Today, I have the pleasure of hosting Nicole K.S. Barker in the writers' lab. Nicole is a Ph.D. student at Laval University in Québec, Canada, working with Ducks Unlimited Canada and the Boreal Avian Modelling Project. While technically a Forestry…
When I was proofreading my dissertation, I felt as if I could constantly fall asleep (every now and then, I literally feel asleep above my print). I experienced the editing and proofreading stages, especially towards the end, as incredibly tedious…
"The final months of a PhD are incredibly messy," says James Clewett - and I couldn't agree more.Unless you are doing your PhD in your home country and will roll into a faculty position naturally at your institution (there are…
As I've been keeping track of how I spend my time in ManicTime, I can now assess how much time writing my dissertation took me, and how much time rewriting and implementing comments took me.When I finished my first draft,…
Today, Ahmad Bilal shares a practical way on how to reduce your use of the passive voice. Ahmad is a civil engineer by profession from Pakistan, currently residing in Sweden. He received his bachelors in 2002 from NUST Pakistan and…
That very beginning of writing your dissertation - chapter 1, the introduction - and then nothing but the flashing cursor in your writing software... This situation is probably the beginning of 99% of all dissertations.The end is also quite the…
Do you recognize yourself in the following description?You are trying very hard to write a paragraph, and just got into the flow of writing. But then you need to add a table or figure, and you need to start switching…
Getting started with writing is sometimes the hardest part to writing. Once we get into the zone, or reach our state of flow, the words start forming sentences in our minds and writing can feel effortless.But too often we spend…
Guilty as charged!When you are spending long hours behind your computer screen to write your dissertation or your next paper, chances are high that you start to get those cravings to snack on something. Sugary and fatty snacks can wreak…
In the academic blogosphere, there are fans and haters of starting with writing at the very beginning of your PhD.I started writing very early, and even though not much of that material has made it into my dissertation, I did…
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