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The Dissertation ‘Two Pager’: A strategy to sustain a “big picture” view of a...
When I was in graduate school, I took several courses with Professor Anthony (Tony) Dorcey, Professor Emeritus with the School of Community and Regional Planning at The University of British Columbia....
View ArticleHow to Write a Thesis (Umberto Eco) – my reading notes
I sometimes eschew book recommendations even though I have an intuition that these may actually work for my purposes. A number of scholars had recommended to me that I should check Umberto Eco’s How to...
View ArticleWork Your Career: Get What You Want from Your Social Sciences or Humanities...
A few weeks ago, University of Toronto Press sent me a complimentary copy of “Work Your Career: Get What You Want from Your Social Sciences or Humanities PhD“, a book written by Dr. Loleen Berdahl and...
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How to write the conclusion of a paper
Whenever I read conclusions of papers, both in my students’ papers as well as in journal articles and book chapters, I find that writers are so tired of writing and doing the research that they end up...
View ArticleComplete Your Dissertation or Thesis in Two Semesters or Less (my reading notes)
I recently ran a poll on Twitter about whether I should write about books I did NOT like, and the majority ruled that it was important to know which ones and why not in order to make better decisions....
View ArticleDestination Dissertation A Traveler’s Guide to a Done Dissertation (my...
The second book I absolutely did not like at all was “Destination Dissertation: A Traveler’s Guide to a Done Dissertation“. As I indicated in my reading notes of Ogden’s “Complete Your Dissertation or...
View ArticleWriting journal articles from a doctoral dissertation
As I often do, I blog about stuff that people ask me on Twitter. This is one of the most common questions I get: how do I write journal articles out of my doctoral dissertation? @raulpacheco Any advice...
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Writing topic sentences and crafting paragraphs
Two of the questions I get asked most often not only by my own students but by other scholars on Twitter as well are: “how do I write good topic sentences?” and “how do I write good paragraphs?“. These...
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Note-taking techniques I: The index card method
I’m an old school kind of guy, and I think everyone who follows me on Twitter and reads my blog (and knows me as a person) knows this. I like highlighting, scribbling (by hand, on paper). I write...
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A brief guide to using Mendeley as a reference and citation manager and as an...
When I was in graduate school, I discovered Endnote. Not only did I discover it, I actually bought a copy at the student price and became absolutely dependent on it. I taught courses to my fellow...
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Taking stock as a motivational strategy: Sum up what you’ve accomplished, not...
My students often come to me frustrated to my office and tell me “Professor Pacheco-Vega, I am making such slow progress with my dissertation/thesis/paper. I feel like I need to read faster, or read...
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Does “writing every day” work?
Lately, I’ve seen a lot of online commentary against the “write every day” mantra. Helen Sword, in a 2016 article, released results from surveys, interviews and focus groups she conducted with academic...
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Reading, scribbling, highlighting, taking notes and organizing information...
I have written several Twitter threads about how do what many people call “active reading“: I read, highlight, scribble on the margins, take notes and then store these in digital and analog media. I...
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Backcasting a Revise-And-Resubmit (R&R) manuscript
This morning, as I was reflecting on a topic I’ve been mulling over (what does Joli Jensen mean by “constant contact with a writing project entail”?), I reviewed potential blog posts I could...
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What does Joli Jensen’s “low stakes, constant contact with a writing project”...
One of the best books I’ve ever read about academic writing was Joli Jensen’s “Write No Matter What“. Ever since I read it, I pondered, “what does ‘constant, low-stakes contact with a writing project‘...
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Preparing for the doctoral dissertation defense (the “viva”)
I did my PhD in Canada, where doctoral dissertation defenses are public, so what I’m going to narrate here is how I prepared for my own defense under the rules and standards of the school where I...
View ArticleHow to write the discussion section of an academic paper
This is one of the most challenging questions people have ever asked me, because after looking through dozens of journal articles in my Mendeley database, I could not find a lot of them who used...
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Planning work over the summer (for faculty and undergrad/graduate students)
Two of my quasi-doctoral students (Cesar Alvarez from University of California Los Angeles and Mariana Miguelez from The Ohio State University), have asked me a few times whether I could write a blog...
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The Scientist’s Guide to Writing How to Write More Easily and Effectively...
I had corresponded with Dr. Stephen B. Heard about his writing book “The Scientist’s Guide to Writing How to Write More Easily and Effectively throughout Your Scientific Career” a few years ago and he...
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Scientific Writing = Thinking in Words (my reading notes)
This is another book that helps those of us who are in STEM fields or publish within the STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) areas write more clearly. This book by David Lindsay,...
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