Break it up into small time periods- Reading about theories can be draining. I often break up my day so that I only work on this task for 30 minutes at a time throughout the day. You will often be more productive during short time periods. Just write, even if it is terrible! Sometimes writer’s block can be caused by […]
Throughout high school and undergraduate university courses, we get told about the importance of planning before we start to write essays or reports. I used to think that we were just told this for the fun of it, kind of in the same way that you are told to read ALL the instructions before using new technology… but for the […]
I actually cannot believe that I have written a few paragraphs (very, very, very rough paragraphs) for my discussion chapter. The final chapter of the PhD thesis. The last frontier. While you will most likely just want to dive straight into the discussion chapter and finish it as quickly as you can, I have a few tips before you get […]
The introduction chapters are a weird part of the thesis process. I thought I would write them throughout my three years – in between doing all the research for my studies… that is definitely not how it worked out. Instead, while in the middle of data analysis, writing up studies, and drafting studies, I started writing the two large introduction […]
Scrambling to finalise a draft to send out to your supervisor(s) can be hectic, as there are often so many minor details we forget to address until the very last minute. These are my tips and reminders for this very scenario: Hand edit. For my final draft I always hand edit. I don’t know why, but I find old fashioned […]
Writing discussions is perhaps my least favourite part of the scientific writing process. Actually, it is probably a tie between the discussion and the abstract. I love reading discussions but when it comes to writing my own, I get terrible writer’s block. Writing my discussion for study 2 has been particularly tedious due to having to re-run all my statistics […]
We are all guilty of naming documents ‘chfbhfgb’ when we just want to get out the office after spending 12 hours straight there. Or just saving everything as ‘New’ ‘Newer’ ‘Newest’. The time to kick these habits was when we started our PhD, but that ship has sailed, so the next best time is when you are in the last […]
Part of operation GTFO is writing introductory chapters, and part of writing introductory chapters is writing about complicated theories and ideas, which can be a very tedious task. I have been trying to write my theories of perception of risk and theories of fears sections of chapter 2, on and off, for a few weeks now. But I have developed […]
It is time for the next blog in the ‘operation gtfo’ series. When you are nearing the end of your thesis you need to start writing those pesky introduction chapters. We often put these off for as long as we can because a) we have lots of other things that need to be done and b) we don’t want the […]
While many PhD theses are different, depending on location and area of research, most require at least one introductory chapter. This introductory chapter sets the scene for the thesis by introducing the thesis area and discussing relevant previous research. My thesis is going to have two introduction chapters, the first providing background information about sharks, the conservation challenges shark species […]