Write Place, Write Time

Guest Blog -- Connections Matter

Part of the mission of Project Thesis is to update you on valuable information relating to the researching, organizing, writing, documenting, revising, defending, and publishing of a thesis or dissertation.

At the same time, the blog was designed to describe the experiences of graduate students, traditional and non-traditional, struggling with starting and completing their thesis or dissertation. We want you to realize that many of your peers across departments are dealing with similar issues, and, most importantly, that you are not alone in this. 

In an effort to bolster this sense of community, from time to time our office will be asking guest bloggers to contribute to Project Thesis on a number of topics relevant to graduate students today. 

It is our hope that you, too, will contribute to this ongoing discussion by posting questions and comments to the blog or on our office Facebook group. 

And with that, the NIU Thesis and Dissertation office is proud to present our inaugural guest blog by Paula Howard.

What do I wish I had known when I started writing my thesis? Connections matter. 

As part of my degree requirements I wrote a thesis titled The Use of Facebook by Older Adults. I learned a lot in the process, about the subject and about myself. One crucial lesson, which I wish I had learned early on, was that I made it harder for myself by going it alone. I had no idea how vital connections are. 

Not just connections to various university personnel who shepherded me and my paperwork through the system. I mean connections to people like my professors, advisors, and colleagues. I don’t mean to diminish the importance of my family and friends throughout the process. They all cheered me on faithfully and put up with a fair amount of flakiness on my part. But when it came to writing my thesis, I would have benefitted from being connected to more people who understood what I was going through. And that’s on me. 

I’ve always had a tendency to assume I have to do things myself, but I should have abandoned that conceit early on. Meeting with my thesis advisor or committee would tie me up in anxious knots. What I can see now is that I didn’t need to dread those meetings. I always came away from those encounters feeling better about my research, my thesis, and my ability to get it all done. I would have been much better off embracing them as a chance to have in-depth conversations about my research, to get feedback and advice, to gather up words of encouragement for those dark nights of a grad student’s soul. 

I also wish I had sought out the camaraderie of my fellow thesis writers. While I was completing my coursework I enjoyed hanging out with other grad students, but once I finished my classes I saw them very little. Working with a writing buddy, or buddies, would have given me the connection I missed. Going to the University Writing Center or attending a Graduate School workshop or presentation would have helped, too. 

Don’t get me wrong. Writing my thesis was a very positive experience, and I’m proud of that accomplishment. But take my word for it: Connection helps. Reading a blog about getting through your thesis can cheer you up for a while, but it’s no substitute for real-world connections. 

-- Paula Howard completed her M.A. in English in December 2015

Who is ProQuest?

So just who is this ProQuest? And why should I care?

Well the short answer to the first question is that ProQuest is NIU’s publication partner for all theses and dissertations approved for graduate degrees. As for the second question, you should care because ProQuest provides NIU with the platform for submitting theses and dissertations to the Graduate School for review and ultimate approval. After that, ProQuest preserves and distributes your thesis or dissertation forever, within certain parameters over which you have some control.

ProQuest is an international, for-profit corporation headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It started out as R.R. Bowker, but its rise to fame really came under the name of University Microfilms International (UMI). From the development of microfilm in the 1930s to the construction of 21^st-century digital repositories, ProQuest (under several different names over the years) has been a consistent leader in the technology of document preservation, including historical newspapers, archives and libraries, and (of course) theses and dissertations.

Now for the “why should I care” part. Well, first . . . because ProQuest supplies and maintains the infrastructure of NIU’s submission platform. When you click the SUBMIT NOW button on the Thesis Office website, you will be magically transported to the land of ProQuest, called the ETD Administrator. Rest assured, however, that the NIU Thesis Office is the custodian and administrator of that platform and your work remains in the secure, trustworthy hands of NIU (Carolyn Law, to be precise) until the very end.

The second reason you should care is because you’ll be asked up front to make some decisions about the eventual availability of your work after you graduate. You would be well advised to do some homework about these decisions before you start. THE SUBMISSION PROCESS – linked to the Thesis Office website – covers the most frequently asked questions.

Then a few weeks after each graduation term, the Thesis Office sends the electronic files of all the approved theses and dissertations (now called ETDs) to ProQuest, where they are ingested into massive databases, deposited in NIU’s Huskie Commons (our institutional repository), and tagged and indexed for online search engines.

To learn more about ProQuest in the big-picture sense, you might want to explore their website, www.proquest.com. It’s really quite an interesting enterprise for any scholar, academic writer, or researcher.

Closer to home, the Thesis and Dissertation Office offers a special presentation called Demystifying the Submission Process for graduate students preparing to submit. This 2-hour program walks graduate students through the specific steps of the process and answers all of your questions about publication options, Open Access, copyright, and more. This semester, Demystifying the Submission Process will be offered on Wednesday, March 9, 4:00 – 6:00 pm in Wirtz Hall 104. Advance registration is appreciated. To register, send an email to thesis@niu.edu with Submission Process in the subject line.

Welcome Back!

We hope your new year is off to a good start and you’ve had a good break!

For our first blog post of 2016, we want to be sure you know about our upcoming events and remind you of our open office hours, which are Monday – Thursday, 10:00 AM – 2:00 PM; stop by Adams Hall 104 anytime with questions regarding theses or dissertations.

Let’s look at the events we have lined up.

Presentations

We have five informational presentations scheduled:

1.      Dissertation 101, Monday, February 8, from 2 – 4 PM (almost full!)

2.      Thesis 101, Tuesday, February 9, from 2 – 4 PM (almost full!)

3.      Writing a Dissertation in Education, Saturday, February 20, from 9 AM – 2 PM (Naperville)

4.      Writing a Thesis in Engineering, Monday, February 22, from 2 – 4 PM

5.      Demystifying the Submission Process, Wednesday, March 9, from 4 – 6 PM

Information about topics covered, exact event/room locations, and who would benefit from each is found on our website.

Workshop

We also have a hands-on workshop, scheduled twice. * NOTE * Our Wednesday, February 3 workshop is full, but you can still attend on Monday, February 29, from 2 – 4 pm.

This workshop is called Tables, Figures, Pagination, and it obviously helps with those tricky topics! It is held in Adams Hall room 103, and almost everyone writing a thesis or dissertation can benefit from this session!

  

Please REGISTER for any of the presentations AND for the Tables, Figures, Pagination workshop by emailing thesis@niu.edu . Put the name and date of the event that you would like to attend in the subject line please.

Introducing, Brown Bag Discussions!

We are now offering discussions over lunch (bring your lunch please) in Adams Hall, room 103 from 12 – 1 PM. These talks will cover a variety of topics and may include guest speakers.

Our first Brown Bag is scheduled for Tuesday, February 16, and it is aimed at faculty who are directing a thesis or dissertation at NIU, especially for those who are doing so for the first time!

Other Brown Bag topics include Writer’s Block, Open Access, and Writing a Proposal.

Please see the schedule on our website, and stay posted in case we add new “menu” options!

Questions? You can always call us at (815) 753- 9405 or email us at thesis@niu.edu. 

Hope to see you at one of our happenings soon!

Writing Groups

This last blog before the Christmas break was meant to be a second installment of Dissertations/Theses in the news.

However, I find myself in a rather familiar situation -- prioritizing other work over finishing my dissertation.

I have one last chapter to write -- One. Final. Chapter. And then . . . all I have to concern myself with is reviewing the content with my committee, relying on their feedback as I revise the entire thing, and then submitting all important required graduate school paperwork to defend my dissertation and graduate.

Instead, I am using the little free time that I have grading student papers, making up quizzes, grading quizzes, helping my kids with their homework. . . Okay, that last one does not count. But you know what I mean.

The problem is that it is just too easy to rationalize finishing all of this other work before I focus on my own. And that is when I fall into the all too familiar abyss.

Thus, concerned that I will not use any of the Christmas break to make any progress on this final chapter, I wanted to offer some thoughts about writing groups.

A dissertation/thesis writing group is not some formal gathering of graduate students reading and critiquing each other's work. That is the last thing anyone needs. Besides, you will receive all of the feedback that you need from your director and committee members. Do not let the name "writing group" fool you. This is just three or four people at a coffee shop, a bookstore, a diner, a library, or some other designated meeting space where you can write. Nothing more.

A writing group is a kind of support network. The three or four of you make a formal agreement that once a week -- or once every two weeks, or once a month, whatever your schedule permits -- the writing group will meet at a pre-arranged time at a designated place (and the time and place must be agreed to beforehand and will not be changed for any reason). This time has been set aside from your busy schedule specifically for all of you to write your dissertation/thesis. Not research. Not read sources. Not collect data. But write. Anecdotal evidence and research shows that graduate students prioritize every other aspect of their dissertation/thesis EXCEPT THE WRITING!

Therefore, the second part of the writing group's agreement is that no other distractions are permitted. No texting, no going on Facebook, no checking Twitter feeds, etc. Every member of the writing group keeps the other person on task. WRITE! As Richard Castle's screensaver tells us:

Anecdotal evidence does indicate that writing groups help. Further, the evidence suggests that writing groups are even more effective if the other members of your writing group consists of peers from different fields/departments. This protects individuals from unconsciously evaluating the worth of their own topic in their chosen field to someone else's topic who happens to be in the exact same field. This leads to panic and writer's block, and the next thing you know: another year goes by and, once again, no work done on the dissertation.

You have your topic. You have done the primary reading. You have conducted your experiment/observation. You have your research and data. Now it is time to write.

It still may take a great deal of time to write the entirety of your thesis (see previous post on being a non-traditional student for data on average length of time to complete a dissertation/thesis). At least the support of a regular writing group will help keep you on task.

Feel free to comment on this blog about writing groups. Feel free to share your thoughts about writing groups on our Facebook page. If you want to try and set up a writing group and need help doing so, feel free to contact the office.

Oh . . . and on a related note: There has been some debate in our office about scheduling regular writing days -- perhaps, once a month in our office or in one of the classrooms in the library -- for graduate students who want all of the benefits of a writing group, but cannot seem to put one together. Office sponsored writing days would offer the same benefits -- get together in a quiet, safe space, no distractions allowed, and write. The only difference would be, Thesis and Dissertation office staff would be on hand to help if someone has a question about something in their document. Would you want our office to offer writing days? Would writing days help you plan time in your busy schedule to focus exclusively on writing your dissertation/thesis? Let us know in a comment or on Facebook.

See you all in 2016. Have a good break!

“I Didn’t Know What I Didn’t Know.”

The title of this post is a quote from a student who attended our “Writing a Dissertation in Education” Workshop of October 3rd.

We often hear positive comments after our workshops, either through email or in person. Typically, students report that the workshop they attended was very helpful.

So what is it that we do at our workshops?

Well, let me tell what we did at our fall workshops then alert you to some of the changes we have in store for the spring.

Typical Fall Workshop

This fall, we offered workshops for specific discipline areas and departments. Some focused on thesis preparation, and others focused on dissertation preparation. By “preparation,” we mean the actual construction of a document according to the appropriate Guidelines (←link to “Thesis Format Guidelines”) found on our website. Content issues are a matter for students and their committees, of course.

A common core at our fall workshops was to walk students through the appropriate Guidelines (←link to “Dissertation Format Guidelines”) in great detail, as the instructions do seem daunting at first. Yet these Guidelines are the publication conventions for theses and dissertations written at NIU, and they need to be followed closely.

We explained the rules, such as the correct placement of tables, and illustrated the rules by way of example, after which students better understood what they needed to do and felt more empowered to get it done. Hence, the positive reviews! (Not to boast, but here's another student quote: "Your presentation was fantastic and very much appreciated!")

We also directed students towards important areas on our website and the Graduate School’s website, such as where to find — and how to read — the Graduation Deadlines for Graduate Students.

Finally, we left time for hands-on manipulation of documents where we helped students address specific problems.

Workshop Issues

We found that many of these workshops were too extensive for some students to complete. In some cases, workshops were presented over two or three sessions. We also found that some disciplines require individualized information, while most do not. So in the spring, we are changing things up!

Spring Ahead! 

In 2016, we will split the sessions into A) ones that mainly present and cover necessary material, and B) ones in which students work right then and there on the formatting of their documents.

A) Presentations

Our presentations will be divided into “Thesis Requirements” and “Dissertation Requirements,” and anyone in any discipline can attend either as appropriate to their degree. Each will last approximately 75 minutes and will finish in one sitting. We will still offer a couple discipline-specific sessions, but our general presentations will give all writers a wealth of information in short order.

B) Workshops

Our workshops, which will be held on different dates than the presentations, will address specific formatting issues, such as problems that arise with tables, figures, and pagination. During these workshops, students need to bring their document on a laptop so they can implement format changes. These two-hour long sessions are open to writers of both theses and dissertations. They will be particularly helpful for those nearing their graduation semester. And, the first one is already scheduled!

Schedule of Events

You will find the dates, times, and locations of all of our events through our website (click Workshops and Support) or through NIU’s Events Calendar, where you can also subscribe to our RSS feed “Thesis-Workshops.” We will be listing more soon!

For any questions, you can always call us at (815) 753- 9405 or email us at thesis@niu.edu. 

Finally, one last student quote: "I will be encouraging all of my peers to attend your workshop in the future." We hope you'll take this student's advice, and we'll see you at one of our happenings this spring! 

Trick and TREAT Yourself to Some Support!

As Halloween arrives, and as you hand out candy or get dressed up for the holiday, think about giving yourself a real treat: find a writing partner or another source to help keep you on track for your study.

In the MOOC “How to Survive Your PhD,” developed by Dr. Inger Mewburn and the Australia National University Online team, the moderators begin the course with a discussion into why PhD students quit (applies to thesis writers, too). As expected, “intellectual isolation” and “stress/exhaustion/mental health issues” were among the several reasons given for quitting. Other reasons, such as “mounting debt” and “being made to do non-thesis work,” were given, but the first two I mentioned can be addressed with a small amount of effort.    

If you are reading this, you probably know that the Thesis Office tries to help with isolation through our Facebook group (NIU Theses and Dissertations) and this blog. However, I’m of the opinion that nothing beats face-to-face interactions, at least occasionally!

And not long ago, a colleague, who recently earned her PhD (congratulations, Professor Probst!), offered me a related piece of advice for making progress. Dr. Probst said she found it very helpful to have weekly meetings with a partner. Here’s how she describes her experience:

“A fellow Ph.D. candidate and I decided to dissertate from afar while we assumed full-time positions. We understood the challenges of writing a dissertation being removed from constructs, particularly peer support, at the university. We planned to continue our regular writing sessions that we began at NIU, but difficulties in arranging our schedules to make time for our dissertations presented themselves. Our weekly meetings held us accountable to write regularly, one of the most important habits for completing the dissertation. Rarely did we review each other’s work—that is not the support we needed. We needed consistency, and a guaranteed weekly opportunity to write meant we had to prioritize that work over other tasks or interests. Furthermore, our meetings encouraged us to write and revise outside these sessions because our writing mindset never lapsed, however tired and discouraged we sometimes felt. We learned that allowing too much distance from the dissertation would make returning to it more challenging. Additionally, the emotional struggles of writing a dissertation are real and can be detrimental, so the emotional support we provided to one another often was more important than carving out time in our schedules to write.”

Wow! I think Dr. Probst’s words offer some good advice!

If you cannot find a partner or cannot work out the logistics, though, NIU offers other resources that might be of benefit.

For instance, if you are experiencing stress, anxiety, or any other condition such as depression, NIU’s Counseling and Consultation Services, located in the Campus Life Building (corner of Lucinda and Normal) Room 200, offers free groups and programs for NIU students. One of their offerings is a “Mindful Monday” group, which meets from 12 – 12:45 for meditation and relaxation, thus reducing stress while offering camaraderie.

They also have therapy dogs every 2nd Monday from 6:00-7:15 pm in Stevenson Hall. See one good dog in the photo to the right!

NIU counselors can get you to an appropriate anxiety/stress management group by referral from a walk-in appointment, available Monday through Friday from 11:00 – 3:30. For more information, see their website or call them at 815-753-1206.

Finally, don’t forget about us, the Thesis and Dissertation Office. We are here in Adams Hall 104 Monday through Thursday from 10:00 am – 2:00 pm, and we have a quiet workshop area in our adjoining room (AH 103) where you can work anytime we are open. Stop in, call us (815) 753- 9405, or email thesis@niu.edu. We will be glad to help in any way we can.