Three Little Pigs and Dissertations
On May 27, 1933 Walt Disney’s cartoon, Three Little Pigs, was released. Do you ever feel like your big, bad dissertation committee is trying to huff and puff and blow your dissertation down?…
Who can forget that big, bad wolf huffing and puffing and blowing those little houses down? I don’t know about you, but I want to be that third little pig in the story. The one with the house of bricks!
So how do you make sure your “dissertation house” is built of bricks?
Create a plan
That third pig knew he was building a house of bricks. He probably didn’t just grab a bunch of bricks and throw them together like a toddler building with blocks, though. And, you shouldn’t do that with your dissertation either! You need a workable topic and a well thought-out plan. Make sure that your structure is going to be sound by making a solid plan before you begin to build.
Build a solid foundation
Just like a house needs a foundation to stand on, your dissertation needs a solid foundation, too. You don’t want to have to rebuild your project, so you should know what kind of data you’ll need, how you’re going to get it, and how you’ll analyze it. Build your study accordingly. Make it strong, because your dissertation will stand on the strength of your study!
Use strong materials
The data you collect for your study won’t do much good without sound analysis. Analyzing of your study data allows you to draw conclusions. These are like the materials of your house. Just throwing your data together without proper analysis is like building a house from straw. Analyze your data to distill any useful conclusions. They become the bricks of your dissertation, and you can use them to make sure that your dissertation is strong enough to withstand any huffing and puffing certain unnamed parties might send you way.
Stick everything together well
Since you’re using bricks, you have the opportunity to reinforce your house with mortar. Good mortar holds those bricks in place so the wolf can’t make any progress at all trying to blow the house down! Having strong conclusions supported by evidence and explained concisely is the dissertation equivalent of well-formulated and applied mortar.
Follow your plan to lay a solid foundation, create the bricks that will comprise your study, and stick everything together. Soon, you’ll have a dissertation house that won’t fall down! Even when the big, bad wolf…I mean dissertation committee…comes knocking.
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