Outline is out of line

One of the first things I did when I was preparing for my dissertation (even before I had an idea of what my topic would be), I sat down and fleshed out a time-line and outline of the chapters. The basic outline of a dissertation goes a little something like this (although the outline varies from discipline to discipline):

Chapter 1: Introduction and overview, or “why should I care about this topic and what exactly is this study about?”
Chapter 2: Review of the literature, or “what have other people said about this topic?”
Chapter 3: Data and methods, or “now that I care about the topic and know what other people have said about it, how will I go about answering my research questions?”
Chapter 4: Analysis and findings, or “what do the results mean?”
Chapter 5: Implications, or “how do these results link back to my research questions? And who cares about it?”

It’s as simple as that, right? Yeah right! Dissertation writing is a lot tougher than any other kind of writing that I’ve ever had to do – it has to be technical, concise, and engaging. One paragraph might have 15 different citations in it, so it seems like one hour of writing is equivalent to 4 hours of research! In some cases more, and in other cases less. It’s a whole new animal, and now I see why it takes people so dang long to write these things!

I keep telling myself that it’s worth it when it’s all said and done, but sometimes after getting bogged down in the literature I just want to throw it all away. Or better yet, start from scratch. I suppose that’s a natural response – I’ll never be satisfied with this paper no matter how well I write it. I’m sure that I’ll look back and say “I shoulda done it this way” or “I shoulda done it like that…” At some point, you’ve gotta just throw in the towel and say “it’s good enough for now” and move on to the next paragraph. This is my mantra from here on out, I need to remember that it’s always going to be a work-in-progress until it gets the final seal of approval from my department.