Reading Group Information

EngD Survival

“…. Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work” Stephen King, 1947- , American Writer

The following are some words from Jamie O’Brien the very first completing student from the Bartlett School of Graduate Studies:

Writing a thesis: ten things I wish I’d known from the outset

This is a potted version of the after-dinner speech I gave to the Worshipful Guild of Wormeriers earlier this year after Ronnie Corbett pulled out. I hope it’s useful.

“My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen, I think it was Napoleon Dynamite who said: Listen to your heart, that’s what I do. Or was it Roxette? …

1. First, general issues: your thesis is an original contribution to knowledge. There is no one particular format for a thesis, its form and content will depend on the material you are gathering. That said, it usually has around 7 – 10 chapters, comprising 80,000 – 100,000 words, not including bibliography and appendices (you should include appendices, which will show background work or points of reference such as a glossary). It will also include an introductory chapter in which you outline your reasons for doing the research and all background information. You will also cover all methods you employed to do the research (either in the introduction or in a discrete methodologies chapter) and you might also describe how you approached the problem (I used standard engineering design techniques to explore my research problem). If you’re being sponsored, procuring a client statement from your industrial supervisor might provide a useful baseline for your research. The middle three or four chapters will be empirical (i.e. based on evidence sourced from the field), with a general discussion and conclusions making up the final one or two chapters.

2. Choose your research theme wisely; make sure your topic motivates you personally or professionally. Writing a thesis is like running a marathon or climbing the Matterhorn; you’ll probably run out of energy at some point and only your self-generated goals will keep you going.

3. Start on the literature review as soon as possible. It forms the basis of your research and ensures you don’t replicate a piece of research done elsewhere. It’s a good idea to collect and summarise all relevant papers in your field of interest. Make sure similar reviews have not been conducted elsewhere. If there are similar reviews, explain clearly how your review is different to others. The review should also provide a way of finding out what you should be addressing in your empirical chapters.

4. If you’re doing practical work, get on with it as soon as you’re ready. I worried far too much about technical issues ended up with just two weeks to complete the work. You could, however, start out with a user or interaction study, but that’s up to you.

5. Remember to keep track of all citations and make sure your references are accurate as you go along – trying to find papers you looked at long ago or correcting all your references could well double the time you spend on your thesis. There is open source citation software available (Latex), but I found it easier doing it manually. If in doubt use the Harvard referencing system. There is no minimum or maximum number of references but large numbers (e.g. >1000) or small numbers (<50) could raise questions among your examiners (for the record, my thesis had 310).

6. Get into a state of Zen-like calm. Learn patience and tolerance. My first draft took two years to write (pretty much full time). Extra revisions, supervision and examination a whole further year. In my experience, you will need to be assertive to get tutorial time. Feel confident in using the resources you’re entitled to. That said, you should also learn to embrace feelings of isolation and desperation – these are your new friends. Joking aside, make sure you get out and about as often as you can, meet up with peers and give yourself well-earned breaks and rewards. It’s a long and lonely slog. Build a cake or something.

7. One task of doctoral research can be to raise the theoretical level in your area of work. Here you can draw on broader themes from the social sciences, critical theory, philosophy, etc. Theorising on your work can be a discrete chapter, or part of a general discussion.

8. Don’t get too attached to the work you produce, you may have to cut good material out for the sake of research parameters and narrative flow.

9. Make sure the language is clearly expressed and interesting. Avoid making wild assertions about your research (i.e. use qualified phrases like ‘this finding might suggest that…’, rather than ‘I spite the gods and claim truth and virtue as the right of mortals…’). If you use technical terms or abbreviations ensure they are fully explained within the text, or in a glossary.

10. Choose a title that sounds interesting and frames the material appropriately. Don’t make claims that you haven’t been able to substantiate in the text (such as “There is Something at the Centre, I’ve seen It: Nietzsche was an Idiot”.

Hope that helps. Any queries or problems get in touch jamie.obrien@uclmail.net

This resource was initiated by students following the Engineering Doctorate in Virtual Environments Imaging and Visualisation (2005) at the Bartlett School of Architecture and the Department of Computer Science UCL.