thesis overload - so near and yet so far!

stinkle

Hi, first time posting here.

I'm writing up at the moment, and am just about to start my last chapter, which is my general discussion hooray! Have severe writer's block though....at this stage I feel like I've repeated myself a million times and just cannot get motivated to rehash all the ideas in a fresh, exciting way.

My plan for this chapter is to sort of look at how all my individual results chapters fit together as part of a bigger picture. Is this a good idea? I've already discussed each chapter individually, hence the boredom!

All help/ideas appreciated

TheBody

Fair play to ya. I remember how draining my thesis was. What subject/topic is your thesis on?

stinkle

it's a biomed thesis, I'm driving myself around the bend a little cos I was looking up inspiration online and am now stupidly confused! Just read something about how you really shouldn't repeat stuff in the gen discussion, I feel that all I'm doing is repeating stuff

woodchuck

Hi, congrats on getting the bulk of it done first of all, nearly there!!

If you’re having a writers block can you afford to take a few of days off just to decompress a bit and recharge your batteries? All that writing is so draining, it’s not a bad idea to distance yourself from it a bit and then reconsider it with fresh eyes/brain.

If it helps at all my discussion chapter went as follows:
- Opening paragraph bringing everything back to why I was investigating that particular topic to begin with (what is/isn’t known and why it’s of medical importance).
- The bulk of the chapter was discussing all of the (relevant) results from each of the individual chapters and how they fit together. There will of course be repetition here, but the key thing is to see how it all ties in together. I also drew a diagram of a proposed mechanism of what I thought was taking place during the process I was studying based on my results. This is optional obviously depending on your work, I just personally liked the idea of being able to summarize everything visually. And I just thought it was worth a mention because it went down REALLY well during the viva! They said it showed I was capable of independent thinking and coming up with a novel concept, rather than just regurgitating the same old stuff. So don’t be afraid to go out on a limb!
- A paragraph on how the results could potentially be used in a clinical setting some day.
- I included a separate section (about a page) on future recommendations. This was experimental details that if someone else was to continue on with the project straight after me, this was the stuff they could/should focus on (but try to word it so that you’re not just poking holes in your own work!).
- Lastly I had a conclusions section. This had a bullet point for each chapter with just a sentence or 2 summarizing the key results. (This tied in with the end of my general induction chapter, where I had a thesis overview section with a bullet point for each chapter, outlining the main aims for each chapter). After the bullet points I had a paragraph summing up the overall ‘take home’ message.

I suppose the main thing to remember is that it’s the last chance you really have to talk up your work in the thesis so make sure to point out what’s novel about it, how it contributes to the existing knowledge and how it relates to the bigger picture. Make sure to end things on a high note

Sorry for the long post, hope I haven’t just confused you more

stinkle

woodchuck wrote: »

Hi, congrats on getting the bulk of it done first of all, nearly there!!

If you’re having a writers block can you afford to take a few of days off just to decompress a bit and recharge your batteries? All that writing is so draining, it’s not a bad idea to distance yourself from it a bit and then reconsider it with fresh eyes/brain.

If it helps at all my discussion chapter went as follows:
- Opening paragraph bringing everything back to why I was investigating that particular topic to begin with (what is/isn’t known and why it’s of medical importance).
- The bulk of the chapter was discussing all of the (relevant) results from each of the individual chapters and how they fit together. There will of course be repetition here, but the key thing is to see how it all ties in together. I also drew a diagram of a proposed mechanism of what I thought was taking place during the process I was studying based on my results. This is optional obviously depending on your work, I just personally liked the idea of being able to summarize everything visually. And I just thought it was worth a mention because it went down REALLY well during the viva! They said it showed I was capable of independent thinking and coming up with a novel concept, rather than just regurgitating the same old stuff. So don’t be afraid to go out on a limb!
- A paragraph on how the results could potentially be used in a clinical setting some day.
- I included a separate section (about a page) on future recommendations. This was experimental details that if someone else was to continue on with the project straight after me, this was the stuff they could/should focus on (but try to word it so that you’re not just poking holes in your own work!).
- Lastly I had a conclusions section. This had a bullet point for each chapter with just a sentence or 2 summarizing the key results. (This tied in with the end of my general induction chapter, where I had a thesis overview section with a bullet point for each chapter, outlining the main aims for each chapter). After the bullet points I had a paragraph summing up the overall ‘take home’ message.

I suppose the main thing to remember is that it’s the last chance you really have to talk up your work in the thesis so make sure to point out what’s novel about it, how it contributes to the existing knowledge and how it relates to the bigger picture. Make sure to end things on a high note

Sorry for the long post, hope I haven’t just confused you more

Thank you so much! That has been a huge help Realised also that I'd read the online help thing that caused me to panic entirely wrong yesterday - they urged against repetition in the other manuscript-based type of thesis yaay.

can't afford to take time off I'm afraid - did that last week I devised some diagrams yesterday, my supervisor said it would be a good idea, and hooray if the examiners were impressed! I also just went through the other chapter discussions and lifted relevant stuff into one document - now all I have to do is edit that. I'll keep all your ideas in mind, they're invaluable, thanks again

djpbarry

stinkle wrote: »

My plan for this chapter is to sort of look at how all my individual results chapters fit together as part of a bigger picture. Is this a good idea?

That's the general idea - the preceding chapters focus on the specifics of your work, the general discussion ties it all up and lets the reader know how the world of science has changed as a result of your work. There's a lot of good advice from woodchuck above - I would stress the importance of talking about what more you would do if you had the time, but be careful to state that this is a substantial body of work and not something you could have done in a short period of time, but just weren’t arsed.

Having a look at the structure of some other theses is also a good idea:
http://arrow.dit.ie/theses

stinkle

that's a very helpful link, thank you I do have a couple of things I'd love to do if I had the time so can definitely include that as a "future work" thing. In the individual chapter discussions, I've already linked in results in preceding chapters. E.g. two of my chapters actually have very similar results (one focuses on disease, the other the basic science, but there's a similar thread going through it), so I've mentioned that - "as seen in chapter x, this mechanism appears to be important". I guess I;m trying to highlight these sort of things for the examiners throughout the text.

BUT...is it a better idea to leave any text like that till the gen discussion? I;ve linked up stuff as I went along based on advice that one supervisor has given me re:presentations and writing - it's not a murder mystery, you dont have to subtly drop hints as you go and then at the end have a big "ta-daaaaaa!" type of summary. He says it's best to spell things out as you go, which I think is sound advice from an examiner's perspective too. No point in alienating the important people who will read this!

woodchuck

stinkle wrote: »

BUT...is it a better idea to leave any text like that till the gen discussion? I;ve linked up stuff as I went along based on advice that one supervisor has given me re:presentations and writing - it's not a murder mystery, you dont have to subtly drop hints as you go and then at the end have a big "ta-daaaaaa!" type of summary. He says it's best to spell things out as you go, which I think is sound advice from an examiner's perspective too. No point in alienating the important people who will read this!

I think you’re probably right the way you’ve done it and I wouldn’t really worry about having too much information in your results chapters or referring to previous chapters. But do try to see if there’s any new way of tying everything together nicely as a whole for the final discussion in a way that you haven’t done before in the other discussions.

I was always told approach these things as a ‘story’ but a murder mystery probably is a bit extreme :P I did it more like showing a logical sequence of events between chapters (as if it was all done in chronological order for specific reasons). For example I had phrases like: “in chapter x I’ve found that … therefore the next step was to investigate if …” or “In this chapter we’ve seen that … and the reason for that may be due to … which was shown previously in chapter x”.

stinkle

woodchuck wrote: »

I think you’re probably right the way you’ve done it and I wouldn’t really worry about having too much information in your results chapters or referring to previous chapters. But do try to see if there’s any new way of tying everything together nicely as a whole for the final discussion in a way that you haven’t done before in the other discussions.

I was always told approach these things as a ‘story’ but a murder mystery probably is a bit extreme :P I did it more like showing a logical sequence of events between chapters (as if it was all done in chronological order for specific reasons). For example I had phrases like: “in chapter x I’ve found that … therefore the next step was to investigate if …” or “In this chapter we’ve seen that … and the reason for that may be due to … which was shown previously in chapter x”.

yaay I have phrases like that too Yeah I don;t see the point of "saving up" my conclusions till the end, just in case I've alienated the reader! Had a very productive day yesterday and got a huge chunk of it done!!!!!!! Once I started it flowed reasonably well.

Don't want it to be more than 10 pages and I've got about 7 after staring at a blank screen for much of the week It's low on citations too, which I think is a good thing - I've essentially just mentioned all my important results and how they fit together. The only citations seem to be the crucial ones I based experiments on/that back up my findings.