The Graduate Degree: A Prelude to Knowledge Work

Investigating, analyzing, evaluating, creating, contextualizing, self-directing: skills like these are integral to the writing of a thesis or dissertation but also characteristic of the broad occupational domain called knowledge work.  To thesis and dissertation writers at any stage of their projects, below we offer thoughts on how you’re already developing—and can continue to develop—skills that are crucial for success in knowledge-oriented fields.

Tallies and Time Clocks?

Knowledge work is generally hard to quantify or measure.  Ironically, though, those who engage in such work across fields of academia tend to be fairly obsessed with counting and measuring.  Most carefully keep or monitor totals of papers presented, articles published, grants awarded, committees served on, and classes taught per year.  When you arrange your CV and the several accompanying documents needed for an academic job search, your field’s particular obsessions with such performance-related numbers boldly reassert themselves.  Other academic endeavors are sometimes summed up in terms of hours spent per week in classrooms, offices, labs, meetings, field investigations, grading sessions, or writing stints.

Yet the efforts that go into various kinds of academic production are not always easy to break down into regular time chunks.  Realistically, much academic work can keep the worker occupied from early morning to late at night, during parts of weekends, and during stretches of semester breaks.  (Let me briefly add that plenty in and outside academia do seem interested in figuring out the number of hours per week academics actually work—or in debating how many hours per week they should work.  A couple of recent reports (see here and here) suggest that such investigations and debates are complex and sometimes testy.  We avoid these issues in this post.)

Your Project: Training in Key Knowledge-Work Skills

A lot of what you do while completing your thesis or dissertation is obviously solid preparation for a future career in knowledge-centered domains.  As outlined and nicely detailed by the Careers & Employment Division at the University of Manchester, those aiming for a career in academia need to develop at least five skills for success.  Good news: as soon as you embark on your project, you’re immersed in an experience that can help you hone each of them.

Networking: As you develop relationships with members of your committee, each member can introduce you to others to help build your professional network.  In addition, while researching and writing, you can further extend your network by attending and/or presenting parts of your project at conferences.  Last year around this time, I traveled to a national conference to present a paper based on research for one of my dissertation chapters and attended multiple panels in areas central and peripheral to my academic interests.  The experience led to new contacts and eventually a request to submit a piece to a scholarly society’s publication.  Next month, I’ll travel to a regional conference to deliver a presentation with an NIU colleague and attend several discussion sessions.  You’re likely taking advantage of similar networking opportunities.  If not, seek them out.

Time Management: You’re already a knowledge worker and thus already weighing priorities and setting many deadlines of your own.  In previous posts on this blog, we’ve covered approaches to managing time during writing sessions, balancing your project with family matters, and maintaining your focus and enthusiasm by mixing work with recreational activities.  Consider such scheduling practices as sound preparation for the self-directed knowledge work of your post-degree career.

Resilience: While writing a thesis or dissertation, setbacks inevitably occur.  Data may need to be reanalyzed.  Ideas and approaches may need revamping.  Feedback on your progress from committee members—or from attendees at academic conferences—can be encouraging but also humbling.  As you get closer to the project’s completion, you’ll likely start looking for your postgraduate job.  Academic job hunting is especially fraught with pressures, rejections, and disappointments.  But lows like these that you experience throughout your project build your patience and resilience for similar wrinkles you’ll face down the road.

Presentation Skills: As a knowledge worker, you need to be able to present ideas clearly, in a variety of settings, among colleagues but also among people unfamiliar with intricacies of your work.  Each time you revise a section of your long document, you add useful material to your expanding pool of well-articulated expressions of your findings.  And you shouldn’t just aim to present them at your defense—another reason to plan to present at conferences while completing your project.  If you’re teaching, consider ways to integrate insights from your developing work in the classroom.

Project Management: At the NIU Thesis Office, we stress the value of being proactive in managing your thesis or dissertation project.  In a previous post, we featured a review of a useful book that describes the project-management approach to the dissertation.  Ultimately, you’re the manager of your project—under supervision of your director, of course.  The management experiences you gain now will certainly inform many aspects of your future knowledge-oriented employment.

Final Thoughts

Happy investigating, analyzing, evaluating, self-directing, and writing to all.  And good luck to those of you defending over the next few weeks!

Why All These Books?: The Explosion of the Dissertation Self-Help Market

Let's talk about Self-Help books. And let's face it -- most are bad. But some, the practical ones, or maybe the ones that use a metaphor that just sweeps you off your feet, can be good, if used wisely, and taken with several grains of salt.

What's Wrong with Self-Help?
Historically, categories of self-help fall into a few repeating areas: Success, Health, Optimism. Think of the "How to be Rich" books, or "How to Get Friends" books. You've seen them or heard of them, maybe even taken a peek inside? And the health books? WOW. There is a whole section for those in the bookstore.

In the 1970s, as America moved forward from the Civil Rights Movement, and then Vietnam, the feelgood book became more of a thing than ever. And then it became a huge publishing industry. It tapped into people's insecurities, their struggles with body image, and their dissatisfaction with life. For some, self-help really helped. For others, it left them as isolated as before, and out a few dollars...or more. I remember digging in my mom's bookshelf when I was a kid in the '80s, and finding books with titles like Real Women Send Flowers. The most striking one I remember? A slim motivational handbook entitled F*** Yes! My mother grew stronger and stronger as we grew up, but I don't think it was because she spent $10 on F*** Yes!

In the 1990s, the pitfalls of self-help were becoming evident. The market was flooded with The Art of the Deal, 10 Days to Self-Esteem, and other well known but probably useless books. Counselors, psychologists, and other began to notice that self-help was replacing folk wisdom, making people actually feel more helpless, making them blame outside things for their own failures, and offering glib and disingenuous advice (especially the success books). In 1993, Wendy Kaminer published I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional, an intelligent indictment of the entire self-help philosophy, and she marked the decline of the decades-long fad as the 21st century approached.

Though the industry of self-help did not collapse, it has been replaced in part by self-care methods like meditation, one-on-one counseling (owing to reduced stigma), and time honored traditions like group yoga. We are not afraid to let others help us anymore. So no need to read about it in private!

The Dissertation Self-Help Book

So where has the self-help book found a new lease on life? In the form of the dissertation self-help book.

Don't jump!!!

The dissertation self-help book has exploded over the last twenty years or so. Familiar metaphors from 20th century self-help, such as survival, demystification, baby-steps, a journey, grace the covers of these books. Familiar models of coping and solution fill their insides: 12-step programs, "invisible rules" that just need to be uncovered, methods to diminish the importance of the problem (I have a book called It's *JUST* a Dissertation!), romanticization of the reader's situation and magical thinking.

It's true that there are helpful pieces of advice in these books. But oh dear, the metaphors... Can we stop talking about the dissertation as if it's not a real thing?

Well... for some of us the dissertation takes a million years to write, so it really does feel like a journey. Or like any number of the romantic and fearsome metaphors on those book covers! But there is a real problem with the self-help model: It focuses on recovery. Any recovery approach itself has problems, but to suggest that a dissertation is something that needs to be survived or overcome is to suggest that the dissertation is a malady or even an addiction. Ill advised it may be! But it is not an illness in need of a cure. It is a project in need of planning, management, and other practical solutions. (See "Practical Dissertation Help Books" below)

Someone needs to write the I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional of dissertation help books. I'm Not Writing My Dissertation, You're Not Writing Your Dissertation.  It's good to have some inspirational books around. And it's helpful to envision yourself on a journey or a quest or whatever floats your boat (yet another diss metaphor...). But how do we read about dissertations with care and a critical eye?

This article on the dissertation book culture is a helpful read:

The Failure of Dissertation Advice Books: Toward Alternative Pedagogies for Doctoral Writing


Practical Dissertation Help Books

BUT WAIT! After all our nay-saying, there is hope. We do recommend some of these books to our students. And other universities do too. I'm just on about the self-help so you know there's no magic "cure" for your dissertation. But what there is are some good books with practical advice:

Writing the Doctoral Dissertation: A Systematic Approach
(We recommend this to everyone!)

The Craft of Research

Proposals that Work

Here are some more books you might want to explore, curated by the University of Michigan graduate school. But don't forget your shaker of salt.

Recommended Books on Dissertation Writing

One final and important suggestion: Taking a page from this millennium's change from self-help to self-care and group help, maybe don't look for all the answers in a book? Talk to other dissertation writers often, take care of yourself and your body, and seek help from professionals if you need to. You are the first person who can help yourself write this dissertation. The words and research have to be yours, but you don't have to handle the "journey" alone.

Explore this map and other fun stuff at
https://www.academiccoachingandwriting.org/dissertation-doctor/the-dissertation-journey