Still No Update...

I reached out to Dr. B again via email a week after I spoke with him.  I told him that a deadline was imperative as I'm going to have to take vacation days to review and rewrite.  He responds that he understands.  

So in the meantime, after almost a year away from it, I'm doing a big review on my own.  (Hmm..."almost a year away from it" - that, dear readers, is RIDICULOUS!)  

Speaking of ridiculous, the weather in the Washington, DC area this week is preventing my regular business travel. If I can get myself to bed early and take on my old pre-workday habits, I should be able to put a dent in it over the next few days.

I found another resource from dissertationwriting.com:  Writing Chapter 1 - The Introduction of Your...Doctoral Dissertation...  that actually tells me a bit more on what is supposed to go into the introductory chapter.  The biggest issue is - to give a synopsis of the findings or not to give a synopsis.  I vote "yes."  And since the school is unresponsive, I think I'll be my own thesis advisor and do what I want to do.  So there.

...and Damn, I'm good!

Dr. Z reported back this weekend that he is incredibly busy and couldn't get to my submission last week as he had hoped.  He did, however, read the beginning.  He said:

"I really enjoyed the beginning of your thesis, a good read." 

I guess that 17th version paid off.  

Damn, I'm fast! (?)

With the Introductory chapter completed, I decided to resend it attached to the already-completed Chapters 3 and 4 (methodology and results, respectively) to Dr. Z for his review.

He wrote back last night:  "Damn, you are fast.  I can't keep up with you."

This is fast?  I feel like it's been dragging on and on.

But I'll take the compliment!   

Above Average

Last night, I finally finished the introduction that made me happy.  That version was the SEVENTEENTH I had written.

An article that Dr. S gave me regarding "Setting the Hook," or writing the introduction to the dissertation, states that on average, award-winning academic journal authors rewrite their introductions ten times.

I guess you could say that I've always been "above average."


(Any wonder why I'm not finished yet?)

In Search of Something Pithy!

As attention-catching as it is, the proposed first paragraph of my dissertation doesn't really apply anymore.  My research results took me in a surprising direction.

What to do...what to do?

Rereading an article Dr. S sent me early last year: "Setting the Hook," Academy of Management Journal, 2011, Vol. 54, No. 5, 873-879.  Hope that helps.

Chapter 1, Perhaps?

With the step back, I've looked over two of the documents that Dr. S gave me as guides for this process:  Chapter 1 of a dissertation (called a proposal) and the entire dissertation done by a previous student - not at ISM but another university.  The latter was approved/accepted, and given that Dr. S forwarded it, presumably a good example of what I'm supposed to do myself.

Observations:

1. Chapter 1 is really the Dissertation Proposal in text form (rather than the outline I submitted last month).
2. Though the Proposal requires five research problems, the accepted dissertation just has one.  The Chapter 1 proposal just has two.

For those PhD students from a traditional doctoral program reading this, you're probably thinking, "well, duh," but understand that I rarely actually meet any of my professors and converse with most only through email.  Mine is a European doctoral program where things are much more of a "do-it-yourself" nature.  That's fairly dangerous for someone like me who "suffers" from something called an "Unrelenting Standards Life Trap."  The propensity to spin one's wheels and waste time is more reality than fantasy.

And one other observation:  I think my the research problems and hypothesis are a bit "off."  So I'm rearranging the proposal into Chapter 1 and addressing that.  Seeing 80% of Chapter 1 come together (less the research problem[s] right now) is encouraging.  The rest of the week will be devoted to working on better articulating the research problems.