How to Polish Your Science PhD Dissertations
Submitting a PhD thesis not only means having made a considerable contribution in your chosen field of science, it also means presenting a properly made, well-composed, well-polished written work to your examiner(s) and other concerned readers. That part may be harder than it seems at first because it could turn out you have never written anything serious before, and this is completely new for you. What are the key things to pay attention to and think about while refining your own work?
Think about the assignment and whether you have fulfilled it completely in terms of direction, depth, relevance, and angle, as well as a form, size and style.
- Read it like you’re doing it for the first time. Try reading it as if you were the examiner, keeping in mind all their recommendations and requirements, and try assessing the dissertation critically, from a bystander’s point of view. Be completely honest and mark all the places and areas that cause doubt, and heavily mark the obviously problematic areas for further improvement.
- Proof-read your thesis for any typos, repetitions, or inconsistencies. Ask a friend or a colleague to help you proof-read it in order to double the speed. Or hire some people who provide editing services, if you aren’t sure of your own attentiveness or spelling.
- Return to the places you have marked to improve them. You can break that process down into several steps starting with the easiest corrections which you can just make as you go along, and finishing with the most controversial, demanding, or long parts, which can even make you turn to your supervisor for help. You could start with the hardest issued first, whatever suits you.
- Double-check all the standard requirements, because if you don’t, they will remind you of themselves on their own, at the most inappropriate time, when you least expect them. Make sure you’re prepared for those trick questions.
- Be decisive on how you want your thesis to look, because to some extent you have the creative freedom to do anything, as long as it doesn’t contradict the rules. Don’t be too dry and methodical with your writing, be more human, have your own opinion, appeal to living people, just know where to stop. Be firm and get rid of a lot of information in our thesis. Get rid of all the excessive, bulky, and unimportant material and make it shorter and more eloquent.
