Is Your Doctoral Work

Drifting?

Thank you for coming, we will start in just a moment We will start in just a moment

PhD Drift: What is it? Where does it happen?

Today we will cover

1. Elements of drift

2. Where it shows

3. How to recover

Time is Not Your Friend

1. Ideas drift: change with policies/ innovations, etc.

2. Require constant updates with literature

Drift During Planning

1. It is not a good idea not to know where you are going for too long = loss of momentum and motivation

2. Also not good to change to meet requirements without understanding them

Drift During Writing the Proposal

1. = loss of momentum and motivation

2. Universities change the goals/standards

Where does it show up?

1. Topic drift

2. Writer chasing the

rules rather than

building an argument

3. Loss of internal

consistency

4. Poor review between

iterations of

methodological

design

Specifically…

1. More than one topic/ often not from the same family.

2. Problem statement vs. lead in, context, ideas in lit, etc.

3. Research questions, purpose or are not consistent

4. Theoretical foundation no longer supports the methodology

What is the wood your work drifts against? 1. University guidelines 2. Model dissertations or

thesis 3. Feedback from

profs/mentors

How to recover?

1. Focus

2. Have a good pit crew

1. Reading

2. Editor

3. Supervisor

3. Self belief –

champions

4. Motivation – outside

sources of inspiration.

What are you favorite tools for recovery?

• Groups?

• Tools?

• University level help?

• ????

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• Sat 9th – Chapter 1

• Sun 10th – Linking lit and methods

• Sat 16th Writing Chapters, Paragraphs, etc

• Sat 17th All about abstracts

• Sat 23rd APA

• Sun 24th Inspirational Stories