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The Psychological Secret Behind A Successful Dissertation |
By:
Kalinda Rose Stevenson, PhD |
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The Psychological Secret Behind A Successful Dissertation
Kalinda Rose Stevenson, PhD
One of the greatest challenges in writing theses and dissertations is not really about the writing process itself, but about the psychological struggles behind the writing. The most difficult psychological obstacle involved in writing a thesis is that you must claim that you are an expert.
When you write a thesis, you need to see yourself differently. Instead of seeing yourself as a student, you need to position yourself as an expert ready to take your place among the other experts and authorities in your field.
This claim to be an expert in your particular area is a psychological leap that most of our educational experiences don't prepare us to take. When were you ever regarded as an expert on anything as a student?
In fact, our educational process taught us just the opposite. We were taught to learn the "right answers." The experts defined the right answers, and judged our exams, essays, and papers, to determine if we had learned the "right" answers.
Since students learn very early that good grades depend on providing the "right answers," most of us had no encouragement to be original about anything. Students often learn that teachers do not reward original thinkers with good grades. Up until you reach the point of writing a dissertation, it's entirely possible to be a successful student without ever writing an original word about anything in your field of study.
If your education followed the typical path, you learned not to be original and you certainly learned not to regard yourself as an expert, but as the willing student who was able to demonstrate that you had learned your lessons. Throughout this whole educational process, based on learning the right answers, you learned to write essays and term papers. Most of us were never taught how to write a thesis.
The typical term paper, in secondary schools and universities, is not based on your own original research in some topic. Instead, you gather information about your topic published by various experts in the field. Your objective is to summarize the material you gathered on your topic in a coherent way.
An essay is not the same as an argument to prove a thesis. Essay questions provide an opportunity for you to present your opinions, but a thesis requires more than opinion.
You can go through high school and college and never be required to make an original contribution to your field. Yet, this is what you must do when you write a thesis. This is one of the primary reasons the transition from essays and term papers to theses and dissertations is so difficult.
What happens when you come to the point of writing a dissertation? You must now take your place among the experts in your field. Now it is your turn to ask new questions and provide new answers. After a lifetime of learning the right answers, this is a dramatically new stage of your educational process.
Your success in writing the dissertation is no longer determined by your ability to learn the right answers. The thesis requires you to ask new questions and provide new answers to those questions. Your success requires you to become the expert who provides the answers. This is the mindset change behind a successful dissertation.
If you don't make your claim that you are an expert in your field, by offering a new perspective, you are not writing a thesis. It doesn't matter if your thesis is simply a tiny step or a giant leap forward in your field. To write a thesis, you must offer an original perspective and new answers, as an expert.
So, what is the psychological secret behind a successful dissertation? You are claiming to the world that you are no longer simply a student. You are now an expert in your field.
Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D Http://www.WriteToPersuade.com. If you need clarity about your thesis, here's a http://www.writetopersuade.com/writingadissertation) writing a dissertation resource for you. My ebook, What's Your Point? is a simple guide to get to your point.
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Article Source: http://www.statssheet.com/articles/article67720.html |
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