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All Blog Posts (13)

How to Do Your Dissertation Research Productively?

Are you ready to start your dissertation research? Your research should illustrate a broad understanding of studies done in your area of study. Whether you are starting your research dissertations or have started already, I am going to discuss some important points that you should know in order to carry out an in-depth research productively. Not kn… Continue

Added by Rose Tyler on October 31, 2009 at 1:49am — No Comments

My absence

Dear friends, Sometimes life gets in the way of best laid plans and intentions. We had a death in the family in mid-April that turned our lives inside out, and now I will be traveling until mid August. At that time I will make a decision about whether to re-energize this site or go dark. Thank you for your patience. With Best Wishes, Diane Cline Continue

Added by Diane Cline on July 4, 2009 at 10:08pm — No Comments

On Transparency and Engagement in the Academy

I participated in Government 2.0 Camp, an Un-Conference held this past weekend in DC. About 350 government workers, scholars, new media gurus, consultants, and intereste… Continue

Added by Diane Cline on April 3, 2009 at 11:30am — No Comments

Boring Conference Papers: A Pet Peeve

This weekend I attended a day-long conference open to the public on the Pompeii show at the Smithsonian's National Gallery of Art. Five academic papers were given in a small auditorium on aspects of Roman art and life. It was really my first academic Classics conference in quite a… Continue

Added by Diane Cline on March 24, 2009 at 10:00am — No Comments

Remarkable Graduate Students Win

I've been thinking about what it takes to stand out from your peers. For some, it's intellect - prodigious brilliance. For others, it's hard work, sheer volume of productivity. And then there's personality: the sparkle in your eyes when you speak about your subject, the excitement that's contagious when you discover a new idea. When it comes to getting the majority of academic teaching… Continue

Added by Diane Cline on March 20, 2009 at 9:21am — No Comments

Are you a Purple Cow, a Tortoise, or a Hare?

First let's examine the idea of time management. Some of us are tortoises and others are hares. I always worked only 2 hours a day on actually writing when I was a full time graduate student. My husband, on the other hand, would sit 8-10 hours a day with it. I finished a year sooner than he did. How?

The dissertation was always on my… Continue

Added by Diane Cline on March 16, 2009 at 2:30pm — 2 Comments

ABD and Working Full-Time?

I bet some of you have been sitting on an unfinished dissertation for years. The data gets older, your advisers are retired now, the approach is no longer so fashionable, or someone else just published a book on the topic. What you need to know is that it is never too late. I got my first teaching job before I finished the dissertation. I was teaching four courses, all "new preps" at a new university in a city I'd never lived in. My deadline was December of that busy Fall semester. I can still… Continue

Added by Diane Cline on March 11, 2009 at 2:30pm — No Comments

Put Your Passion in the Driver's Seat

Read this Tweet today: Monday meme RT @LynGraft: "Always be bad at something that you are passionate about." BW article » link to How to Keep Innovating - BusinessWeek It reminded me of a classic blog post on passion that I read recently on the relationship between following one's passion and the fear of failure. Most people put their passion into the box for "doing on the weekend/when I… Continue

Added by Diane Cline on March 9, 2009 at 11:30am — No Comments

Tweeting the Diss Experience

Why did I create this website? It all started with Twitter. I check in to Twitter each evening after dinner, having tried to resist the temptation during the day. Besides the people I follow, I use the search window in PowerTwitter to find links and news posted on subjects I'm inte… Continue

Added by Diane Cline on March 5, 2009 at 9:08am — No Comments

Visual Aids and PowerPoint : Less is so much more

Back in the day, we used dual slide projectors to illustrate lectures. The images were designed to promote comprehension or illustrate a comparison. There were no words. Less clutter still means more impact. You should never have to read from the slide. There are three levels of presentation within PowerPoint. 1. The slideshow is a text document when almost everything you will say is on the slide. Your presentation is still just a document at the first level when, if you were to send the prese… Continue

Added by Diane Cline on February 28, 2009 at 5:00pm — No Comments

Word of Mouth for Graduate Students: Some Unsolicited Advice

Posted by Diane Cline on February 16, 2009 at 1:29pm The dissertation years are critical to building word of mouth about who you are and why you should be hired when you finish. Yet many graduate students focus solely on the research and ignore building relationships with peers and faculty who will be recommending them in the years ahead. I have some advice to share that will be most useful when the time come… Continue

Added by Diane Cline on February 26, 2009 at 1:48pm — 2 Comments

Can you explain your diss topic in 60 seconds or less?

You probably are asked "what are you working on" more often than "how are you doing". What is your answer? I have a whole workshop on this topic, but will summarize it for you briefly. (First let me say that if you ARE asked how you are doing or feeling ALWAYS answer in a positive way -- that's about personal branding -- an entirely different workshop). When the question is "what are you working on", there are several factors to consider and your answer needs to be instantaneous. 1. Who is aski… Continue

Added by Diane Cline on February 25, 2009 at 9:30am — No Comments

Go to a new library to stimulate innovation and creativity

Innovation and creativity comes in many forms. For me, it is when I read outside my discipline that I see new connections and frameworks. New books lead me to try unconventional approaches. When you feel stuck or bored, go to a new library. Take a trip to the other side of your town or state. Browse their stacks. It may be that the juxtaposition or arrangement of books you see over and over at your institution is stifling your creativity at this point. When you go somewhere else, the books you… Continue

Added by Diane Cline on February 23, 2009 at 9:30am — No Comments

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This community is for graduate students and the professors who care about them. I created it out of a desire to create a space where grad students can share their common experiences and where professors can offer advice. Many advisers are simply too busy or unable to advise students on the issues that don't have to do with the content of the dissertation.

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