Dissertating...or planning to dissertate

So I've read two books full of advice for surviving a dissertation (Mauch, James E. 1998. Guide to the Successful Thesis and Dissertation a Handbook for Students and Faculty. 4th ed. Vol. 58. Books in Library and Information Science. New York: M. Dekker and Ogden, Evelyn Ogden. 2007. Complete Your Dissertation or Thesis in Two Semesters or Less. 3rd ed. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.). They're quite different and offer different kinds of advice for navigating the process and the institution. I was disappointed to discover that I can't actually complete my dissertation in two semesters because of the deadlines the TWU has in place (e.g. they must have two final copies of your dissertation in their office a month before commencement as opposed to Ogden's book that says that the typical timing for a defense is at least two weeks before commencement)...sigh. But it did force me to create a realistic time line that uses Ogden's time line as a skeleton modified with TWU's deadlines. And that might allow me to finish by August 2009...if I stop blogging and start working that is :-)

Dissertation advice

Now that the prospect of creating a dissertation is looming I've become inordinately interested in dissertation advice. One of the failings of the doctoral program of which I am a part is a scarcity of information or information sources. Other programs I've encountered offer courses from which one emerges with the first several chapters of one's dissertation complete or at least drafted. They also seem to spend a great deal of time talking about conducting research and what's expected regarding both comprehensive exams and dissertation. Sadly, not so in my program. So, in an effort to inform myself, I came across this new column in Inside Higher Ed this week: Demystifying the Dissertation: Piles, Stacks, Folders. It's a new column that, I think, will be useful.