Almost every thesis resource book begins by telling you
that being bright isn’t enough for finishing a thesis. Successfully
doing a thesis—that is, writing and researching a thesis of which
you’re proud, of which your committee approves, and from which your
field benefits—takes knowing the rules of the road. The ranks of
permanent ABDs are filled with intelligent, motivated former students
who somehow missed the rules for negotiating the thesis course. Each advisor,
department, and school has a set of unwritten rules, and students who
don’t discover these rules of academic and graduate life don’t
survive.
What are the rules—written and unwritten—that demystify the
thesis process? All authors acknowledge they exist, but most state them
obliquely if at all. The following “rules” have been pointed
out by graduate students, authors, and thesis experts. Many of them are
described in Peggy Hawley’s book, Being Bright is Not Enough.
and David Sternberg’s book, How to Complete and Survive a Doctoral
Dissertation. Some of the rules may sound cynical or pessimistic,
but heeding them can help you avoid unpleasant surprises. You might not
be able to keep all the rules all the time, but at least you’ll
know when you’re at risk of breaking them. If things begin to go
wrong, you can refer to them and see what rule you’ve bent or ignored.
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Direct Your Advisory Relationship
The thesis process is as much a human relations enterprise as a research
project. Starting students need to understand the kind of relationship
they can expect to have with their advisors, at least initially. How the
relationship develops over time depends greatly on how students direct
it. Left to its own, the relationship usually fails to live up to students’
expectations. Perhaps more than any other failure, new students expect
the advisor rather than themselves to guide and energize the relationship.
Students need to play the role of neophytes appropriately deferring to
their advisors, while shrewdly directing the advisory relationship to
get the advising they need.<br><br>
• Don’t expect to get the advisor of your choice. The best
professors in the department are already besieged by numbers they can’t
adequately handle.
• Expect to sell yourself to your advisor. The brighter you are,
the better your academic reputation, the more developed and refined your
thesis and research ideas, the more funding you have, and the nicer you
are, the more attractive you’ll be to a potential advisor.
• Don’t arrive empty-handed. Have a well-thought out research
idea before you meet with potential advisors. Even if your idea gets mangled
or thrown out, the act of thinking through a research topic in advance
will show you’re a serious and capable researcher.
• Choose your advisor as much for his or her “management style”
as for his or her expertise. The more mature and powerful you are as a
professional in your own right, the more important it will be to select
an advisor who isn’t autocratic or arrogant. Otherwise you’ll
constantly be confronting your control issues.
• Don’t expect your advisor’s steady interest in your
topic. Over the several years it takes to finish your thesis, your advisor’s
interests will likely change. Even if you begin working on a topic that
interests him or her, your advisor may have gone on to new interests (and
newer students) by the time you finish.
• The amount of advisory support you receive depends on what you
offer your advisor. Most advisors are interested in advising you only
if (a) you’re working on a topic relevant to their interests, (b)
you have a grant or funding that benefits the department or university
(especially grants whose overhead gives the department discretionary funds),
(c) you’re known as a brilliant scholar who will enhance their reputation,
or (d) you’re a pleasure to work with. The higher the quality of
your work, the better you make your advisor look and the more support
you can expect.
• Don’t expect as much advice or support as you want. Although
it’s true that advisors suffer from lack of time to advise students,
most advisors don’t give sufficient advice because they don’t
know how. Many haven’t conducted research or published in a long
time. Many don’t know the latest statistical or research techniques
used in their discipline. Many don’t know enough about the student’s
topic to give useful advice. Many are poor writers and don’t know
the fine points of editorial style. Their advice will reflect their agenda,
their interests, their knowledge. Even if they’re kind and sincerely
interested in your progress, they’re limited by what they know.
• Once you’ve finished the proposal, it’s usually better
to stick with a bad advisor, unless things become unbearable Once you
have an approved proposal, changing advisors will be extremely difficult
and you’ll lose precious ground. The cost in time, money, and emotional
anguish to say nothing of possible future reprisal will far exceed the
discomfort and difficulty of working with a bad advisor. Try to compensate
by finding other faculty to work with discreetly (i.e., bring up their
suggestions as if they’re from your reading or your own thinking
about the issue). If you feel things are at such a state you need to change
advisors (God forbid!), do so by going to the department head and discussing
your problems in confidence.
• Don’t complain about your advisor. Graduate students are
in no position to complain about anything. In any dispute with your advisor,
the structure and politics will favor the advisor over you no matter how
right you are. Never say negative things about your thesis, the program,
or anything else that might get back to your advisor.
• Play your part. Interacting with your advisor will be difficult
simply because of the power he or she has over your success. Accept that
you’ll need to play a subordinate role and defer to your advisor
on most issues. Even if you’re a well-known and respected professional
in your own right, within the academic setting you’re a novice and
a scrub.
• Expect an adversary relationship. Your advisor is the university’s
gatekeeper. Further, if you’re planning an academic career, you’re
a temporary colleague but a future competitor. Expect intellectual combat—this
is a way of life in academe. You need to present your point of view without
apology, argue non-defensively against suggestions you can’t abide,
and know when to acquiesce if your advisor insists on the issue. You need
to know how to debate your viewpoints but also when to retreat.
• Expect to take most of your advisor’s suggestions. Not taking
suggestions will be seen as a threat to your advisor’s authority.
You don’t have to take suggestions verbatim. You do have to address
them in a way that convinces your advisor you’ve done your best
to handle them.
• You can’t ignore your advisor’s suggestions no matter
how off-target they may be. If you have a really bad advisor, you can
consume much of your time plotting how to get around his or her bad advice.
You’ll need to learn how to negotiate and resolve conflict amicably.
Assume that perfecting negotiation and conflict resolution skills is part
of your graduate education.
• Act grateful for any and all feedback. Even if your advisor criticizes
what you’ve done, state your appreciation and assure him or her
you’ll begin taking immediate steps to improve in the area of the
criticism.
• Don’t bypass your advisor. Don’t work with outside
consultants without your advisor’s knowledge and permission. Don’t
ask other committee members for help without first getting your advisor’s
agreement that it’s a good idea. [The exception is when you need
to compensate for a bad advisor’s inadequacies by discreetly finding
additional support.]
• Use technical help if it’s allowed. Most graduate students
lack one or more skills needed to research and write a thesis. Although
students are able to learn whatever they need, learning takes time and
money, so many students compensate for their inadequacies by engaging
other people in the thesis process. Faculty use consultants all the time.
So should you if it doesn’t violate policy. Help your advisor to
understand how using such assistance would benefit both of you.
• Barter skills with other students. Faculty expect students to
help one another but they don’t expect students to ask for professional
help. Advisors think it makes them look like they’re not doing their
job, so it threatens them. It’s better to get help from other students
with whom you can trade talents. Only if you can’t find peer help
should you search for professional help, and then only if it doesn’t
violate policy.
• Let your chair run interference for you. If you have a great advisor,
bypass the rest of the committee as much as possible.
Generate Your Support Systems
Nobody said life —or graduate school—is fair. Surviving the
thesis process is a test of emotional intelligence as much as of academic
expertise. The key factor to starting and finishing a thesis is personal
motivation. The best way to ensure your persistence and determination
is to build a supportive infrastructure to motivate your work over the
long haul.
• All graduate students are not created equal. Science students
are more equal than non-science students. If you’re in the non-sciences,
you’ll likely have little of the financial, advisory, collegial,
and resource support available to science students. Additionally, your
thesis research will be more broadly focused and rarely part of a larger
research project. In reality, there’s little similarity between
theses in the sciences and non-sciences. Many, if not most, of the rules
in this article apply only to non-science students.
• Full-time, on-campus graduate students get more support. Advisors
believe that full-time students are more focused on academic matters and
therefore more deserving of their attention than other students. Try to
find a way to attend full-time by cutting back job duties even if only
for brief periods when you need to put your full attention on the thesis
(for example, right at the start, when writing the proposal, when collecting
data or running experiments or doing other research, and when writing
the final chapters). Once you’ve established yourself as a “serious”
student who’ll be one of the 50% to finish the thesis, you can then
increase your employment focus.
• Form support networks. If you’re an off-campus or part-time
student, you’ll be left out of the grapevine. You won’t be
part of the pizza parties or TGIF get-togethers. You’ll need to
create a network that includes students who are in the know. Creating
such a network is in fact a survival skill you can take with you into
your post-graduate career.
• Join Internet forums. Graduate school, and the thesis process
in particular, have a way of making very successful, intelligent students
feel inadequate. As you begin your thesis, you may be ignorant—lacking
the “street smarts” you need to finish—but you’re
probably just as intelligent and capable as the next student. You can
find compassionate support from other starting students through Internet
discussion forums and graduate student user groups. Such groups often
lack the competitive edge that appears as interpersonal reserve or conflict
in regular support groups. Students can remain anonymous as they complain
about their struggle with a thesis. Problems involving advisors and faculty
can be broadcast and discussed without fear of reprisal.
• You’ll need to generate your own support systems. Most graduate
departments are highly competitive with little real community or cooperation.
Graduate students and faculty are skilled at looking friendly and helpful,
but the structure of academe pits them against one another. Plan to initiate
your own support system. Start your own support group if you need to.
References Used in this Issue:
Peggy Hawleyademic Departments.(Peggy Hawley. Being
Bright is Not Enough. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1993.
Gerald R. Salancik. Power and Politics in Academic Departments. The
Compleat Academic: A Practical Guide for the Beginning Social Scientist.
Edited by Mark P. Zanna and John M. Darley. New York: Random House, 1987. |