Vikings and Dissertations
October 9th is National Leif Erikson Day. Erikson led the first Europeans known to visit North America. Here’s why you don’t want your dissertation to be like this Viking expedition…
The Wright Brothers, Yuri Gagarin, Ferdinand Magellan,… Being first will make you famous! But, what about all of the other guys who tried before the first guy, and came up short?
Being first is hard. You don’t want to try to be first with your dissertation, and you don’t have to.
Many students think that they must produce a completely original work for their dissertation. But, what is a completely original work, anyway? You’ve basically got two options: absolutely unprecedented & unique.
Your dissertation can’t be absolutely unprecedented; if it were there wouldn’t be a word, like “dissertation,” to describe it. So, let’s go with unique.
Everything is unique unless it’s identical to something else. So, your dissertation is an original work, so long as it’s different in some way from every other dissertation.
Make sure that you take advantage of this distinction. Don’t try to create a study that’s completely different from everything else out there. Your committee will have a difficult time evaluating your efforts, and your time to graduation will suffer.
