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The Untold Secret to Writing Your Dissertation

Ethan Siegel

Image credit: Bill Watterson.

If youre struggling with the f inal, most important obstacle separating you f rom
your graduate degree, heres how to make it happen!
Ethan Siegel in Starts With A Bang!

I spent every night until four in the morning on my dissertation, until I came to the point
when I could not write another word, not even the next letter. I went to bed. Eight oclock the
next morning I was up writing again. -Abraham Pais, physicist

Youve been in graduate school f or many years now, and youve come a long way. Youve completed all of
your coursework, f ormed your Ph.D. thesis committee, passed your preliminary/oral/qualif ying examinations,
and have done an awf ul lot of research along the way. T heres a glimmer of hope in your heart that maybe
just maybet his will be your last year in graduate school.
Image credit: East Tennessee State Universitys Department of Mathematics and Statistics.
Youve probably even gotten some papers published along the way, with a handf ul of them (if youre lucky)
with you as the lead author! But theres one more task you need to perf orm bef ore youre ready to def end
in f ront of your committee: you must write that dissertation!
While there are many guides on how to do that, many of them are either jokes
Image credit: Flickr user chnrdu.
or people grossly overstating the task in f ront of you. T here are some very important things that go into
a dissertation, but there are also some huge misconceptions about what a dissertation is supposed to be.
What f ollows is my advice f or anyone whos reached that stage in their careers, on how to write a
dissertation. (At least, as f ar as theoretical astrophysics goes, although Im sure this is applicable to many
other f ields.)
Image credit: Jorge Cham of PhDcomics.
First of f , here is a list of what your Ph.D. dissertation is not:
1. It is not the def initive work on whatever your primary research topic is.
2. It is not going to settle long-standing arguments in your f ield.
3. It is not the most important piece of research or writing youll ever undertake.
4. And f inally, it is very likely not even a document that anyone outside of your committee (with the
exception of a f ew good f riends, and possibly your grandmother) will ever read.
Image credit: Peter Lubbers / Rocky Lubbers of http://runlaketahoe.blogspot.com/.
You must accept number 4 bef ore youre ready to write, otherwise you run the risk of becoming a
perf ectionist about a document thats eriouslypractically no one is going to read!!!

What is a Ph.D. dissertation, then?

Quite simply, its your way of proving to your committee that you are a competent scientist in your
own right, capable of standing on your own two f eet as a scientist, researcher, and academic. It is where
you demonstrate the f ollowing:
1. T hat you are capable of making original, valuable contributions in an active f ield of research.
2. T hat you are aware of and inf ormed about the broad landscape of your f ield, the background and
currently competing work being done on your specif ic sub-f ield, and that your prof essional opinions
are well-inf ormed and backed up by your knowledge and legitimate reasoning.
3. T hat the body of work you submit in your dissertation is comprehensive enough to merit a Ph.D.
4. And, perhaps most importantly, that you are ready to go of f and continue your research (if you so
choose) without the guidance of your mentor(s).
T he f irst, second, and f ourth of these are things you must convince your committee of during your
def ense; the third, however, is something that must speak f or itself within your written dissertation.
Image credit: Dalhousie University.
And thats why the most important thing you can do is to just crank it out. What you may not realize is that
75% of your dissertation is already done, you just need to take advantage of it!
What do I mean? I mean dont reinvent the wheel!
Let me explain.
Image credit: Gnarlycraig f rom Wikimedia Commons.
Youve already written/published some papers, and youre very likely at least part-way through some more
projects that may or may not be completed by time youre ready to graduate. Well, guess what?
T hat, right there, is most of your dissertation!
Lets say youll have f our papers completed by time you graduate, and another two projects that youve
done signif icant work on, but that wont be completed by graduation. T hose f our papers that will be
f inished are chapters 2-5 of your dissertation, and those two unf inished projects are Appendix A and
Appendix B.
T hats your work that you created, so be proud of it and dont re-invent it!

Image credit: Plymouth State University.

Get your Universitys unique template, learn how to f ormat your work properly within it, and marvel at how
close you are! Heres what you have to actually write, now, in order to graduate:
1. Your title. T his is important, and it needs to tie together all of the (likely) very dif f erent papers and
topics you wrote on into one unif ied idea. Topics in Physics wont cut it here, but Cosmological
Perturbations and T heir Ef f ects on the Universe: From Inf lation to Acceleration will do just f ine.
2. Your abstract. T his is just two or three sentences introducing your f ield, f ollowed by one sentence
about each of your papers, and concluded with one or two sentences about f uture work.
3. Your introductory chapter. T his wasf or me, at leastt he hardest part. You need to put all of your
original work in the context of your broad and specif ic f ields of research. T his means giving a broad
(and well-ref erenced) overview of your sub-f ield, how it f its into the broad context of your f ield and
why its important, and how your specific research has addressed some of these particular issues.
It should be seamless to transition f rom the end of this chapter into your (only slightly tweaked)
middle chapters of your dissertation.
4. Your f inal chapter. T his is a summary of what youve accomplished as well as a detailed discussion
of what challenges remain in your f ield, with some detailed plans f or f uture directions that your work
is going to take you. T his is where you include ref erences to current, active work being done in your
particular sub-f ields of interest, and where you set up the motivation f or your appendices.
T he restacknowledgments, dedication, ref erences, etc.t ake practically no time or ef f ort. But you must
remember that the goal of your dissertation is not to change the world; its to finish it and to do a good
enough job to graduate!
Image credit: NYUs Leonard N. Stern School of Business.
Once your written dissertation has been okayed by your committee, youll still have to def end, but this isnt
as worrisome as it might appear at f irst glance. You see, unless your advisor is so incompetent that they
dont care if you crash-and-burn, you wont be allowed to def end unless everyone knows youre prepared
and ready to pass. Af ter your def ense, youll make your dissertation revisions, graduate, and its up to you
whether you want to participate in the graduation ceremony or not; either way you get your diploma in the
mail a f ew months later.
T his isnt the only way to write a dissertation, f or what its worth. Its just the smartest way to do it, and so
thats why its my advice. (Its also advice thatf or some reasonis rarely given by others.) Now you know
the secret to writing a Ph.D. dissertation, so f inish that thing up and graduate already!
An earlier version of this post originally appeared on the old Starts With A Bang blog at Scienceblogs.

Suggest a link for furt her reading

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