Writing a Master's Dissertation: Psychology
Nov 24, 2021
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This article gives advice on the psychological outlook that can be useful in writing a master's dissertation.
This article offers advice on writing master's dissertations (assumed to be around 20,000 words), with a general focus on Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. The focus of the article worked out by an online essay writer is on psychological strategies for tackling the writing process.
The Dissertation: Getting Perspective
Many students find master's degrees particularly grueling: the one-year course is perceived to be exceptionally intense. However, students should realize that the difficulty may not stem solely from the academic material they are dealing with. After all, though the topic may be new, the intellectual demands are not likely to be more stringent than those of the final undergraduate year. What is often more challenging – and often overlooked – is the emotional effect of separation from one's previous cohort of friends, the sense that the staff are no longer so obviously on your side, and the pressure to decide what one will do after graduation even while the course is in full swing.
These observations make one's master's experience no less grueling. However, when faced with a daunting dissertation, it can be useful to identify what it is about it that really is so daunting.
The Dissertation: Core and Structure
Students often spent undue energy worrying about the overall structure of a dissertation before they have worked out the core idea. While it is true that one works out one's idea in the process of writing, such that the work to decide the content and the work of writing the content are not fully separable, it is a good idea to keep them apart as much as possible.
A 20,000-word dissertation does not take long to write. It can be written in a few long working days. The student should not worry unduly about the mechanics of writing, and should remember that exploratory writing is highly inefficient. Microsoft Word in particular encourages one to become distracted by matters of formatting, and allows one to procrastinate while still thinking that one is working towards a goal. The point is to haul oneself up and away from the minutia: not to fiddle with formatting when one should be writing; not to fiddle with phrasing when one should be researching.
The core of the dissertation is reading and research. If this is well done, the structure will largely handle itself. The dissertation should not be polished until the final stages: there are many editing tools and essay writing services available which can rapidly clean up a rough text. The student should certainly leave time for a fellow postgrad to copy edit and proofread the text, but there should not normally be any need to pay someone to do this – graduate students should support each other.
Research Psychology
Students should put their master's degree in the perspective of their entire life. The dissertation is a step on the way to the much greater things one will do or write later in life. It is an "essay" in the original sense: a "try." Effective writing psychology is to enjoy the process, to enjoy the opportunity to explore the literature, and not to rush through the research period so as to get on to the writing.
The next problem is actually physically getting oneself to do the work. Particularly in the Northern hemisphere, when the weather might be good, this can be the greatest challenge. It is common to laugh dismissively at the student who falls asleep in the library, at the student who cannot stay in his seat long enough to read an entire article; at the student whose eyes start sliding down the page in boredom and sleepiness. Rather than laugh, one should recognize that this experience is virtually universal (including among professors), and adopt strategies to cope accordingly.
Physically removing oneself from computers and distractions helps; maintaining a structure to the day helps too; physical exercise helps to fight off the sense of depression that can arise as summer days are squandered in an airless library.
Conclusion: The Psychology of Dissertation-Writing
The dissertation is not, all things considered, such a long document. At 20,000 words or so, it is only as long as four or five of the essays the master's student will have written during the year. The real difference is that the student is on their own, and that reading lists are not provided.
The thrust of this article has been that though the writing process is psychologically grueling, a close look at what is difficult about the writing process may reveal that the dissertation itself is not the real problem – the emotional strain comes from the wider context.