Dissertation Tips

As a recent MA survivor, I thought I ought to document some of my tips and tricks before my memory starts making me believe it was an easy process (it wasn’t).

Top Ten Tips

1) It’s never too early to start thinking about your topic. You might still be working on your term papers, but you could well find material that will be useful for your dissertation too.

2) Keep an accurate record of everything you’ve read. It’s easy to think that you’ll remember where you saw that vital snippet of information, but it’ll be dislodged by thousands of other snippets and you’ll be gnashing your teeth when it comes to writing the bibliography.  Tools such as EndNote will allow you to log detailed bibliographical information.

3) Read widely at first, then narrow it down. While your topic is still fairly broad, a quick skim of a relevant text will suggest whether it’s worth pursuing and give you more ideas.  Make a note of the core texts to which you will return, as they’ll be far more fruitful once you’ve defined your final dissertation title.

4) Prepare for your tutorials. Your supervisor can help only if you give him/her a clear sense of what you’re doing.  Their assistance is particularly valuable during the early stages and can avert unnecessary work or blind alleys.  Sending them a sample chapter will show your approach and style, which can be difficult to get right.  It’s better to get this feedback at the beginning of the process rather than when you’re just about to hand it in!

5)  Work out a timetable. Depending on your institution, you’ll probably get around 5 months to work on your dissertation.  This seems like a lot, but there’s far more research required than for a term paper.  Factor in visits to other libraries, archives and relevant conferences.  Also make allowances for work commitments (if relevant) and your personal life.  Obviously, not all eventualities can be foreseen, so allow for contingencies, eg illness, bereavement.  It might sound like overkill, but project management tools can help.  Basecamp, for example, will manage your schedule and allow you to create related to-do lists and upload documents.

6) Back up your work. I can’t stress this one enough.   We rarely expect a hard disk to fail or our laptop to be stolen, but it happens.  Frequently.  A Windows error completely scrambled my dissertation the day before I was due to submit it.  There was also a disk fault on my backup drive, so that didn’t help me either.  Fortunately, being the Eternal Pessimist, I also had a third copy stored online.  Don’t rely on USB keys as they are very easily lost.  There are online services such as Mozy that will give you a couple of gigabytes of storage space and allow you to schedule your backup.

7) Give yourself a break. Working flat out is unlikely to produce a better dissertation.  You need to give yourself time to reflect on what you’ve done and also to allow ideas to percolate.  Having a day off to do something completely different can reinvigorate your mind and boost your energy levels.

Find a productive workspace. I found that an hour of working in the library was equal to around 3 hours at home.  We’re all different, but most of us work better with fewer distractions and are absolute terrors for finding work displacement activities.  My partner, for example, had a burning need to clean the windows when she was supposed to be writing her dissertation.  It’s never happened again since.

9) Leave enough time at the end. Don’t forget you’ll have the bibliography and coversheets to write.  Also, it’ll be sod’s law that your printer breaks down and leaves your magnum opus in a mangled heap.  Your university might well stipulate that you get it bound and deduct valuable points if you fail to do so.  A well-presented document will give a better impression of your work, too.

10) Enjoy yourself! Don’t forget that you were sufficiently interested in your subject to want to do an MA.  The dissertation gives you the opportunity to research in more depth and also give more expression to your own ideas.  If you follow the tips above, hopefully it’ll be a rewarding experience and you won’t end up muttering to yourself in a corner.

I’m sure other folk have even better tips.  Mine are based purely on having learned the hard way.  Please let me know if this has been helpful or if you have anything to add.

Good luck, and don’t forget to back up your work!

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