Dissertation writing requires a lot of discipline throughout your research work. Procrastination is highly discouraged as the process may require intensive data collection, data analysis, and large-scale data compilation. You need a plan to go through your dissertation. In this article, we will look at the do’s and don’ts while writing a dissertation.

Basic Things In Dissertation Writing

A dissertation is significant as it is a test that you use to prove to your lecturer/professor your skills to conduct good research. If you demonstrate proficiency in your research skills, you will score high grades.

The first step you need to establish while composing a dissertation is coming up with a plan that will suit you. You need to organize yourself and break down the process into manageable bits to reduce the bulk in the writing process. The plan should be comprehensive and flexible.

Your time management skills should be at its “A” game; you need to manage time effectively. You need to create a big picture of how long it is going to take to accomplish/finish a section of your dissertation and work towards it. You might also need to subdivide these sections into bits. Have in mind the time it will take to complete the sections and manage your time. In that, you beat your expected goal.

Be organized/systematic

You need to be able to plan your activities efficiently. Time management goes in line with the organization. You need to organize a meeting with your supervisors, schedule interviews if need be, for you to obtain some information from a particular person or group of people. One needs to set aside time to spend at the library for research purposes. Being systematic requires self-discipline.

Be Communicative

To achieve the maximum from people with skills such as library assistants or colleagues, you need to be amicable and ready to grasp all the knowledge they are willing to give. You also need to have excellent listening skills. Take into consideration their feedback and put them to practice.

Meeting up with your supervisors during this process is essential. You should maximize the benefits of these meetings as they are very knowledgeable in this field.

Missing these meetings is very rude. In case of emergency, you should communicate before that you will not make it formally through an email. You should know about your topic before the meeting. It shows that you are a serious student. You should also engage your supervisor with questions on unclear parts. Remember to maximize the benefits of the meeting.

When you set future meetings, it is important to send your work to the supervisor before the meeting so that he/she knows what they are coming to discuss.

You should have a research strategy

The research strategy should involve the methodology of the research resources to be used. You will need research resources such as books, journals, and other print articles. You can obtain all these from the library.

There is no limit to the resources that you should use, but be careful not to use a lot of materials and leave no space for your thoughts.

Once you complete the research, you should proofread your work and present it to a second party to do the same. It helps in assuring that there are no grammatical errors such as spellings and improper use of words.

What is scholarly referencing?

It refers to the series of conventions used to point readers towards the source of the materials; books, literature, journal, etc. used in writing your dissertation.
There are different styles of scholarly referencing; however, a proper academic referencing contains the following;

1. The title of the work
2. The name of its author
3. The type of publication, e.g., webpage, journal, book, etc.
4. Date of the publication
5. Publisher and place of publication
6. Other details that can point readers to locate the source of information cited in your dissertation quickly.

Why do I reference?

Plagiarism is a grade one offense in the academic world, but a proper referencing saves you from plagiarism related accusations.
Plagiarism can be unintentional. However, when you fail to provide a reference to the source that might have influenced your thoughts, you would have opened yourself up to plagiarism related accusations.
Other reasons why you need to reference your dissertation include;

1. It’s a standard academic courtesy to make it easy for anyone to engage with your work. Referencing makes it easy to follow data, methodology, and trace the influence on your thoughts.
2. Citing other academics gives credibility to your work. It shows you are well-read in the field and build confidence in your readers.

What reference system should you use?

Different reference systems are acceptable, depending on your academic field. If you’re lucky enough, your university could let you choose between footnotes and parenthetical referencing.
If you are allowed to choose, ask the following questions after reading the “usage” section of the referencing types.

1. How many sources will I cite?
2. Do I want to engage closely with the sources, or you wish to cite briefly?
3. Will I use paraphrase or direct quotation?

These questions can help you decide the referencing style to use.

How do you reference your dissertation effectively?

If you want a consistent and effective dissertation referencing, two things are of great importance;

1. Be systematic

   You’ll probably have tens, if not hundreds, of references. If you want to finish writing the paper before citing your recommendations, you’ll probably find it difficult to do or unable to do it at all.

   Therefore, you have to be systematic about how you track and organize your work. Cite your references as you write for easy retrieval and use in the bibliography.

2. Use Software

   There are several ways to be systematic about referencing. You can decide to take notes or keep a spreadsheet as you research. However, the best way to store, retrieve, and, most importantly, cite references is with the help of referencing software like Refworks, Endnotes, etc.

   This software is a time saver as it lets you easily catalog, retrieve, and annotate sources. They generate a citation and develop a bibliography on your behalf.

Accurate referencing is a big deal in academic writing. It goes a long way to determine the credibility of your dissertation. You must, therefore, pay attention to the efficiency of your thesis referencing. It gives academic writing the proper finish.

Both a thesis and a dissertation are alike in a lot of ways. The only thing that differentiates the two is length. For example, both are large research project. So you will have a long works cited, for example.

Believe it or not, the thesis pages for a dissertation sometimes total very high, in the thirties or forties (of pages) sometimes. The masters thesis might only have ten pages of scholars they draw in and that is because you have less length.

Formatting Rules Vary From School to School

Another thing that both share in common is that you will have to consult the Graduate School, before you can format the pages properly. See, every dissertation and thesis happens to be formatted according to certain.

Always call the graduate school and ask them where they have their master’s thesis and dissertation guidelines posted on the university website, or ask if perhaps you could stop by and get a copy.

Over the next few months, these will become virtually your bible. Some students prefer to format later, and write long and fast when they write. While some people like to make sure it is formatted correctly as they move to another section.

Formatting the Thesis an Dissertation

There is an advantage to using APA format, and you can do this with MLA as well. For both the thesis and dissertation, take advantage of headers. Headers allow you to break any long writing project into small, doable sections—this way, you do not have to try so hard to come up with those difficult to write transitions between some paragraphs—which is one of the hardest challenges in writing any kind of paper.

Since students almost always have major trouble with transitions, I advise them to take advantage of this header system, which allows you to write short, mini-papers, much like the article you are reading now by me.

Revision is Crucial with Long Scholastic Projects

If you are not really excited about your topic, you are more likely to make lots of mistakes. Make sure to revise very carefully to find mistakes.

Format After You Finish Writing

Having a complete document to work with is the beginning of your finishing work. After you have put every section into its rightful place, you need to format your paper correctly. Formatting is important for you to produce a paper that is up to standard. Apart from the standard aspects, different institutions and departments have different guidelines on how your paper should be. Seek to know what your institution and particular department expect from you. Once you finish writing your paper, formatting should follow closely so that you can have a standard paper.

However, there are some constants that across all dissertations. According to experts at mydissertationteam.com, they include:

• Abstract
• Table of contents
• Acknowledgments
• Table of contents

Proofreading To Finish Dissertation

Proofreading helps you to get rid of common mistakes that will not look at your paper. Some errors like spelling mistakes should not be found in your work. Getting a third party to do the proofreading for you is more effective than doing it yourself. This is because, after all the writing, you might be too tired to see mistakes. Also, since you did all the writing, your eyes could not be in a position pick out even the most obvious errors. If you are not a native English speaker, getting a native to proofread your work is more appropriate. Some of the things that the proofreader will be looking for are:

• Spelling mistakes
• Grammatical errors
• Punctuation mistakes

Even if you had done a bit of this after you were done with the writing, know that it is possible to have overlooked some things. You can also use some software to try and get your paper as clean as possible.

Involve Your Tutor When Finishing Your Dissertation

At the end of it all, your tutor is one of the most important parties in this whole process. This is because he is among those who will determine your paper’s fate. There is a need to get their feedback once you are done with writing, formatting, and proofreading. This is because if there is something they think you should change, you need to hear them out. You may have done your best but they will have a say to determine whether or not your work is up to standard. However, since you understand your field better, only make the necessary amendments. Some points to note concerning your tutor’s feedback are:

• The tutor’s feedback should be done in bits first before the final copy is done. For instance, getting feedback after every chapter is more effective than a one-time thing.
• Understand your field well so that the feedback can only add value but not cause unnecessary changes when finishing your dissertation.
• Plan with your tutor in advance so that you can know their availability. They need enough time to go through your work.

Finishing Dissertation By Buying Feedback

Sometimes getting feedback from an outside party who has expertise in your particular field of study is necessary. This is because they have no other interests apart from doing what they do best because they get paid for it anyway. This means that their feedback will be genuine and objective and they will give your work the attention it deserves. Experts who proofread at a fee can also propose some questions that you can use in preparation to defend your work.

The concern on how to finish dissertation is common among students especially those who have not done it before. For you to handle this concern, you will need to consult with your tutor and other reliable sources. At the end of the day, you will need to present a complete and standard paper.

Make The Decision On How To Add Thesis To Resume

A resume should not be a standard document that you just forward to any audience without a thought. Even though there are some aspects like personal biography and academic qualifications that may not change, you will need to edit it more than once. This is for the purposes of relevance. It also makes the audience acknowledge that you made efforts to customize it. Some of the things to consider before you decide to add your thesis to your resume are:

• Your target audience.
• The field to which you are applying for the job
• The particular position that you wish to secure as you apply

That said, the decision to include your thesis in your resume majorly depends on your application at a particular time. Remember to tailor your resume every time you make an application and delete the thesis part when it is not necessary.

Where And How To Put Thesis On Resume

Once you have decided that adding your thesis to your resume will make a difference, then you need to know exactly where and how to do it. A resume should be organized in a particular manner for it to get the necessary attention and bear the desired fruits. Placing one thing wrongly can make your resume look disorganized. That said, there is a need for you to know where to place your thesis. Below are a few tips on how to do the correct placement:

• Consider your Educational background and experience first and out them in a desirable order. Sometimes this is guided while other times you just make the decision based on your gut feeling.
• Put your thesis topic at the top of your Educational background sector
• Let your master’s and Bachelor’s degrees follow in that order where applicable

Most importantly even as you decide where to place your thesis, think about the whole resume impact it is going to have in your application. This, therefore, poses the challenge to create a catchy look and relevant information.

Title Placement

The issue of title placement comes after you have evaluated your target audience, position you are applying for and decided that you will have your thesis in your resume. Now, just to clarify, you will not need to put extra details of your thesis here. Avoid resume clumsiness by all means. Proper discretion is, therefore, necessary at this point. A few tips on how to place your thesis title correctly are:

• Put it beneath your doctorate’s main entry
• You can use italics depending on the style used in the whole document. The APA and MLA styles allow italics on the title
• Choose between indention and bullets just for the sake of highlighting
• Just in case your thesis has been published, you can indicate the publication citation after the title

The Details To Leave Out

If allowed and necessary, including your thesis in your resume is a great idea. Even so, there are some details from your thesis that are deemed unnecessary in your resume. Only a short summary of your thesis will do but with the exclusion of:

• The Abstract
• The members of your thesis committee

So now you know how to include thesis on resume. The above details might be allowed in your curriculum vitae but they are not appropriate in your resume. If you include them, you will be required to use titles and sometimes the people you worked with might not have any recognized titles. If you need thesis writing help, we advise you to check PhD dissertation service.

Whether or not to include your thesis on your resume depends on its relevance or lack of thereof. Consider the factors discussed here and if you decide to put it then do it right.