Writing Your Doctoral Thesis with Style

Abstract

All the rawmaterial for your thesis is ready – at least it should be if you’ve successfully worked your way through the count-down plan as described in Chap. 15. So now it’s time to wrap things up and write your doctoral dissertation. This is easier said than done, of course, and you cannot hide from the fact that you still have a lot ofwork ahead of you. But don’t let the thought of writ- ing your thesis paralyze you into a state of inertia. Like any big project, writing your thesis is easily doable if it’s broken down into smaller steps. In fact, you have already done this by having written at least a couple of articles that are ready to be trans- formed into chapters. Keep in mind, however, that a research article written for a peer-reviewed journal is not the same thing as a chapter in your thesis. Even if you’ve published several articles, you can’t just staple them together and – voila! – cre- ate an instant thesis. There are some fundamental differences in 178 19 Writing Your Doctoral Thesis with Style these two types of writing which we will discuss in detail in this chapter. Although you may be feeling a bit stressed (or even a lot stressed) that the deadline for completing your thesis is approaching, writing a thesis will be a new (and hopefully excit- ing) phase of graduate school. See it as a challenge, and whatever you do, don’t stop now. Too many graduate students leave their programme without having written their thesis. One way or the other, your degree will be of help in your further career. It would be a shame to have done so muchwork and leave graduate school without that coveted degree. Likewise, you may be the kind of person who loves working in the lab, but hates sitting down to write. In this chapter we present a few suggestions for making the process as straightforward and painless as possible.