[Closed] Starting to write my Thesis

Your introduction e.t.c should be the last thing you write. Makes it much easier!

Use black as the font colour. That usually stops things looking rediculous.

Introduction yes,

completely agree.

However the aim defines the feeling or story of the thesis and the objectives define what will come in the subsequent chapters so defining them earlier on will give me a nice clear direction.

Obviously they will change if I find that what I am writing is veering away from what is written!

When is it due in?

Write your results, discussion, aims, introduction. In that order. You won't know what you need to introduce or what your aims were until you have your results down! Are you a scientist or arts? If arts then I have no idea........

Sounds cynical but it is the only way to do it and stay sane / maximize bike time.

Whats the thesis for? 2nd PhD going by your user name 😉 (unless you are really an MD trying to get a real "Dr")

Is "DrDomRob" A bit premature then? 😉

I feel your pain though, I'm a couple of chapters in but every time I re-read it I think it's a big bunch of cr@p.

don - final submission March '11, first draught Jan/Feb '11

Shackleton - Still in the process of getting results (Stupid hardware letting me down) not enough to do any meaningful post processing yet.... It's getting a bit tight!

Edit: "premature"!!! It's normally only my missus that uses that word..... But yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I admit I liked the user name so figured I'd get there one day!

And remember that you are the world expert on your minute topic. You also know where the bodies are buried and where the holes are. Either make sure they are well covered in your discussion or make them appear not to be holes! Chances are your external won't pick up on most of them as they lack the necessary knowledge or insight into your set up. Again, if you are doing arts then I have no idea how true this would be.

As a serious aside, write when you can. If you have a block, go for a ride. If you feel the urge to write at 2am do it. I found routine helped. I wrote from 8am until 12 and then went for a ride. After lunch I went into the lab for a couple of hours to get papers together. Usually home by 5 for a relaxing evening. Stressing out will only hinder you.

Don't, whatever you do, tot up the words you've written over the course of a PhD. It is a scary number when you compare it to the final thesis word count.

Cheers Shackleton,

I am doing Engineering Doctorate, (a PhD with some other bits). I shall try and sort myself a routine though, at the moment I seem to be just going around and around in circles with this tiny little bit!!

thesis .. piece of cake i've written three , orthapedic surgery for diabetics, managing discipline in a large multi site business and 20th century hungarian history.. I'm a plumber and i left skool with 5 o levels ( 2 at grade U) a couple of hundred quid ought to cover it..

MrSalmon, good luck with yours, what area are you studying in?

clearly totalshell you are a man mountain amongst academics!

Computer Science, although I'm at the slightly wishy-washy end of the spectrum.

. I'm a plumber and i left skool with 5 o levels ( 2 at grade U) a couple of hundred quid ought to cover it..

You're still in a better position than many people with a PhD. I've finished mine, had no end of problems with the examiner, no support from the department and despite not going straight from uni to PhD and so having good work experience, being a better programmer than most of peers, I am having massive problem finding a job. Pissed off dose not even begin to describe how I feel.

Whatever you do, don't end it with "And then I woke up and realised it was all a dream". I got marked down a couple of times for that.

Haha...

Currently listening to the best of the hollies to try and give me some inspiration...

I fear I have entered the world of procrastination again....

Mr Salmon - hardware or software?

The Brick - Sounds rubbish 🙁

I am not gonna lie, I kinda hope I am going to be able to pick up a post with my sponsoring company for at least a 5 year term.... But that is little more than hopeful at the moment.

I kinda hope I am going to be able to pick up a post with my sponsoring company

Should be a good chance of a nice reference at least!

learn to use THE FEAR to your advantage

I agree with use the fear! Wrote my thesis up in seven weeks! One week per chapter with a last week to edit! Minor corrections then bound never to be opened again!
Aim...what is the question you are answering in your thesis
Objectives...how are going to answer the question

Good luck

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGGHH

Set yourself a daily word target (1000 words a day was mine) and then just write. Even if it isn't on the section you need to do, just write something, anything that gets you to the target. You'll get into a routine and find it easier to start.

Crikey ... Are you guys really going for Permanent Head Damage (PhD)? 😯

Just finished the post viva corrections on mine - there's some good advice from other people above. I'd second the 'if you want to work do, if you have a block get away from the computer' sentiment.
I was lucky as I had a big transfer report where I had written the intro; the methods I wrote as I went so all that was left was results and discussion. I also had defined experiments for each chapter so I treated them as individual components.
I think the difficulty in writing a Phud is not what you write but how it's ordered to create a reasoned argument that is has a common thread through out.
Oh and if you haven't had the viva yet (it says you'll submit in March '11 in the above post?????)unless you are amazing the viva will last at least a couple of hours. Afterwards all the academics you know will ask you 'how long was your viva?' and then tell you all about how they/someone they know/one of their students only had twenty minute vivas. Please don't do what I did and say gosh they must be very good and feel a bit inadequate - DO turn around and say the external must have found them really boring if they wanted out after only twenty minutes....
Good luck, it's a bitch to write but the piss up is well worth it.

Your introduction e.t.c should be the

last thing you write. Makes it much easier!

I agree with use the fear! Wrote my thesis up in seven weeks! One week per chapter with a last week to edit! Minor corrections then bound never to be opened again!

SEVEN WEEKS!? I must have spent the best part of seven weeks drawing the diagrams for mine, let alone anything else. What subject was it in?

I agree with use the fear! Wrote my thesis up in seven weeks! One week per chapter with a last week to edit! Minor corrections then bound never to be opened again!

Each night 'park' your thesis at the top of a hill - it's easier to get going the next day. By this I mean don't come to a natural end the previous day - stop writing even tho you may want to write a little more - make a few bullet points. That way the next day you actually start writing again and avoid that staring into the computer screen nightmare. Also turn your router off. It also helps if your subject is the physiology and bioenergetics of ultraendurance mountain bike racing 😉

I wrote my aims last - conveniently they were things I had already done 😀

If you can come up with a 'story' that flows through the thesis it helps a lot. Remember to step back every so often and see how the thing hangs together - it is very easy to get bogged down in details.

Do you have any papers you can adapt?

The Brick what type of jobs have you been applying for? what languages are your strongest?

Did you do well on the PHD itself?

I've sometimes though about doing a PHD one day.. but finding myself in the situation you describe is what would put me off

Finbar and Don Simon...yep i passed! And even have a related job! I built a sensor using Surface Plasmon Resonance to monitor multiple microbes in buildings. Didnt sleep much over the seven weeks but I did have a good transfer report and papers that I could use which helped. I was also ubber organised when it came to writing up.

Dr Mema!

writing my thesis was easy, starting writing it however was a nightmare. Just sit down and force yourself to write for an hour and see what you come up with and go from there.

I started with my introduction, then did chapters of individual experiemnts, then discussion then summary...

I'm just starting to write my end of year 1 report. I cannot even begin to imagine being in your position! Hopefully this is a normal feeling.

Best of luck to you.

My aims were last as the work i ended up doing was waiting for some crucial results to be interpreted and confirmed, Was actually very easy that way. Introduction then all the experimental stuff then results (the ones i had) then conclusions then aims. That way my conclusions fulfilled my aims nicely.

ref above. it took about 7 weeks just to do the referencing and spell checks.

hardware or software?

I suppose you'd say software, but it's not really software development as such. It's more about interesting* applications of computational intelligence approaches than the software itself.

*May not be very interesting at all.

(Mr MC posting)
I started with experimental techniques, results, then discussion then the rest of it. A long road starts with a first step blah blah, so if you can make the start easy its less daunting, and youll also reassure yourself by getting a lot written quickly which makes the mountain look smaller (or road shorter, I was a scientist not arts!).

Once youve got some direction on the structure from the middle section youll know what literature is relevant for your review, and be able to tune your aims and objectives so that youve met them in your conclusions as others have said 😀

Mine was in electron microscopy of catalysts, and the cat I spent the first year looking at was completely dropped in the second year, and then I started looking at another cat system in my third year and ended up writing up on the latter two. All I carried from my 1st year was the actual techniques learned.

I did two postdocs, a year in industry, then joined the police 🙄

Hi Guys,

Thanks for all the input.

jcromton - I remember that feeling, what felt like 20 minutes later but was actually 2yrs 9 months later I was thinking AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH - how has it taken this long to do so little!!!! Once you start writing though you realise you have done a lot, and still have loads more to do/holes to fill.

I am now writing up the "Milestones" I need to hit to hand in on time.

I have had some really big problems with my testing, I am trying to build up a load history for a big orange and blue boat, so have covered one with strain gauges, that was 11 months ago.... I am still having issues with the data collection processes.

The data logging hardware wasn't as capable as the manufacturer said it was but it took 7 months to discover despite having one of their most senior software engineers looking over my shoulder and helping me!

And now the boat is a 6hr drive away!!!

Still it wouldn't be fun if it wasn't a challenge 😀

Keep the write up stories coming, it'll make me feel better!!!!!

Mr MC - Awesome, I bet you confound a few people who assume you are a bit daft!!!

I know a lecturer at a big uni who also works part time as a Lifeguard on the South Coast over the summer... He's had some amusing arguments!

My advice would be to put in rough headings for all of your thesis right at the start if possible, accepting that they'll change around a bit later. Add subheadings under these and so on until you have a rough structure. Then starting adding in rough ideas for paragraphs etc. Keep building on this structure, putting notes into the different sections as you think of stuff. Keep doing this for the chapters you're not working on as you think of relevant bits. I made all my figures for each chapter first, and then went through and built on the notes I made afterwards. By having the structure in place early, I've found the whole process not too daunting as by the time you start a chapter, you've already got plenty of notes to type up. This is particularly relevant for the discussion, make lots of notes of discussion points as you write your results and methodology. Good luck!

@brakeswithface - really good advice!

The figures are often the most time consuming too, but they tend to show the 'story'. Cliched, but a picture really does tell a 1000 words (and then you can claim to have written 1000 words that day 8) )

The iterative paragraphs thing works well. It lets you break work down into small achievable segments - the feeling of having finished a section no matter how small really makes a difference.

AAAAAAAAAAARRRGGH

IT JUST WON'T WRITE ITSELF!

Just man up and get it done. Really, it's the only way.

This can help tho: set a timer, 20mins say, with an alarm to go off (on a mac there's various for the dashboard).

If it goes off and you've nothing done since the last buzzer, set it again, get up go away from the computer. Read a book, watch some telly, fettle your bike, come back when it goes again. Hopefully refreshed.

Also good: pint of chocolate milk and fire in three espressos.

(Dr IA, multi-agent systems)