You may call me Doctor

I know I haven't been posting much the last few months (well, really not at all). Two things have happened in the last couple of days. First, my final revisions were accepted on Friday, so now I am confident that I will be receiving my Ph.d in August. The second thing is, now that I have time to post, my daughter will have my computer for the next 5 weeks so many of the ideas I had for posting are not nearby!

I will continue to try to post at least once a week on a wide range of topics. One area that I am very interested in posting about are the changes I made to my final dissertation. While many of us who participate in the #phdchat on twitter Wednesday 2:30-3:30 EST (7:30-8:30 GMT I think)know that there will be revisions to the dissertation, this process is almost more painful than the actual thesis writing.

In my case, I went into my dissertation defense knowing to expect some challenges to my work. As my committee members told me throughout the process, my research was messy. As such, it was very important that I knew what I was saying for my final defense. However, there were a few factors that I had difficulty articulating. These "minor" points ended up being major factors as I began to revise my dissertation. In fact, through working out the answers to the questions posed during my defense, I came up with a new concept (and term) as I was unable to articulate it any other way.

I think having been near the end of the Ph.d process also made it even more difficult to complete this last bit. I thought I had gone as far as I could with the data I had (which is why I went forward with the defense). Therefore, I really had to push myself and overcome my complacency in the dissertation to address the issues my committee members had identified.

This was very different than journal articles I have written. I'm not sure why, but I have no difficulty addressing and revising problems pointed out by reviewers. Perhaps it is the high stakes in which I feel for my dissertation I must please my committee members whereas with an article, I can always walk away if my vision and the reviewers don't align.

I want to write some articles based on my dissertation, looking at some of the issues I had to either cut or ignore to complete my dissertation. I really want to start a whole new project in a totally different area. But for now, I'll just blog the next few weeks.