tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3456948.post8851346559982213207..comments2024-01-17T23:23:29.732-06:00Comments on Jacob T. Levy: Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3456948.post-80961729621517356002010-07-21T12:37:45.558-05:002010-07-21T12:37:45.558-05:00Very useful post.Very useful post.Mariahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01267216653445237853noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3456948.post-72426169638780830582010-07-18T21:09:58.370-05:002010-07-18T21:09:58.370-05:00You're exactly right, Jacob. Sometimes you ne...You're exactly right, Jacob. Sometimes you need to start the dissertation in order to discover what your thesis is. Wolff is correct about the thesis/topic distinction, but you can get started with a topic and then discover your thesis.Aeon J. Skoblenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3456948.post-56134582318379756002010-07-18T10:37:59.893-05:002010-07-18T10:37:59.893-05:00Hear, hear. Your disagreements are especially tho...Hear, hear. Your disagreements are especially though not exclusively salient when the point of the thesis turns out to be to show that everyone's been arguing about the wrong question (and to substitute, and answer, the right one); in cases like that, the author often only comes to see the depth of their challenge to "the literature" by trying (in writing) to answer ITS questions, and then seeing why those answers AND those questions won't do. It's normal, not pathological, for that realization to come in the middle of the process. (And, yes, this is how my own dissertation went, but I've seen it replicated.)Patchennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3456948.post-78877562357218355082010-07-17T20:34:58.837-05:002010-07-17T20:34:58.837-05:00I confess with more than a little frustration that...I confess with more than a little frustration that Wolff describes very much how I wrote my dissertation--not because I wanted to write it that way, much less because I thought that was the correct way to write a dissertation, but because, as I look back upon my graduate education (and more) today, I doubt I was cognitively capable of writing it any other way. I did in fact start with page one--in fact, with my preface, and then my introduction, after which followed page one. Ridiculous, I know. But I simply couldn't get myself to go from one on to page until I knew how two was going to get me to three, etc. My advisor pushed me in all sorts of ways to just write this section, this chapter, this bit, and worry about how it would fit together later; in the end, though, I ended up just marching through, as I always do.<br /><br />I suspect that some kind of OCD is responsible for this, or else habit of telling myself that I'm OCD. I also suspect that it pretty much explains why I'm the kind of blogger I amRussell Arben Foxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03366800726360134194noreply@blogger.com