From the beginning to the end, creation of a doctoral thesis is nothing short of a riddle or a maze. It is not uncommon to see scholars make the wrong moves or take few wrong steps that may lead them to making some strategic mistakes that can come in the way of the completion of their thesis:
- Choosing a topic that is difficult/challenging or uninspiring: In the first phase itself if you make a mistake with your topic selection, you have made the wrong move in the maze and you would keep roaming endlessly without ever getting to move out. Your priority while topic selection should be to choose one that interests you rather than impressing you or others. You must never get interested in deciding a topic that looks very difficult or challenging, only for the reason that it sounds unique or amazingly impressive.
- Pushing through the proposal: usually in the beginning the students are too busy trying to get a hang of the course that they usually are not able to keep up with the pace of the deadline of the proposal submission. Then, when they are closer to date, often they rush with the submission and take decisions without much thought about the topic, methodology, etc.
- Procrastination after the proposal approval: proposal approval is a milestone in itself and usually when scholars are able to come to this level, they get an immense sense of relief and accomplishment. They continue to bask in the glory of this achievement for a long time and thus sometimes develop a slack or relaxing attitude that can deviate them from their goal. You must keep your focus in place from the very beginning as you have a stipulated time frame in which the master thesis has to be completed.
- Staying unorganised: One objective of the thesis proposal is to get organised and create the definite plan that you need to follow for your thesis completion. Have a specific task in place and an organised structure that you need to follow for the achievement of that plan so that you are able to live up to the stipulated deadline.
- Not submitting rough drafts on time: If you have committed all the above mentioned mistakes, you wouldn’t have a choice in committing this one. You would invariably get late in the submission of your drafts timely and thus not only delaying submissions but putting off your guide as well.
If you have just started your PhD, you must ensure you don’t commit such mistakes at the preliminary stage itself, at more progressive stages what can be the errors and flaws, we will take up in our next blog!!