Surviving the Thesis Monster: Any advice for a first-gen grad student?

[Alan]

I'm deep into my dissertation for Neuroscience, and I feel like I'm drowning in data and citations. My committee keeps telling me to just focus on being a "thesis maker"—just generating content—but they don't understand that my brain is fried. I'm the first person in my family to go to grad school, so I don't have anyone at home who gets the pressure of a dissertation.

Every time I sit down to write, I freeze. I have the data, I have the analysis, but crafting the narrative of a 200-page document is paralyzing. I've started using some writing tools just to get the blood flowing, like voice-to-text to ramble out a paragraph, or a citation formatter so I don't lose my mind. It helps a little.

For those of you who've made it through: how do you eat this elephant? One chapter at a time? Do you write every single day, even if it's just a terrible draft? My advisor is the "just get words on the page" type, but my internal editor won't shut up.

Also, if anyone knows a good statistical software package that doesn't require a computer science degree to use, drop the name. SPSS is my nemesis.

 

[Pedro]

dude SPSS is the WORST try JASP—it's free, does most of what SPSS does, and the interface is way less painful. saved my sanity during my thesis.

also yes, write every day even if it's garbage. garbage you can edit. blank pages you can't. your advisor is right even tho it's annoying to hear lol

 

[BenShow]

Your advisor is right though. Terrible words on a page beat perfect words in your head every single time. The narrative emerges through revision, not through staring at a blank document waiting for inspiration. Write garbage. Revise it into something good. That's the actual process, not a shortcut around it.