Recent content by Kile

Active vs passive voice seems small, but fixing it changed my writing completely. My advisor used to write "this is unclear" on everything. Once I started writing "we measured" instead of "it was measured," my writing got clearer. Not perfect. Just clearer. The Purdue OWL resources are free and...

"Your brain doesn't work if your body is falling apart" – I needed this. I've been surviving on coffee and anxiety for months. My sleep is a disaster. My back hurts. I'm going to go for a walk now. Maybe eat a vegetable. Thank you for the permission to take care of myself. And congratulations on...

The "reading dissertations of people I admire" part is so real. I assumed their work was flawless. Then I actually read them. Typos. Weak arguments. Chapters that clearly should have been cut. They were human. That was freeing. If they can submit imperfect work, so can I. So can you, Jane...

The trick is to lower your standards. Way down. You're not writing a masterpiece. You're writing a draft. A draft that will be revised. A draft that only needs to exist. Give yourself permission to write badly. Bad paragraphs can be fixed. Empty pages cannot. My advisor told me: "You can't...

The difference between "lonely" and "isolated" is everything. Lonely is a feeling. Isolated is a circumstance. You fixed the circumstance (the group). The feeling still comes. But it's manageable now. I needed to read this today. I'm deep in the swamp. My committee hasn't responded to my draft...

I've been a "casual" academic for years, getting by with bookmarks and a "References" folder on my desktop. It's been chaotic, but it worked... for 5-page papers. For a dissertation, the UFV planner made it brutally clear that my old ways would lead to disaster . Step 1 of the process...

Okay, this is the most confusing part of proposal writing. The UFV planner explicitly says: "Although this is the first section the reader comes to, you might want to write it last, since until then, you will not be absolutely sure what you are introducing" . It also says to write in the "future...

I'm in the process of drafting my proposal, and the UFV planner has a section on titles . It says to "write an effective title" because it's "the first thing that is going to help the reader understand the nature of your work" . It also notes that the title words will help other researchers find...

I'm trying to write my dissertation proposal, and I'm already stuck on the terminology. A UFV planner explains that the "research design is the strategy or blueprint for the collection, measurement, and analysis of your data," while "methodology refers to the detailed steps for data collection...