Ten Suggestions to Help You Choose Your Perfect Dissertation Topic

This is a guest post by Noelle Sterne. Dissertation coach, editor, scholarly and mainstream writing consultant, author, and spiritual counselor, Noelle has published over 300 pieces in print and online venues. Her recently published handbook addresses graduate students’ largely overlooked but equally important nonacademic difficulties: Challenges in Writing Your Dissertation: Coping with the Emotional, Interpersonal, and Spiritual Struggles (Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2015).

If you’re beginning or in the throes of your dissertation, you may know from other long-suffering students that the work engenders a love-hate relationship, with all the exasperations, frustrations, teeth-clenching, and eye-rolling, and occasional affection, elation, and fulfillment (eventually) of a primary human relationship. Therefore, your topic, like your partner, should be one that initially excites you and sustains you throughout the inevitable rages and reconciliations, desires to divorce yourself from it or run back to its scholarly arms, and finally settle into a consistent satisfying relationship.

As a longtime coach of doctoral candidates, I’ve seen many students in their first passion commit to a topic that would take 50 scholars, even with laptops, group writing bootcamps, and resuscitating Netflix subscriptions, 75 years to complete. Other candidates take on topics because their professors suggest them and the students believe the professors will help get articles published. Or students think the topic is “hot” and they’ll have an even better chance of publishing. None of these reasons will support your passion for your topic.

It’s almost axiomatic that many people choose concentrations and careers because of early personal experiences. A woman becomes an oncologist because she couldn’t save her mother from Stage 4 cancer. A man raised in poverty becomes a financial counselor to help businesspeople succeed in neighborhoods like his own.

Such motivations also generally guarantee sustained interest in a dissertation topic. Here I offer you ten suggestions, with questions and examples, to help you narrow down the perfect topic you’ll be living with for a long time.

1. Revisit your childhood dreams. How did you see yourself? What “professions” were your play favorites? Many kids like to play “doctor” (not that kind), and Mary, one of my clients, loved to play “nurse.” She showed me photographs of herself at age five with an impressive collection of play bandages, ointments, even casts, and a doll house she’d made into a “clinic.” Today, with her doctorate, she’s director of a regional hospital.

2. Review your favorite undergraduate and graduate course papers. Which did you really like doing? Which did you get As in? What about your master’s thesis? Would you feel excited expanding it? Lynn was an elementary school reading teacher who really cared about those stuttering, struggling readers. When she leafed through her course papers and reviewed her master’s thesis, she saw that the comparisons of different reading programs were her best work. Her dissertation topic? A comprehensive comparison of two elementary school reading programs for their relative effectiveness. Now a Ph.D., Lynn is a professor who teaches aspiring elementary reading and literacy teachers to help even more struggling readers.

3. Think about troubling experiences you’ve had, as in the examples above. Would you like to help remedy their causes? Negatives can be powerful motivators toward positive actions and activities. And think of all the people you’ll help. Before Philippe immigrated to the United States, he had been a secretary to a government cabinet member in his native Caribbean country. He daily witnessed the poverty, illiteracy, lack of jobs, and suffering of so many of the people. His dissertation topic explored literacy programs that could be implemented throughout the country to help raise the educational standards. With his degree, Phillipe was appointed to a government position in education to institute large-scale national literacy and job training programs.

4. What topic has fascinated you for a long time? What do you want to jump into and explore? Jill, a registered nurse in her 40s at a regional hospital, observed how older nurses were discriminated against. She longed to explore the assumptions and possible myths that administrators held in hiring, making assignments, and firing these nurses. Jill’s dissertation and the article she developed from it became valuable additions to the literature—and helped change hospital policies.

5. What especially meaningful experiences have you had that you want to know more about and know will make a difference? During surgery, Derrick had what he swore was a near-death experience. He delved into the research, interviewed many people who had had similar experiences, and even scored an interview with a major author on the subject. Derrick’s dissertation dealt with near-death experience theories and testimonies. He is now revising his work into a book and has a publisher interested.

6. What would you like to be known for? The answer to this question is likely inherent in your choice. In the examples above, the students’ passion for their choices drove their ambitions. Don’t be modest. Think about what you really know you can contribute—like Lynn and Phillipe.

7. Don’t be deterred or discouraged if the topic has been “done.” Even if you discover that many scholarly articles have been published on your topic, your slant will be different. You can use those articles to show how your study is better, different, and worth not only the doctorate but publication.

8. Dream: Imagine how the topic can be used in your dream job and how you look forward to devoting your professional life to your interest. Sandra was a geriatric care counselor advising adults on the placement of their elderly parents in appropriate care facilities. She felt needed and fulfilled, knowing she was helping both generations toward the best choices. Imagining her dissertation topic, Sandra saw how she could identify and discuss the many elements involved in placement. Exploration of this topic would help her professionally to broaden her knowledge, enhance her abilities, and open her mind to new counseling techniques. After obtaining her degree, Sandra gave several presentations, published her findings in an elder care journal, and established a private consulting practice.

9. If you’re not in your dream job or career, paint mental pictures of the one you are aiming for. Observe and talk to others in this or a related career. What topic did they write on? How did it help their careers? What pointers can they give you about topic choice? Have they successfully transitioned from the dissertation results to real-world application? Do they seem happy and enthusiastic? You’ll learn a lot about the “right” and “less-than-wonderful” choices others made, what they learned, and how you can use their experiences to help make your own best topic decisions.

10. Finally, listen inside for the topic that’s right for you. If you meditate, in your sessions silently ask the question about topics. You may be “led” to certain people, scholarly literature, movies, or magazines that clarify or confirm your choices. If you don’t meditate, keep asking yourself the topic question and stay aware and open. Several possible topics may occur to you. Test them against the suggestions here and keep listening to your intuition.

Choose one or two of these recommendations to explore each day. Don’t push or strain but relax. Let your unconscious lead you. Remember how important the choice is and how it will influence and direct your career and life. You deserve the perfect dissertation topic, and you will reach your answer.

© 2016 Noelle Sterne
Adapted from Noelle Sterne, Challenges in Writing Your Dissertation: Coping With the Emotional, Interpersonal, and Spiritual Struggles (Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2015).

Get Yourself a NO committee

Guest post by Vilna Bashi Treitler, Professor and Chair of the Department of Black and Latino Studies at Baruch College, and Professor in the Sociology Program at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York

I have for several years now made a resolution not to work so hard in the coming year. I mostly fail to keep this resolution.

I have overworked for several years now. I worked so much and so hard that when I had a sabbatical, I overworked then too – and I didn’t realize it until my husband asked “What are you doing???” when I would be in my bright but bleak foreign-city office weekends and evenings. Writing, while enormously difficult, was NOT my problem. It was saying no.

I had said “yes” to too many things for too long. Sure, all these opportunities sounded great when I was asked to do them, and the deadlines were so far into the future. After a while, deadlines jam up upon one another in ways that couldn’t be anticipated at the time “yes” is being said. I wanted to build a successful career, but I only slowly realized that instead I was probably building the shortcut to a cardiac unit. I had to figure out a new approach to choosing among the opportunities that trickled my way as I went from graduate student to assistant-, associate-, and then full-professor. I realized that I just could not be trusted to figure out what I should or should not be doing because everything looked like a good opportunity for networking or getting a line on the CV. Lines on the CV are what we all want and need, right?

We also need some limits.

Forming a “No Committee” helped me get perspective on my limits. Let me tell you about my No Committee. On it, I have two friends who are both professors and the third person is my life partner. Their qualifications: they care about me, they know the academy well enough to know what challenges are there for me, and they keep up with me so that they know how much is too much for me to handle.

How do I use them? When an opportunity comes to me, I send them an email with the subject line “Here’s one for the No Committee” and ask them for their advice. In the email I describe the opportunity, what information I have about what it entails (and whether I can trust the information I have), and further, I normally list all my reasons for saying yes to this thing plus whatever doubts I might have, and I hit “send.” Then I wait. I think the subject line tells them enough that they each tend to answer rather quickly. It probably also helps that I always listen  to their advice. I have not yet ignored the No Committee’s vote. That is, if they say no to me, I say no to the opportunity. Seriously. As I said, these are people who care deeply about me, and care less about my ambition or my insecurities which drive me to say yes more than I should. The one time in 2015 when I didn’t ask their advice, I said yes to something I regret saying yes to! And once, I sent them information about an opportunity that I didn’t want to take, and they outvoted me and each told me that I had to do it – and can you believe they were right??? Doing that thing has paid off in ways I surely couldn’t anticipate at the time.

So, form a No Committee for the New Year, and see where it gets you. How?

• First, your committee must have an odd number of people. I find three to be perfect. While a five-person committee would probably work, I imagine you’d have to wait longer to get five answers to your questions. In any event, you need always to have a clear answer, and even numbers leave you at risk for tied votes. A clear majority vote is probably more helpful.
• Second, choose committee members who have three qualities. First, they must care deeply about your well-being, and make that paramount. Second, they must understand the quirks of the academy. By this I mean that have to get why you have to do extra work for which you are not directly paid, like service obligations, taking on mentoring or advising roles, or teaching a new prep that might lead you down some new professional roads. They might also get why you’d do the academic equivalent of herding squirrels, like organizing conferences, or contributing to or putting together an edited volume. (For the love of marshmallows, think twice before you do these last two things!) And they have to understand the personalities of the decision-makers and gatekeepers around you so that they get why moves in certain directions might be good/bad for you. And third, they have to be able to keep confidences.
• Third, choose people who answer their email.
• Finally, when you contact your people, be totally honest about why you want to or don’t want to do something. They can only help you if you give them full information.

Make your first new year’s resolution be “I will form and use my No Committee!” and see where it gets you. Happy new year!

How To Concentrate on Your Writing Even When Life Goes On

To write, I need to concentrate. To concentrate, I need to have a clear mind. And, when something is bothering me, it is hard to have a clear mind, and, consequently, to write. So, how do you write when you have too much on your mind?

The simple answer is that you can not write when your mind is preoccupied with other things. To concentrate, you have to get the problem off your mind. The difficulty that clearing your mind involves depends on how big of a problem you have. Some problems can be taken care of fairly easily, whereas others are much bigger and require major steps. Let’s start with the easy kind of problems.

Annoyances with an Easy Fix

Let’s say you can’t write because you cannot stop thinking about an annoying email from a student asking you if they can enroll in your class even though they will miss 75% of the class sessions because of baseball practice and you can’t get it off of your mind. (Of course, you should not have opened your email before writing, but, that’s beside the point.) The best thing to do in this situation is to respond to the email.

Do something about the situation instead of letting it bother you. Tell the student attendance is required in your class, and that you cannot make any exceptions. Then, close the browser window and get back to writing.

Respond to What's Eating You and Get it Out of Your System

This technique – of responding to situations that bother you to get them off of your mind – also can work for more complex problems. If, for example, your chair just asked you to serve on yet another committee even though you are already on five other committees and you are all wound up about what to do about it, the best thing to do is to send a firm email explaining why this is not a good time for you to take on another committee assignment. Again, act, and get it out of your system.

Suppose your problem is that you have just received a rejection letter from a journal and feel depressed about your academic future. The best thing to do is to be pro-active. Take out a pen and make a plan for submitting the article to another journal. Set a firm date as a goal for beginning the revisions and for submission. Having a plan will make it easier to move forward.

If you are having general problems with concentrating, you also might consider doing meditation, which has been shown to enhance concentration.

Acknowledge Your Emotions and Work with Them

It is essential to acknowledge your emotions and to work with them. If you had an argument with your partner this morning, and can’t get it off of your mind, sometimes it is best to acknowledge that you are upset, and to engage in tasks that do not require much concentration. You can fix the bibliography on your latest manuscript or organize those articles that are piling up on your desk. Who knows, you might even calm yourself down while you are busy looking up citation formats in the Chicago Manual of Style.

Of course, there are some problems that are not going away any time soon. You may be involved in a custody battle with your spouse. Your mother may be dying of cancer. You may be on the brink of divorce. To figure out how to be productive in those very trying circumstances is much less simple.

The first question you have to ask yourself is: how long is this going to last? If your sister has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and will die within the next thirty days, by all means, drop everything and spend every minute you can with her. If, on the other hand, you have a mentally ill brother who requires long-term care, you have to decide how much of a role you are going to play in his care, and set limits to the amount of time and energy you give him.

Setting limits on what you can do for your loved ones is difficult. But, often, it is for the best. If you depend on your job for your financial solvency, it would be detrimental in the long term for you to spend so much time caring for others that you end up losing your job. Once you have lost your job, you likely will be of much less use to your loved ones who rely on your emotional and financial support. So, be sure to keep the long-term in mind.

Finally, do not hesitate to seek out professional help if you are having trouble dealing with your problems on your own. If you find yourself unable to move forward with your life or your work because of constant emotional setbacks, your best bet is to seek out a qualified therapist, psychologist, or psychiatrist who can help you to find the most appropriate solutions for you.