With all the pressures (editing, revising, restructuring, deadlines, etc) involved with completing a dissertation, thesis, or final project, I am curious about how others feel about it after graduating. If you could change anything in your final work today (topic, grammar, punctuation, etc), would you?
I'd design a qualitative interviewing process to delve into the reasons behind the results I received in my doctoral research. Then I'd develop a program that remediates those causes, implement it, and measure its outcomes. No, wait, sorry. That's another dissertation, and someone else's to boot.
I'm actually recasting my dissertation in order to address several observations that I omitted from the original manuscript. Since I'm now with UNISA, I want to make certain that the final draft is acceptable for publishing.
None of the above. I would choose one of the areas or issues that I recommended for future studies. Ike Okonkwo, Ph.D. (Nova Southeastern University)
There is no doubt that I would certainly make some minor changes especially, by deleting some data that now seems irrelevant to me in retrospect. At that time, my eyes only saw and appreciated what it wanted to see. But now, my eyes sees some of those data differently in terms of their symbolic value to system or multiple applications. Honestly, one week after I received my PH.D degree, I was indifferent to the outcome. This was because I could not reconcile the four painful years that I spent for the program along with the piece of paper (diploma) that I received afterwards when I walked only 15 seconds from the seat that I sat on to the auditorium's podium to be acknowledged. Six years later, I will not trade anything for my Ph.D.... Thank you for the question.
I wouldn't change my view at all on the dynamics of Jacob's wrestling with "the man" in Genesis 32, but I would take out the whole, 50 page, first chapter on Derrida and deconstruction. !
I don't really care, mostly since mine was a Master's project that wasn't expected to (and doesn't) contribute anything new to the body of knowledge in my discipline. It exists only on my hard drive and in my professor's files. I worked my ass off for 16 weeks to pull it together, and while I think the results were impressive, I took the "A" grade and moved on. I can barely remember the title, never mind anything I'd like to change. Bruce
In a way I did this during my MA thesis. I returned from my summer of fieldwork and found a copy of a newly published PhD thesis that explored my topic (and obviously did so in a deeper/fuller way) waiting for me in my mailbox (I had met the author at a conference). I went into panic mode as I thought my thesis would amount to a glorified book report. I basically started my research from scratch. It took longer, and was not the area I was initially interested in, but I completed it and am glad I did it. If I had the chance to do it all over again I don't think I would have completely changed the focus of my research. As for remaining typos etc, they are there and I had to not look at it for the first six months as it was angonizing to see the mistakes and alternate analysis I would now favour. The important part is I completed it. Jeff PS this experience has helped me as I begin my doctoral studies
