taken form phdcomics.com

First and main motto should be something like “may the force be with you”. But if we are to take the question a little (which literally means, a little) bit serious, then, let’s rewind to a couple of days before when we had a little discussion about ways of writing and presenting academic papers, slides, and so on.

As a result of this discussion, Katharina Schlierf has asked some of us to answer to these quick (not so quick really…) demand in order to help her providing her first year Ph.D students at the Universitat de Valencia with some ideas / advise.

Not that I consider myself into a position of giving advise to others, but, I think that some points might be worth considering. Kata asked for three points. Which is a great number for make nice groupings of information. Nevertheless, I prefer to present an extended version and let people choose (as the pressure to make a workable top three listing is not really on. Is it?

Off we go:

• There is no such thing as a divide between content and it’s presentation form. You can not present the same content in multiple formats. Whether you chose to make an oral presentation, a power point or write an article, the way you “formally” present things are THE content. So, do worry about content and DO worry about presentation.

• Try to clarify the following as to have a crystal-clear (whenever possible) answer to; “what is your thesis about?”

  • Your theme (say: decision making in urban planning)

  • Main objectives (say: analyze failure in assumed good urban plannings projects)

  • Research question( say: why excellent urban planning projects fail in reaching all or some of their goals)

  • Theoretical Background (say: Urban Studies and Anthropology of the City)

  • Relevance of your topic: (say: amongst the last decade, in the urban planning department of La Seu d’Urgell several external consultancies have been contracted to design and implement dozens of projects. More than a half of these projects have failed to achieve their proposals. Whereas the city-council and the literature in decision-making and urban planning are eager to publish data on failure, we think it might highlight what the weakness as well as opportunities for improving decision-making are…)

  • As time goes by, you should be able to be more specific and provide and enlarge details for all these questions at your will. But this is because as time goes by you are likely to be more into your field-work. And thus, gain concreteness. So it is normal to not have that much to say at the beginning of your thesis. Expect concreteness to reshape what your main objectives were and your research question was.

• Learn to write a lot (a blog might be a good starting point)

• Learn to delete and get rid of what you just wrote. A text is always an open text. Expect to go back and forth in your thesis. Deleting a complete chapter of your thesis might be painful, but from a readers perspective, could be grateful.

• Research tools (software based or not) are your friends (and worst enemies if you do not back up your data). Do not be afraid to use them or to ask someone for help. (here you can find a bunch of them; http://digitalresearchtools.pbwiki.com/; always look for Free/Libre software alternatives)

• No one said it was easy. But this does not mean you can not enjoy. If you are not enjoying it, try finding out why. And if you can do something about it, do it. If, instead of doing that by yourself, you can do with others, then the outcomes are likely to be more enjoyable. (stressful does not lead to successful; enjoyable neither, but at least, you enjoyed something)

Hope it helps. Morgan Meyer made an awesome presentation on writing tips as an answer. I will find out if I can attach it here too…