July 2nd 2008 09:37 pm
If most of the things I want to say in my PhD are already in my weblog, what’s the added value of the dissertation?
While working on the study of my personal blogging practices I went through my weblog archives. 1460 posts, more than half a million words (it was hard to believe when I saw the stats).
Reading old posts in an interesting experience, especially at a “convergence moment” when lots of old ideas find their place in the dissertation. At some moment I was pretty frustrated wondering on Twitter “if most of the things I want to say in my PhD are already in my weblog, what’s the added value of the dissertation?”
Well, writing a dissertation has an added value. This post is about it.
While weblog provides a space to grow ideas, it’s also a mess of fragments. They are connected through links and tags, but in many cases the higher level reasons of why certain bits appear and how are the relevant to a bigger whole remain unarticulated. Mainly because at the moment of writing it’s not clear how the fragments connect. Also, in many cases, the whole story is too long for a weblog post.
Connecting those fragments takes time, which is difficult to find between work and writing about new and fresh ideas. Usually I know vaguely about the connections; regular readers of the weblog probably have an idea too. For others, it’s just a bunch of interesting bits buried in the pile of half a million words.
It also takes extra work (e.g. a systematic data collection and analysis) to connect fragments in a story that provides stronger evidence than a collection of anecdotes.
Working on a dissertation provides a structure to address those issues: the need to connect fragments, push and discipline to collect evidence, time to work on converting all that into a bigger whole and a space to do it.
At this moment I smile reading my old post about not wanting to write a book - I’m pretty happy to have my dissertation as a legitimate excuse to turn “small pieces loosely joined” into a whole that does not easily fall apart. While reading weblog posts is still easier, I hope that reading the dissertation is more efficient for those interested in a bigger picture behind the fragments.
I still have my concerns about the long time it takes to write a book and lack of interactivity in the traditional process of doing so, but this is another story.
[Some related thoughts were also in a post by Jill about an added value of writing a book on things well covered in the weblog, but I couldn't find it back.]
Tags: PhD, writingRelated posts
4 Comments »
ismael on 03 Jul 2008 at 12:23 #
I look at it just the other way round: I think of the PhD as a process, not as a result or an output. Hence, the dissertation is just a part of the process, as the blog is (and collecting the bibliography and doing the readings, etc.). So, it’s not dissertation _or_ blog, but just parts of the same thing.
Lilia Efimova on 03 Jul 2008 at 12:55 #
And, the fact that doing a PhD pushes me into following the process as “it should be” does not mean that it’s an objectively good one :)
ismael on 03 Jul 2008 at 2:44 #
a-ha, I guess I hadn’t caught what you really meant.
Now, yes, I couldn’t agree more :)
Library clips :: Conversations, Connections and Context :: July :: 2008 on 26 Jul 2008 at 2:04 #
[...] Mathemagenic has a great post on not so much gardening, but on her thoughts on writing her dissertation when it’s all there in her blog. If we one day read her dissertation, and then read her blog posts, which do you think we would be able to get more know-how from. I think the blog posts, as they are more initimate like conversations, but the corollary is that perhaps her dissertation would give us an overiew to be able to tie all these blog posts and see the big picture. [...]