It's in the Guidelines

              If you haven’t visited us in the Thesis Office or attended one of our workshops, then you may not know that you can’t finish a thesis or dissertation without referring to the guidelines. It’s important to know how to utilize the guidelines and how to use them most effectively to make formatting your thesis or dissertation simpler. You will need to learn several Microsoft Word functions which you may not have ever needed to use before completing coursework and may never need to use again, so allot time to familiarize yourself with the software in your completion schedule. To begin with, download and or print the guidelines so you can refer to them quickly often.

Begin implementing the formatting outlined in the guidelines during drafting. Don’t wait until the entire document is completed to reformat. Remember, while you’ll need to follow the conventions of whichever citation style you’ve chosen, conventions of the Graduate School precede those of all other citation styles and will sometimes conflict. The guidelines alone may be difficult to understand without referring to them in conjunction with the templates and example pages also available on the Thesis Office website. Of all the procedures outlined in the guidelines, the two which often present students with the most confusion are page numbering (including section breaks and suppressing the page numbers) and leader dots. Dedicate the most time to mastering these two functions of Microsoft Word first. Separate adding and deleting section breaks and suppressing page numbers into two different learning tasks.

It’s likely you’ll need to also supplement the guidelines with Microsoft Office’s support website to view step by step illustrations to complete both tasks. Bookmark, save, and/or print the examples and templates from the Thesis Office website along with Microsoft Office’s support website’s examples and you will have all the resources you need to make sure your page formatting is correct! Do the same for adding leader dots to ensure your Table of Contents is formatted correctly as well. Video tutorials over leader dots and section breaks are on the Thesis Office website as well to supplement the guidelines. Microsoft Word several templates for title pages, tables of contents, etc. These templates will make formatting your document according to the guidelines more difficult, so don’t try to implement them, though they seem to present a ready-made, time-saving fix, they will create a headache for you.

The guidelines cover any issue that may come up during the formatting process, so refer to them first as the definitive source along with the other supplemental sources mentioned. Of course, if any other questions or concerns arise, we at the Thesis and Dissertation Office are very familiar with the guidelines and are happy to help you navigate and utilize them effectively and are available M-Th 10 am – 2 pm and by appointment in Adams 104. 

Thesis and Dissertation Office: https://www.niu.edu/grad/thesis/index.shtml

Thesis and Dissertation Office Guidelines:

https://www.niu.edu/grad/thesis/pdf/ETD-Guidelines-Thesis.pdf

https://www.niu.edu/grad/thesis/pdf/ETD-Guidelines-Dissertation.pdf

Thesis and Dissertation Office Templates and examples: https://www.niu.edu/grad/thesis/templates-examples.shtml

Thesis and Dissertation Office Video Tutorials: https://www.niu.edu/grad/thesis/video-tutorials.shtml

Microsoft Office Support - Suppressing Page Numbers: https://support.office.com/en-ie/article/start-page-numbering-later-in-your-document-c73e3d55-d722-4bd0-886e-0b0bd0eb3f02

Microsoft Office Support Leader Dots: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/show-dots-or-leaders-between-tabs-c80b62d0-2244-4078-95bd-8c82f91440ba

- Tiffany 

Catastrophic Interruptions: On Writing the Dissertation (or not) When You Can't Write

by Robyn Byrd

I have a conference paper due in 10 days and a chapter deadline at the end of the month. But what have I been doing this past week? Driving almost 2500 miles across the country, and I wasn't on a much-needed vacation. I was moving my aging father from Arizona to Maryland (where family can care for him). Last Friday my sister called me in the middle of class, going out of her mind not knowing what to do. He had collapsed, unable to breathe, and was yet insisting on taking care of himself. Big Sister to the rescue! Dad is safe a week later.

And now Big Sister is another week behind on her chapter draft and her conference paper. Like many dissertation writers, I have experienced more than a few setbacks. The very length of the project makes it almost certain the writer will be set back by something -- be it poor health, caring for parents and children, divorce, or worse. A man I met at one of our programs was set back by his wife's death. Another was crying daily because he was fighting addiction. By comparison, taking care of my ornery father (love ya Dad) and getting a divorce in 2015 seem like minor inconveniences. But setbacks they were, so much that my dissertation completion schedule (presented at my proposal defense) seems like an unfunny joke by now.

So what can we do? While I'm not an expert on personal trauma or time management, I have lived through catastrophes of  both, and can offer some wisdom for surviving and doing the thing. Because I am surviving and, ever so slowly, I am doing the thing.

1. Accept that you are behind. Adjust and move on.

A big part of moving on is acceptance, in any kind of bad situation. Getting behind on your dissertation -- like WAY behind -- because of a personal or family catastrophe is common. It happens to the most dedicated writers. Accept it, change your completion schedule, defer the graduation, make new plans. You have spent this long on the diss. If you still want the degree, still do it. But adjust your expectations for completion. You were going to miss being a student anyway. ;)

If your setback(s) help you realize you need to be doing something else? Do that instead. Many people decide, mid-stream, that they do not want to write a dissertation after all. Don't be tricked by the sunken cost fallacy. If doing something different is better for you, even after all this work, DO it.

2. Develop habits and routines. No, really.

You may have been able to manage your diss writing up to this point by getting a little done here and there, or having an informal schedule for doing work. Well, now that you are behind, and now that you know "stuff happens," get even more serious about your habits and routines. I bought a Panda Planner, and started using Trello.com to manage my time and work. The Panda Planner also lets me have daily reflections right on my schedule. Also, check out Tiffany's post about apps for writing projects. A combination of digital and physical planning methods works best for most.

Habits are hard to cement, so using planning and mindfulness you can develop them over the coming weeks and months. Don't get too ambitious. A single new good habit every month could put you months closer to defense. For instance, I have been working on going to bed earlier.

3. Don't compare yourself to others... unless it helps.

Personally, I do compare myself to others, because until recently I knew no other single moms in my program. Of course the other women can do it themselves! They have husbands or they're single. While it's true that I don't know everyone's story, it helps me to think this way and not hold myself to a standard of "five years to PhD" (the average in my program), simply because my life situation is not average. I'm a single mom; I got a divorce mid-grad career; my dad is aging fast and needs help; I'm low-income and need to work a lot of hours. All these things, plus setbacks, make me realize I can't expect to work as quickly as the others.

On the other hand, if you know you have trouble with comparing yourself and feeling insecure about it, develop a habit of NOT doing that! Talk to friends about it. Even people who don't Ph.D. They probably have similar problems at work. And don't forget -- you've had a setback. It's not an excuse. It's an understandable reason for not working.
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Setbacks are not the end of the world, and they're not even the end of your dissertation (unless you want them to be). Athletes experience setbacks in many of their seasons, and they don't necessarily throw in the towel. Stuff happens when you're working hard! Catastrophic interruptions happen at every stage of our lives, they just seem even more catastrophic when our lives are this tightly scheduled. Talk to a therapist, talk to friends, be mindful of you thinking about the interruption and its consequences. If you decide to keep going, your dissertation will get done. Just not as soon as you think. And that's okay.

Bullet Journaling for Motivation

Tiffany started you off on this Bullet journal journey with some gorgeous example templates for dissertation planning.  For those not interested in the hobby of lettering, or those who want their entries to be quick and convenient, there is a whole sub-set of folks bullet journaling in a minimalist format.  I tend to end up somewhere in the middle.  Sometimes I spend time making my pages look cute, but I also use my bullet journal as somewhat of a workhorse.  If I need to scribble down notes or ideas quickly, so be it. 

There are plenty of places online to look for bullet journaling layout ideas (my favorites are Pinterest and Instagram), but I wanted to talk more specifically about how you can use your journal as a motivational tool.  Writing a dissertation or thesis is a long process that requires sustained attention and effort, and a bullet journal can function as a helpful tracker of your progress. 

Writing a dissertation or thesis is all about setting a series of goals.  Due dates for your chapters, due dates for your research or literature review, due dates for sections of chapters, and finally goals for everyday writing.  The latter is what I’d like to focus on here. 

Most of the texts on dissertation writing agree that we should be working on our projects daily, whether that’s a 6-hour block of time or the 20 minutes you have on the train.  It’s not always easy to see how those small daily efforts add up to you reaching your larger goal.  Here’s a few things I’ve tried. 

You could set up a word count goal for the day.  I have experimented with making a sticker chart for myself like the ones we had in elementary school and giving myself a sticker per 100 words I write (thanks to Katy Peplin for this idea).  It’s amazing how this little motivational tool still works.  Our teachers were on to something.  I got these stickers at the dollar store.  You could use stars, hearts, or any other sticker shape you like. 

 

Another method of tracking progress is setting time-based goals.  I’m a huge fan of the Pomodoro Method, and I set up a pomodoro goal at the beginning of each month.  I record these daily and count them up at the end of the month, but you could also use a sticker chart or adapt the idea of a mood tracker (i.e. fill in one space per pomodoro). 

One of the great advantages to the bullet journal is having a physical space to organize your thoughts and track your progress.  I’ve been bullet journaling for about three years now, and one of the things I love best about it is having a record of all the work I’ve done.  Because results are slow in coming, it can be easy to forget the amount of work you are putting in.  After I passed my comprehensive exams I looked back on my bullet journals and was able to see how many small goals I met before I met the larger goal of passing the exam.  One day I read half a book, the next I transcribed my notes, and the next day I met with my study buddy.  It’s like putting a bucket under a leaky faucet.  Each drip makes the bucket fuller, and all these drops of water will eventually fill the bucket. 

- Amanda 

Amanda Roberts is a guest bloggerPhD candidate in the English Department at NIU. She is currently researching Tori Amos to complete her dissertation.