Today, I want to ask you a question: Do you know how to finish your dissertation? This came to me because of an email exchange I had with an ABD at a northeastern US university. She wrote to me and said, "I would like to finish writing my dissertation, but I don’t know how…" When I asked her about this, it became clear that she 1) didn’t have a clear stopping point for her writing (she had veered away from her original proposal and wasn’t sure how to get back on track) and 2) she didn’t really know what a finished dissertation "looked like." So I asked her to do two things: 1) go back to her original proposal and relentlessly cut out anything that had veered too far off the path. She was also to decide what the next steps were to get back on track. And 2) to skim a couple of accepted dissertations from her department (preferably ones chaired by her advisor). If you’re working steadily, but not sure if you know how to finish, these two steps can help you get where you need to be.
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