Greetings! Happy New Year and welcome to 2015.ย  This could be the year that you finish your dissertation. It’s cold outside, but that doesn’t mean that work on your dissertation comes to a halt. No stopping, no pausing. The holidays have passed and it’s time to get to back work on that chapter, those revisions, the paragraph. Join us for the Winter Dissertation Challenge. Our online challenges span 6 months each: Winter Challenge [January – July] and Summer Challenge [July – December.]

Welcome to theย Dissertation Houseย On-line, Winter 2015 season! This page will be active from January 2015 – June 2015. ย We had so many graduates this year! Congratulations to all of our new PhDs! ย (See ourย “Alumni” pageย for regular updates.) You can participate in the online Dissertation House from any part of the world. Students join the Dissertation House (DH) from various states in the US and many countries in the world. The “DHers” who participate in person come from universities throughout Maryland, with sponsorship from theย National Science Foundation’sย PROMISE: Maryland’s Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP), and funding from the graduate schools atย UMBC, the University of Maryland College Park, and the University of Maryland Baltimore – The Founding Campus. Through the PROMISE Pathways initiative, and the PROMISE AGEP: Maryland Transformation project, we invite and encourage all doctoral students within the University System of Maryland to join us online, and you will have a special opportunity to join us in person this summer during the July Dissertation House.

Dr. Wendy Carter-Vealeย is your “Head Coach.” Dr. Carter-Veale will be conducting “in-person” Dissertation Houses at UMBC January 2015. Our pre-registered participants are required to blog in daily during their time in the Dissertation House, and are encouraged to continue blogging until they finish their dissertations.

Dr. Renetta Tull will join you online in January from time to time .Nanda Leigh 100_0492

Regardless of your campus affiliation, whether you are in a doctoral program in Maryland, or pursuing your PhD at another school outside of Maryland, pleaseย to join us online using this page. Join ย from your location …ย fromย any stateย in the U.S. orย any countryย in the world. ย Take the challenge to finish your dissertation!

To join us online:

  1. Go to the comment section below and introduce yourself (name, school, department.) Note: You may use your full name or an alias. If you have a blog, you may use your blogger ID, however, you do not need a username or password to participate.
  2. Tell us what you are working on and what you plan to accomplish today or over the next few days.
  3. Blog in daily, preferably twice a day (morning and afternoon/evening) to report your goals for the day, your daily accomplishments, and your goals for the next day.

We will repeat something that we said before, because it is both important and true: Our graduates and participants pushed (and we do mean that theyย pushedย through adversities, complications, and issues) to finish sections, get chapter approval from advisors, complete drafts, pass proposals, pass defenses, and turn in their final documents. These grads are now professors, working in non-profits, industry, and have had postdocs throughout the global academic community (e.g., France, South Africa, Egypt.)

If you have joined us in the past, come back again if you are still working on your document. We’re still here, and we’ll still be part of the community that will cheer you on! Post your goals for the next six months on this page. You’re not alone, this is your online community. Focus on completion.

———————————–

Winter Banner Photo Credits:
http://tcktcktck.org/2013/01/winter-wisconsin-forest-photo/42518
Snowy Wisconsin forest Creative Commons: Christopher Schoenbohm, 2011ย 

108 responses to “Winter 2015 Challenge”

  1. Hello All
    I guess I am the first to post in 2015. Happy New Year. We are looking forward to you joining us next week in the Winter Dissertation House at UMBC.

  2. Good Morning,
    Happy New Year everyone.
    Happy writing. I look forward to a productive week.

  3. Good morning everyone. It’s a pleasure to be here with you in the Dissertation House on this chilly Tuesday morning in January. Welcome to the group who has joined us here in person, and welcome to those of you who aren’t here, but will join us online.

  4. For this Dissertation House session, here are my goals:

    – Table of Contents
    – Outline of the dissertation
    – Add figures and captions to Chapter 2
    – Begin a detailed outline of the introduction (Chapter 1)

    Good luck everyone!!

  5. Good morning!

    Today I will re-familiarize myself with Chapter 1 of my Dissertation and re-write the first section. I also need to proofread/edit the rest of Chapter 1.

  6. Goal today – Chapter 3:
    1- Describe migration policy changes drink and just prior to survey
    2- Fill table with descriptive stat on migrants and natives by individual & hh characteristics
    3- Answer/address comments from committee members on previous chapter

  7. It’s great to be here. I am elated to have Dr. Tull and Carter-Veale advise me in my doctoral journey.

    1. Thank you William. Welcome. We had a good talk at lunch about your topic. Please share your goals for the day.

      1. Indeed. My goal for today is to fine-tune my bibliography, clarify research questions and methodology. In addition, I plan to obtain some feedback on resources to obtain recent (last 5 years) peer-reviewed journal articles on African American Executives.

  8. Good morning, all! Today is our first day of Dissertation House and already we are quite productive. We’ve made an outline of our goals for the week and shared them with the rest of the group. My plans are to revise my methods section with my new analytic plan, finish describing my third aim, and add any remaining variables that are not already outlined in the chapter. Once my methods chapter is complete, I will move on to completing my literature review by finishing the predictors and effect modifiers sections. I hope to finish all of this and still have time to review my proposal for completeness in order that I can set a proposal defense date for March. Here I go…wish me luck!! ๐Ÿ™‚

  9. Good morning!!! I’m very excited to be participating in the Winter 2015 Dissertation House! My goals for this week are to develop my table of contents, expand my literature review, operationalize my main variables, and conduct some preliminary data analysis. I am looking forward to this being a very productive week! Thank you so much for this opportunity!

  10. Happy 2015 to everyone! I’m super excited to be in the Dissertation House with experienced coaches, provided food, and writing buddies. I cannot ask for more and have to get my dissertation done.
    My goal for today is to review Chapter 1 and start writing Chapter 2.
    Good luck to all of you!

    1. ended up editing chapter 1. I added more sub-sections into this chapter.

  11. Hi good to be here.
    My goals for today are:
    1. Reread my proposal
    2. Write a table of contents
    3. Redefine my topic
    4. Revisit my introduction

  12. Hi All!
    My name is Kiran. I am a third year PhD Student in the Dept of Chemical, Biochemical & Environmental Engineering at Universtiy of Maryland Baltimore County.
    My goal for the dissertation house is to complete my PhD proposal. It will be a 15-page document written in the the style of an NSF proposal. I already have some work done for the introduction/background and Aims 1 & 2.
    For Day 1, I plan to work on the Aim 3 of my proposal. I want to finish working on the literature review and write a detailed experimental design.

    Hoping to make good progress today!

    1. It is good practice to have your proposal written in the style of an NSF proposal. That is a good idea, and astute on the part of your advisor/department.

  13. Hi,

    My name is Shehab. I am a 5th year student in Computer Science at UMBC. Today I will draft the TOC of my dissertation and start summarizing the paper, Pseudo-Boolean Optimization, by Boros et. al.

    1. Today I planned the TOC and started writing section 3.1 while reviewing a paper. I also had a meeting with Dr. Carter-Veale to discover that if I want to graduate by December I have only one month per chapter. So, I am planning to work on the second chapter from tomorrow morning which is 70% complete.

      1. I am going to start importing chapter 2 from my proposal and blow it up today.

        1. I have finished importing the chapter. Now I am working on blowing up section 2.1.

          1. I plan to keep working on chapter 2 and finish 2.1 by lunch. I will be working remotely today.

            1. Finished reviewing the original graph Isomorphsim paper and incorporated the results. Currently I am reviewing the Luks paper.

  14. Buckling down for some serious writing this week in the Dissertation House Winter 2015. My first goal is to familiarize myself with the dissertation formats and build my projects into a cohesive series of chapters. It will be nice to have a road map for staying motivated and making all those years of data collection come together into something meaningful.

  15. Happy 1st Day everyone. I’m logging in remotely. I am working on my NAEP data, making sure I have all data points to that I can revise my conclusions to be as accurate as possible.

    1. Hi Leigh!! Welcome back. Thanks for joining us online!

  16. Hi Everybody. I am going to work on chapter one and two mainly in this week.

  17. Just finished the first iteration of TOC. I am going to start with the first literature review now. The summary of the paper will be a part of chapter 3.

  18. Okay. Completed the data changes – moved from the word format to the excel format so that I can create charts based on the data. Tomorrow, I’ll review my conclusion and identify those areas that need to be changed. I’ll insert the changes based on the notes I’ve typed from other NAEP articles I’ve read. GOAL: Submit revised conclusion to my Chair by Sunday. If I can do it earlier, that’d be great, and I’ll work on revising my case study based on my Chair’s revisions.

  19. Alright – Got one thing off the list. Hooray
    On my way now to talk to my advisor and back to writing this evening.

    Hope some of you will join me.
    NM

  20. Dr. Carter-Veale was very patient and helpful in helping me clarify my research questions and methodology! God-sent!

  21. Today I have completed:
    1. Reread my proposal – Done
    2. Write a table of contents – Done
    3. Redefine my topic – Done
    4. Revisit my introduction – Started/Not done
    5. Literature Review for core algorithm – Done

  22. Good Evening!

    Today I was able to complete a good first draft of Chapter 1. Apparently I did more work than I thought I had previously. ๐Ÿ™‚ I also made some improvements and additions to my acknowledgments section, the Table of contents, list of tables, and list of figures.

  23. I have done with:

    1- Dissertation Cover
    2- Acknowledgment
    3- TOC
    4- Review a similar thesis to know better about a dissertation in my area.
    5- I read a paper about the literature review.

  24. Done with what I had planned for today .i.e, writing up most of the text from Aim (iii) for my proposal. Aim (iv) and some of Aim (ii) tomorrow!

    signing off….

  25. Today I have completed my Table of Contents

    I began a more detailed outline of my dissertation – still have to flesh out Sections III and IV

    I attempted to add the figures to Chapter 2 of my dissertation (which is an already published paper), however, Word kept becoming ‘unresponsive’ each time I would try to paste the figures. So I am not sure what that is happening.

  26. Day 1 of the Winter 2015 Dissertation House was a very productive day for me. I was able to expand my literature review by identifying other terms used for the variable I will be examining. It’s amazing what a quiet room filled with positive dissertation writing energy can do to expand one’s thoughts and mind. This is a real breakthrough for me because I previously had not been able to identify articles to line the foundation of the research questions for my dissertation.

    On day 2 of the Winter 2015 Dissertation House I will begin summarizing the articles found and incorporating them into my literature review. I have also created a dissertation article summary table that will help me easily keep track of articles I will be using in my dissertation. I will be adding the relevant articles to that table.

  27. I completed my research questions and methodology today ๐Ÿ™‚

  28. Good afternoon, all!

    Well, today was certainly productive, although I encountered a few minor setbacks. Primarily, I am unsure of the exact estimation formula for my revised methods section, despite having met with my epidemiologist twice last week. Oh, well. I awaiting his response on the formula I drafted and hope to work more on that tomorrow. As I still plan to take full advantage of my time here this week, in the mean time, I will be working on other parts of my methods chapter, as well as making revisions to my literature review chapter from feedback I received last week. If all goes according to plan, I will be setting a proposal defense date in the next few weeks! Hooray! ๐Ÿ™‚

    Tomorrow is a new day! I’ll check back in then with an update on my progress.

    1. Thanks for sharing! ๐Ÿ™‚

  29. I am back in the public policy building writing again.
    Working on comments from committee members. Hope to get those done tonight and hand them over and back again to essay 3.

    I hope the snow will not hinder travel tomorrow.

  30. Good Morning Everyone,

    I received feedback from my mentor or Chapter 2 of my dissertation last night. Today, I plan to tackle his revisions and start chapter 5.

  31. Good morning,
    Great productive day yesterday.
    Today, I plan to continue working on the background section of essay 3.

  32. Good Morning Dissertation House friends!

    Here are some notes from Dr. Carter’s morning lecture today:

    Reader – The reader reads your document and gives approval that the dissertation is ready. He is not the editor.

    Editor – Check with your department ahead of time! Some departments may have different perspectives of whether you can have an editor or not on your committee. Sometimes, departments may say that an editor on your committee may lead to plagiarism.

    What faculty mean: “Maybe you should…” , it actually means: “You need to…”

    How many years is it for completing your PhD program?
    10 years from the time you were admitted into the PhD program.

    Tips with Your Relationship with Your Advisor:
    – Respect your advisor
    – Say ‘thank you’ in written form in your dissertation. ๐Ÿ™‚
    – Within your career, you may encounter people who don’t agree with your perspective, but, it’s okay. Learn to work with them still. Life is a learning process.
    – Advisors have different ways of mentoring. Although you may not notice, your advisor might actually be always on your side behind your back.
    – Your advisor would like you to exhaust everything that everyone knows about that topic. Try not to leave gaps in your knowledge of what you know about a certain topic.

    Get Your Swagger back! ๐Ÿ™‚
    Remember who you were and how you felt when you started your PhD career? Keep that inspiration, that motivated self, that drive, that confidence. Don’t lose those qualities; keep them! Use those qualities to help you get through grad school!

      1. You’re welcome!!! ๐Ÿ™‚

    1. This summary is very helpful. Thanks, Amanda.

  33. Excited to work on and complete my table of contents today.

  34. Working on the Outline for my dissertation, Section III and IV.

  35. Today I plan to:
    1. Work on Chapter 1 (Introduction)
    2. Work on Chapter 2 (Background)

  36. Hello Everyone,
    This morning, I am working on ‘low-hanging’ fruits today: outline, grad school format, references, deadlines, etc. I plan to pick up on data work by the afternoon.

    1. I have added new variables to my dataset and completed the initial runs. I am half-way done with a general research statement and updated my job search excel sheet. It was a great day and I hope to continue incorporating my committee’s feedback tomorrow. See you, then.

  37. Good morning,
    I am getting re-aquainted with my proposal and making the outlines for chapters 4 and 5.
    Creating a list of contacts in a spreadsheet for my interviews.
    I have set up a meeting for January 28th with my advisor, but I plan to hit the ground running with a list of things I have done and plan to do to move forward with my research.
    Researching digital recorders/editors/(I believe I have a couple of willing readers).
    Thanks for the in-person updates on DH.

  38. Hi everyone,

    I hope you all have a very productive time at the winter 2015 DH challenge. Thank you Dr. Tull, Dr. Carter, and all DH staff for organizing these events. Although I have graduated; but, the challenge continues and I still get that positive energy (+helpful advices/lessons learned from Dr. Carter) every time I hear about a new DH.

    Good luck

    1. Hi Navid – how is the new job?

      1. Hi, It is challenging; but, I really like it.
        btw, Are you Nanda? I am sorry, but, I did not recognize minouche…

  39. Hello. Was VERY productive yesterday. Did the data work that I thought would take me longer. Today I read though the conclusion to identify those places that need to be revised, based on the new data analysis perspective.

  40. I plan to start working on chapter 4 of my dissertation this afternoon.

  41. I am done with aim (iv) of my proposal! ahead if schedule.. time to tackle aim (ii) ๐Ÿ™‚

    1. Yay! Congrats on finishing your aim! ๐Ÿ™‚

  42. Today:
    I completed my Chapter one table of contents, research & obtained 15 context specific peer-reviewed article journals and received valuable insights and tips.

  43. Highly productive afternoon, 28 articles added to help with lit reviews for Chapter 2 with 2 hours left to spare to review and revise my outline.

  44. Good Afternoon,

    Today, I completed revisions on Chapter 2 and started chapters 4 and 5. I also got some formatting done on the first pages of the dissertation (abstract, title page, TOC, lists, etc…).

  45. Tomorrow thursday Jan 22, I will continue working on chapter 4 and some minor editing for Chapter 1.

  46. I finished my outline of my dissertation and made some progress on Chapter 3. I can see that I still have some work to do to bring Chapter 3 to a close and I am doing some brainstorming on that.

  47. Got a large section of the background done today. I am on a roll so I will continue working this evening while the evening traffic subsides. If I manage to finish the background section tonight, I can start looking into running the data tomorrow and Friday.
    I will post again this evening before I head home and list my tasks for tomorrow.
    Drive safe.

    NM

  48. End of Day 2!
    Got down most of Aim (ii) down.
    Glad to actually write down most of aim (iv) and aim (ii). It helped me identify a lot of empty pockets and gaps in my proposal that i need to fill with more detail… what kind of experiments, how many, what materials I will actually need!
    (Note to self: read some more :P)

    Looking forward to giving the whole draft a look and make the ugly version a little more readable.
    Over and out!
    ….Kiran

  49. Today I hoped to finish chapter 1 and start on chapter 2 but ran into a few issues related to my thesis. After my meeting with Dr. Carter, I am revisiting chapter 1 and my thesis. I also had to reread a few papers and I found a few more that will be helpful. So tomorrow I am staying focused on the introduction and my thesis. Once I get this in a reasonable state I will start on chapter 2.

    Thank you Dr. Carter and Dr. Tull, I learned a lot today!

  50. In the last two days I’ve made significant progress on the introduction to a paper that I hope to publish soon. I’ve given myself the deadline of Feb. 13, the day before Valentine’s day! This will be chapter 2 of my dissertation. Yesterday I was grateful for all the detailed notes I compile while reading… today I’ve exhausted a lot of those notes. Tomorrow I am going to have to revisit the sometimes grueling process of reading and summarizing journal articles. Luckily I have a serious stock pile of them on my computer!

  51. Finished with TOC and CV. Working on chapter 1 tomorrow. I felt like I had a little more trouble concentrating today, but it will be better tomorrow.

  52. Day 2 of the Winter 2015 Dissertation House was extremely productive. Not only was I able to really move forward with expanding my literature review, I enjoyed hearing from post-docs who had also gone through the Dissertation House at another university and who offered words of encouragement and inspiration.

    It felt comfortable and my heart was happy to sit in a room all day and write about my research. This day solidified for me that I am exactly where I am supposed to be.

    Day 3 I intend to continue expanding my literature review and learn valuable information from my one-on-one coaching session with Dr. Carter-Veale.

  53. Ok- I managed to get lot done. I finished the background section but I need to edit, refine and do some citations. This is my plan for tomorrow:
    1-Finish the background section (even if it’s a rough draft) by morning.
    2-begin looking at my regressions and data set (get ready to run some preliminary regressions

    Hope the roads are clean by now.

  54. Morning,
    Day3: this morning, I will refine and edit the background section.
    This afternoon, I will begin running some regressions.

  55. All Right! Time for Day 3…
    Today’s plan is to go through aim (i) and the introduction of my proposal. I will make edits to the content and identify what more information is needed to make the story complete (or rather, what information do I need to take off so I the flow is not affected).

    Here we go…

  56. Today, I plan to solidify:

    1) Research questions

    2) Background

    3) Problem statement

    *Reflection on tips provided yesterday on recent phd grads: “My journey, my pace, my challenges and will finish the race I started knowing who I am and Whose I AM.”

    1. Accomplishments today: I clarified my research questions, background, reviewed data codebook and ran SPSS data frequency. Dr. Tull and Carter-Veale provided me and others with writing strategies, dissertation proposal advice and overall completion of the PhD. Thank you all for your help and guidance, you’re the BEST!

  57. Good Morning! It’s Day 3.

    Today I will work on the major revisions for Chapter 3. If I can finish those today, then I will also work on minor revisions for Chapter 1.

  58. Today I am going to continue to work on Chapter 1 and Chapter 2.

    1. Making great progess but feeling a strong desire to run around campus:-)

  59. Today I ran into a few road blocks which was a little frustrating. I had planned on really familiarizing myself with my data set and doing some preliminary analysis. However, my license for SPSS has expired. After I was done being emotional about that (I really wanted to tackle my data), focused on creating a CV, which I found out was much different from a resume. I used the resources in the book The Academic Job Search to create my CV. I also had my one-on-one coaching session with Dr. Carter-Veale. That energized me to close the loop on some open ended things I need to take care of.

    Tomorrow I will focus on adding more to my literature review since that is really the only thing I can do until I renew my SPSS license.

    1. Sorry to hear what happened! Did you try checking with the library if they provide SPSS licenses for students? I know that they have SAS for students. Maybe they have SPSS too?

  60. Good Evening Everyone,

    Today I completed most of the major revision for Chapter 3. I also handled some minor revisions for Chapter 1 and added my CV to the beginning portion of my dissertation.

    It was HARD to write today. Not much focus… I miss my lab ๐Ÿ˜ฆ (Never thought I would say/type that!)

  61. Today was great for me. I almost done for the first chapter.

  62. Sorry for not posting this morning, so morning, accomplishments and tomorrow’s tasks all included:

    Working on the results section and brainstorming what information I need to calculate to explain why CellNOptR did not work.
    Made progress on the discussion section and scheduled a meeting to talk to someone with math background about combinatorics.
    Tomorrow:
    Will do some literature search for multiplex experiments with AB and in vitro
    Attempt again to add figures to Chapter 2 again if my computer cooperates

  63. Based on the short lectures today, I decided to slightly change course and focus on the introduction rather than data. So tomorrow, I will continue gathering information and write a couple of paragraphs on motivation and implication in the morning and turn to the data in the afternoon.

    NM

  64. Oh man… sooo much reading today! I didn’t add as much as I would have liked to my introduction, but did some much needed work clarifying how my thoughts and references fit together and editing out unnecessary language. I got a serious start on my methods draft, and wrote the acknowledgements. This is starting to look like an actual paper rather than an outline!

  65. The writing exercise by Dr. Tull this afternoon was very helpful for me. I finally get to move on to the next chapter and work on it. Tomorrow will be mainly writing chapter 4 (the hardest chapter in my project because I just started this one less than 6 months ago).

  66. Hey self, you need to finish the Intro tomorrow.

  67. A somewhat slow day.. and a little tiring, but i guess that was expected… However, I still got almost all of my work done that I had planned for today. I definitely need to read some more in order to complete writing all details of my proposal. The one-on-one session with Dr Carter was really helpful! I got some tips on organizing my literature and some helpful pointers about how the proposal should also indicate future career plans…

    The plan for tomorrow is finish writing about aim(i) and reword the literature review that I write sometime back. Time for some fresh eyes on that piece of the proposal…

    Done for the day.

    …Kiran

  68. I made great progress with chapter 1. Tomorrow I will keep working on chapter 1 and then on to chapter 2.

  69. Super productive day today!! My methods chapter is almost completely updated with my new analytic plan. I’m just waiting on an article from my dissertation chair to finish it up and send it off for comments. Sooo excited to be approaching proposal defense! I love Dissertation House!! Thank you, Drs. Carter and Tull!

  70. Good morning, on this final day ๐Ÿ˜ฆ
    1- finish the background section
    2-add two paragraphs to the current introduction
    3-and work on the getting ready to run some regressions tonight or tomorrow

  71. Last day – I plan to :
    1) Run logistic regression analysis on my data.

    2) Add more content to the literature review.

    3) Discuss research questions and background with two faculty memebers.

    1. Today was another highly productive day, I got more done in the past days than I have in the past month. One of the take home messages was “when professor x says y” and “face-time” which came in handy when I spoke with couple of faculties from UMES today, these are valuable tips and advice that are hard to quantify but highly beneficial.

      The tips were instrumental in discussing my research questions, background, data and finding with faculties today. I was able to also had more content to my literature review. I am very grateful for the resources provided in the Dissertation House. Everyone is helping in someway or another to make a difference in our phd journey. Thank you so much Drs. Tull and Carter-Veale.

  72. Hello, fellow Dissertation House-ers!! Today is our last day here together, so let’s make it a productive one!

    Summing up my progress from this week, I’ve nearly completed my methods chapter (just waiting for an article from my adviser to revise the background of one of my scales) and my introduction chapter is complete, including revisions. My final goal for this week is to complete my literature review section. Currently, it is approximately 60% completed; remaining unfinished sections include known (1) risk factors for TKA, (2) evidence of racial disparities in health care utilization generally, and (3) racial disparities TKA utilization.

    Back to work now! Good luck, all! ๐Ÿ™‚

  73. Buenos dias everyone!

    Today I plan on:

    1) Reviewing the literature around multiplex experiments using beta-amyloid (for discussion of Chapter 3) and continuing to write the discussion.

    2) I am going to attempt to add Figures to Chapter 2 again pending that Microsoft Word does not keep shutting down

  74. Good Morning,

    Today I am working on my conclusions (Chapter 5). And I will wrap up with some reading.

  75. Oops! I forgot to blog in today…
    The plan for today is to read the introduction and background section of my proposal and convert it from “ugly” to a more acceptable version. Also, later in the day, I plan to work on drawing out the timeline section of my proposal.

    Ok! back to work…

  76. This is the last day of the Dissertation House event. As I look around the room at each person’s post-it paper on the wall, I see a few goals checked off. It’s so nice seeing everyone making progress over the course of 4 days! You can do it! ๐Ÿ™‚

    It was also fun helping Dr. Carter with the timer this morning. All the participants from this morning’s session did a wonderful job! It does put things in a different perspective when there’s only 2 minutes to talk about your research. I feel that 2 minutes would make me a little nervous because there’s only 2 minutes to say everything; that’s just 120 seconds to share your story! Overall, I feel everyone did a wonderful job though! ๐Ÿ™‚

    Lunch is coming soon! Perhaps, lunch will provide a refreshing moment for each person to start the afternoon!

  77. Good Evening Everyone,

    Today, I wrote all I could on Chapter 5. I also re-read a few articles to really bring home the significance of my work.

    Dissertation House was the BEST thing I could have done this week. I am A LOT LESS overwhelmed by the thought of writing my dissertation now that all chapters have at least a detailed outline and I have a timeline for completing all of my chapters.

    Good luck to everyone as they finish their writing goals!

  78. Last day!!! I’m so sad! But thank you to everybody for making this experience a great one. God Bless and keep on going.

    1. Generally, which means that you need mobility in your th;#7y821&ere going to realize its co-signer to ensure that trainees loan will get approved Life is stuffed with pains unless you same day away from the headaches of the credit assessment

  79. Today, the last day of the Winter 2015 Dissertation House, was my breakthrough day. I made significant progress on expanding my literature review and operationalizing variables. I had been stuck on this for a while and I was so happy to have finally moved past this point.

    I was greatly encouraged this whole week and really enjoyed this experience.

  80. Dr. Carter and fellow students, I have been mum for some time since participating in Dissertation House last summer, but I can now share the good news that I have passed my final defense and will graduate in May. It’s been a long journey, but I’m proud of my work. Thank you, Dr. Carter, and keep pushing, everyone!

    1. Congratulations Andy! I also heard from your advisor. Thank you for letting us know. It was great working with and we wish you the best in your career! You will be great!

Join the conversation! Leave a Reply.

What is dissertation house?


The Dissertation House program is an intensive writing retreat designed to help graduate students overcome the barriers that often impede progress on their dissertations. Developed by the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, the program provides a supportive and structured environment where students can focus on their writing, receive feedback, and learn effective time management and goal-setting strategies. Over several days, students work in groups, participate in workshops, and receive coaching from experienced facilitators. The Dissertation House program has been highly successful in helping students make significant progress on their dissertations. It is widely regarded as a valuable resource for graduate students seeking to complete their degrees.

Newsletter