andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2012 andrew_gelman_stats-2012-1351 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: Thomas Basbøll writes : A blog called The Thesis Whisperer was recently pointed out to me. I [Basbøll] haven’t looked at it closely, but I’ll be reading it regularly for a while before I recommend it. I’m sure it’s a good place to go to discover that you’re not alone, especially when you’re struggling with your dissertation. One post caught my eye immediately. It suggested that writing a thesis is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. As a metaphorical adjustment to a particular attitude about writing, it’s probably going to help some people. But if we think it through, it’s not really a very good analogy. No one is really a “sprinter”; and writing a dissertation is nothing like running a marathon. . . . Here’s Ben’s explication of the analogy at the Thesis Whisperer, which seems initially plausible. …writing a dissertation is a lot like running a marathon. They are both endurance events, they last a long time and they require a consistent and carefully calculated amount of effor
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1 It suggested that writing a thesis is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. [sent-5, score-0.419]
2 No one is really a “sprinter”; and writing a dissertation is nothing like running a marathon. [sent-8, score-0.801]
3 Here’s Ben’s explication of the analogy at the Thesis Whisperer, which seems initially plausible. [sent-12, score-0.178]
4 …writing a dissertation is a lot like running a marathon. [sent-13, score-0.574]
5 They are both endurance events, they last a long time and they require a consistent and carefully calculated amount of effort to complete them and not burn out. [sent-14, score-0.547]
6 But writing a dissertation is a not a single “event” and really doesn’t require “consistent” effort. [sent-15, score-0.635]
7 Certainly not the kind of effort that you have a finite amount of energy for at the beginning of the process (which is what it is: a process not an event). [sent-16, score-0.199]
8 It doesn’t really take endurance because you will be taking regular breaks and you’ll be recharging your energy every day. [sent-18, score-0.438]
9 Writing a dissertation, then, is, if anything, like training for a marathon. [sent-22, score-0.169]
10 It’s the preparation for the marathon, the regular training, running up to a half-marathon that actually improves your health. [sent-26, score-0.371]
11 Running the marathon itself wears you down; it makes you less healthy. [sent-29, score-0.564]
12 I see two appealing things about connecting a Ph. [sent-33, score-0.13]
13 Both activities are similar to what came before (writing term papers for a student, training runs of a few miles for a marathoner) but are qualitatively different. [sent-36, score-0.265]
14 A thesis is not (supposed to be) just a longer version of a term paper, and most of us can’t just run a marathon by extending our usual five-mile run for four hours. [sent-37, score-0.994]
15 (I can testify to the latter; first my legs started to cramp up, then I started to get out of breath, and eventually I felt like my whole mind and body were disintegrating. [sent-38, score-0.437]
16 On the downside, once I started to walk, it felt even worse. [sent-39, score-0.157]
17 If you like graduate students and want them to be happy, it’s natural to want to say nice things about them. [sent-43, score-0.126]
18 Saying a thesis is like running the marathon, that’s a respectful thing to say. [sent-44, score-0.488]
19 There’s also this point, also from Basbøll: Very few dissertation writers actually do either (sprint or run marathons). [sent-46, score-0.588]
20 So to say that writing a dissertation is “like” these things is really to compare something writers (presumably) have a distorted view of with something they know very little about. [sent-47, score-0.704]
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