Becoming Doctor Jones

Publishing Info: Bolker, Joan. Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day: A Guide to Starting, Revising, and Finishing Your Doctoral Thesis. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1998.

Time Investment: 150 easy-to-read pages; it’s possible to read it one chapter at a time, as you progress toward your degree.

I love Joan Bolker. Reading this book has brought me to the point of tears more than once. I quote her constantly when giving advice to colleagues. Occasionally I imagine writing her elaborate tributes or fan mail.

Joan Bolker has excellent experience to recommend her for the job of helping you write your dissertation. She started two dissertations, only one of which she finished. She knows the difference, first hand, between a failed dissertation and a successful dissertation. Second, she worked as a therapist to that’s right! struggling doctoral students for years and years.

Joan Bolker doesn’t just want to help you finish your dissertation—she wants you to enjoy writing it. To do so, she offers ways of analyzing your own work habits. In fact, she’s the main reason I began this blog. Also, her chapter on how to choose committee members and what to do when you have problems with your committee prompted to me to change my committee in a way that infinitely sped up my progress.

“If you’ve tried, God forbid, to train a puppy by beating it, you’ll know that you can end up with a docile dog, but not one with any spirit or joy. Puppies who are trained with praise and treats grow into lively, obedient dogs.” This has been one of the most vivid images in my mind for the past three years. Rewarding yourself for accomplishing small, realistic goals by calling a friend, going outside, or taking a bath works infinitely better than punishing yourself for not accomplishing your goals by piling on more work.

More on Joan Bolker next week, but by then, you should have bought the book already!

Publishing Info: Graff, Gerald and Birkenstein, Cathy. They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2006.

Time Investment: 135 pages, written for high school or undergraduate audience

They Say, I Say is a tutorial on entering an academic conversation—a crucial, basic component of writing a dissertation or scholarly article. They offer simple explanations of summarizing, quoting, answering potential objections to your ideas, and meta-commenting.

To teach these skills, the authors rely on templates. For example, here is one template for introducing an ongoing debate:

“In discussions of X, one controversial issue has been _________. On the one hand, _____ argues _____. On the other hand, _____ contends ______. Others even maintain ________. My own view is _______.”

If this seems an overly simple way to begin an essay, perhaps you’ve never struggled, as I have, to explain the main ideas of your dissertation in brief. The authors do not suggest every paper should begin with a variation on that sentence, but they do offer simple starting points for expressing your main argument. I can imagine beginning a chapter draft in this way, just to have a clear point to come back to when my mind is muddied up with details. In the final draft, one could always begin with something snappier.

Clarity is something that most writers strive for—and clarity becomes even more important when our purpose is to teach or convince others of specific claims. They Say, I Say helps writers clarify their purpose in writing and communicate that purpose to others.