarian or ask your advisor for a list of recent graduates whose work you can look up. Seeing what other people have done to earn their PhD can make the project much less abstract and daunting. A concrete sense of expectations will help you envision and ...

  9. How To Write A Dissertation Or Thesis

    How To Write A Dissertation: 8 Steps. Clearly understand what a dissertation (or thesis) is. Find a unique and valuable research topic. Craft a convincing research proposal. Write up a strong introduction chapter. Review the existing literature and compile a literature review.

  10. What Is a Dissertation?

    Revised on 5 May 2022. A dissertation is a large research project undertaken at the end of a degree. It involves in-depth consideration of a problem or question chosen by the student. It is usually the largest (and final) piece of written work produced during a degree. The length and structure of a dissertation vary widely depending on the ...

  11. What Not to Do on Your Dissertation

    Add heaps of dissertation appendixes. Don't assume that you're going to get extra marks for including all your research notes and photocopies of your favourite journal articles in the appendixes simply because you can't bear to leave the material out, and want the examiner to see how hard you've been working. You won't get extra marks ...

  12. Writing a Dissertation: A Complete Guide

    A dissertation is a critical part of completing a PhD. Here, we'll learn all the elements and steps you need to write a dissertation. ... Often, the student must also give an oral presentation on their topic, known as a dissertation defense. ... your introduction sets up your research topic and provides the necessary background context to ...

  13. How to Write a Dissertation

    In the introduction, you set up your dissertation's topic, purpose, and relevance, and tell the reader what to expect in the rest of the dissertation. The introduction should: Establish your research topic, giving necessary background information to contextualise your work; Narrow down the focus and define the scope of the research

  14. How to Write a Dissertation or Thesis Proposal

    While a thesis proposal is often only 3-7 pages long, a prospectus for your dissertation is usually much longer, with more detailed analysis. Dissertation proposals can be up to 25-30 pages in length. Note Sometimes, a research schedule or detailed budget may be necessary if you are pursuing funding for your work. Dissertation prospectus examples

  15. Thinking of giving up on my dissertation after 7 years

    Thinking of giving up on my dissertation after 7 years. I'm just burned out, tired, and feel like a failure. My mom (suicide), step-father and my cat died during my PhD but I kept pushing forward anyway. Severe burnout, health issues (currently on medication), changing advisors, and a pandemic later and I am losing my TT job at the end of ...

  16. I just gave up on my dissertation... : r/AskAcademia

    I gave up on mine 7 years ago. Best decision of my life after getting divorced. Seriously, my whole life got better after giving up two abusive relationships; one with my ex-spouse, and one with myself and my guilt about all the money, time, and effort I'd spent on a PhD that I didn't have the love to finish.

  17. How to Choose a Dissertation Topic

    Step 2: Choose a broad field of research. Step 3: Look for books and articles. Step 4: Find a niche. Step 5: Consider the type of research. Step 6: Determine the relevance. Step 7: Make sure it's plausible. Step 8: Get your topic approved. Other interesting articles. Frequently asked questions about dissertation topics.

  18. Giving up on your dissertation is not an option

    While I was writing, I hit multiple walls, contemplated giving up several times, and eventually came to understand that this was a job—a 30-day temp job. Writing at this intense pace reminded me of writing my dissertation. I don't have any magic medicine to offer you to help you accomplish your gargantuan dissertation task.

  19. Dissertation Structure & Layout 101 (+ Examples)

    Abstract or executive summary. The dissertation abstract (or executive summary for some degrees) serves to provide the first-time reader (and marker or moderator) with a big-picture view of your research project. It should give them an understanding of the key insights and findings from the research, without them needing to read the rest of the report - in other words, it should be able to ...

  20. Quitting MSc during Dissertation?

    A. LostRiot. 14. You need to tell your supervisor everything you've said in this post. It's in their interest for you to complete your project, they don't want to give you something you won't be able to achieve. Talk to him face to face, point out to him everything you've said here I'm sure that will help a lot. Reply.

  21. Giving Students the Up-to-the-minute Knowledge They Need

    It's all about giving my students the up-to-the-minute knowledge they need.". This steadfast commitment to staying ahead of the industry is popular among his students, and they awarded him the 2022-2023 Golden Apple Award in two categories: one for graduate core courses and another for graduate elective courses.

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  24. How to Write a Thesis Statement

    Step 1: Start with a question. You should come up with an initial thesis, sometimes called a working thesis, early in the writing process. As soon as you've decided on your essay topic, you need to work out what you want to say about it—a clear thesis will give your essay direction and structure.

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  26. 5 takeaways from President Biden's State of the Union address

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    John Kerry has been a U.S. senator, a presidential candidate and a secretary of state, all after receiving three Purple Hearts for his military service in Vietnam. Now, at the age of 80, he is ...

  28. Trump secures delegates for GOP nomination, setting up a 2024 rematch

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  29. READ: Sen. Katie Britt's remarks giving the GOP rebuttal to ...

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  30. Bengals pay up for Sheldon Rankins because his presence was desperately

    2024 impact. The Bengals' pass rush up the middle last year, outside of DJ Reader, was nowhere near good enough. Too often the pass rush was Trey Hendrickson or bust. With Rankins flushing the ...