Thursday, February 18, 2010

A PhD Dissertation is . . .

After scanning the titles of (literally) over 1000 different dissertations and reading parts of about 20, I've come to the conclusion that writing a PhD dissertation simply represents the opportunity to park a lot of big words next to each other in such a way that only a select few can understand their meaning.

I hope mine is different.

3 comments:

dannyfrese said...

I hope mine is better than that, too. Is this the reason for your enigmatic dropping of baseball? Where are you studying?

Craig Dunning said...

My departure wasn't enigmatic at all. Managers are fired by teams every season, so I thought I would strike before they did. :-)

Yes, my research project is part of the reason for my change in baseball status.

I'm doing a program at the University of Pretoria (South Africa), who has graciously agreed to allow me to stay here to pursue my topic, which has something to do with religion in the West Bank (and possibly Gaza).

UofP is modeled on the British system, which, I'm sure you know, is dissertation focused. Or as some say, dissertation ONLY. There are upsides and downsides to this system, which a couple of select readers of my blog could go "toe to toe" about, but there's no need for that.

I'm excited about my project, and I think the end product will be something very useful. If you're interested in more specifics, drop me a PM and I'll fill you in more completely.

Danita Flory said...

This is certainly hilarious! I think people have their own definition of what dissertation is all about, but once you saw and read the thesis abstracts of them. Then you can truly tell what kind of dissertation that person really wrote.