Want to Finish? Make Your Dissertation Your Priority

As you probably already know, writing a dissertation is different from anything you’ve ever done. This undertaking requires you to adjust, if not radically change, your lifestyle. If you ever really want to complete the dissertation, and in a timely manner (if that isn’t an oxymoron), you need to rethink your priorities.

You may have been used to putting family first (possibly after your full-time job). But rethink this priority. Heartless and psychologically suspect as this statement may sound, you can make it up to your family in many other ways—later (that’s another article). Or you may say “yes” to all kinds of non-school activities. Learn to say “not now” (also another article).

At this point in your graduate school life, you’re supposed to make the dissertation your major priority. In my longtime dissertation coaching of struggling doctoral candidates and dissertation writers, I’ve learned several techniques and related perspectives that will nudge you into making your dissertation a priority.

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TAA Member Phil Wankat: Notable Cartoons from the ‘TAA Report’

The second installment of TAA Member Phil Wankat’s curation and commentary of the archival issues of the TAA Report (now The Academic Author), Cartoons, is now available.

Wankat selected articles that have information that is still valid today, and included commentary on each. We will be adding these articles to the web page, “Articles from TAA Report Archives (now The Academic Author) with Commentary,” over the next few months. The articles are organized into 10 categories, including Authors Needed, Cartoons, Contracts, Ethics, Money, Production, Recognition and Rewards, Software, Textbooks as Scholarship, and Writer’s Block. The first installment was Authors Needed.

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12/7 TAA Webinar – Passion for Learning and Research: Is Earning a Doctorate the Right Path For You?

Join us Thursday, December 7 from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. ET for the TAA webinar, “Passion for Learning and Research: Is Earning a Doctorate the Right Path For You?”. Presenters Dr. Tasha Egalite, a newly minted PhD in Curriculum and Instruction with a concentration in TESOL at New Mexico State University, and Dr. Kristin Kew, an associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Administration at New Mexico State University, will share and reflect on their own doctoral journeys, the critical issues they encountered, and the hoops they jumped through while completing their dissertations. Some of the themes discovered during their research on the dissertation process and obtaining a doctorate were sustaining momentum, maintaining purpose, and creating meaningful works while furthering their learning in the fields of education and educational leadership. Advice will be provided on how to determine whether to apply for a doctoral program and how to navigate some of the pitfalls and rabbit holes of the academic arena.

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Register for 10/4 Two-Hour Workshop – ‘Efficiency with Style: Revising Your Manuscript at the Macro & Micro Levels’

Fast-writing and “allowing messy drafts” is often recommended as a productivity strategy for academics. But … how do we most efficiently transform the resulting messes into coherent and powerful prose?

Academic Writing Coach Erin McTigue will be presenting a two-hour interactive virtual workshop, “Efficiency with Style: Revising Your Manuscript at the Macro & Micro Levels.” on October 4 from 3-5 p.m. ET. Learn how to take a “messy draft” of your choice and try out three macro-level revision strategies to hone overall logic and organization of the manuscript and then three micro-level revision tools for coherence and writing style. You’ll leave the workshop with both a sequential approach and individual tools for transforming your future drafts with efficiency.

Members Register Here

Not a member yet? Join for only $30

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The Psychology Behind Writing: Tap into Your Natural Personality to Assist Your Academic Writing Process (Part 2)

Hello fellow TAA members, thank you for reading this second post of “The Psychology Behind Writing.” With monthly offerings, we’ll get into some of the psychological processes that support our academic writing as well as the ones that derail our writing. And, we will definitely explore strategies for amplifying the positive and mitigating the negative.

As many of you might know, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is structured with 4 personality scales, each with two “opposite” preferences that rest on a continuum of intensity for that personality scale. The key to remember here is that we all have all 8 preferences available to us (4 scales x 2 preferences), but we tend to have a natural preference for inhabiting one side over the other. One side tends to come more instinctively, we don’t have to think about it as hard, we can be on auto-pilot, we are more practiced with it, and we probably don’t have much anxiety around using it.

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Consider Creating a ‘Commonplace Book’ to Inspire, Remind, and Refresh You and Your Writing

A Commonplace Book is a way to compile knowledge important to you. It can become a valued snapshot of you and your interests as you grow in your life and career. I was keeping a Commonplace Book for decades and didn’t realize I was doing it!

Commonplace Books might include quotations, connections to important literature or sources, meaningful articles, key data, journals (personal or professional), your curriculum vitae, and any other centralized information. They are often informal and may sit on your desktop, in the cloud, in your notes program, or maybe even in your In Box.

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