1st Edition
From Student to Scholar A Guide to Writing Through the Dissertation Stage
From Student to Scholar guides graduate students through the "hidden" developmental transition required in writing a dissertation and moving beyond, to become a successful scholar. Identifying common rhetorical challenges across disciplines, author Hjortshoj explains how to accommodate evolving audiences, motivations, standards, writing processes, and timelines. One full chapter is devoted to "writing blocks," and another offers advice to international students who are non-native speakers of English. The text also offers advice for managing relations with advisors and preparing for the diverse careers that PhDs, trained primarily as research specialists, actually enter. On the basis of more than thirty years of consultations with graduate students, this volume is an important addition to graduate thesis seminars and composition courses, as well as an invaluable reference for writing centers, workshops, and learning support centers.
Table of Contents
- The Hidden Transition
- The Rhetoric of Student Writing
- The Rhetoric of Graduate and Professional Writing
- Relations with Advisors
- Getting the Work Done
- Writing Blocks
- A Note to International Students
- Looking Ahead
Convenient Myths
The End of Schooling
Common Ground
Evolving Forms and Expectations
Simulation and Frames of Reference
Performance and Process
Motivations and Standards
Turning Points
Forms, Frames, and Movement: Where do we begin and, from there, where do we go?
The Scope and Scale of a Dissertation
Conceptual Balance
Interdisciplinary Reference Frames
Disillusionment
Productive Use of Time: The behavioral consensus
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Draft Management
The Social Dimensions of Scholarship
What is a Writing Block?
Why do Blocks Occur?
Analysis, Resistance, and Release
Biography
Keith Hjortshoj is the emeritus Director of Writing in the Majors and Senior Lecturer in the Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines at Cornell University, USA.
