by Noel Bell

Created on: February 08, 2009   Last Updated: March 15, 2009

I finished my dissertation not too long ago. My experience is probably unusual, but I surpassed many of my colleagues and finished doctoral work in a solid 4 years. When I finished my dissertation I was able to glean four publications out of the final work.

I can say from my own experience and helping others with their dissertations, there are some very important points to keep in mind. Here is the typical advice I give to people who are at various stages of completion.

1. Get an Academic Frame of Mind

Many of my A.B.D. colleagues are looking for the magic pill or the easy button, and you can see it in their writing and in their attitude. If I can see it, I know their dissertation committee can see it.

The standard behavior in graduate school is to be an academic, to use the language of your field, and demonstrate your ability to integrate concepts from one area into others.

For example, my area was organizational behavior. I had to take concepts from the sociology literature and organizational behavior literature and integrate them into a coherent knowledge base.

I studied these extensively and used the concepts in my conversations and emails with my committee showing my ideas about how to solve my problem.

The dissertation is somewhat of an art form in that you show your colleagues that you can be a writer, a scholar, a researcher and a reporter all in one final work.

2. Plan Your Attack

Like any structure, you can modify it to fit your particular style. There are also many other structural forms.

But the basic dissertation is going to have five chapters. I tell my A.B.D. friends to first get in the academic frame of mind, speak the language, and then start hammering out the pieces of the puzzle.

Write Chapter 1 last. You really won't know what to say here and how to say it without first knowing the language of your field and whether your problem is researchable or not. It is where you take a broad area of concern then drill down to the very specific problem you are trying to solve.

Do not talk about your method, your literature or your results in this section because this is merely an introduction that will have the reading ease of an introductory article in Scientific American.

Write Chapter 2 or the literature review first. The literature review is where you pick up the language of your field and develop that all so important scholars language.

The literature review is the forum for the integration concepts and ideas and various gaps in thinking. It is where you show

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