Ask Doctoral Advising

Recently, a comment was posted to our blog that due to certain restrictions, we elected not to release the comment, however, the author posed some important, legitimate questions that I would like to address further.

Specifically, the entry raised awareness to a professional dissertation writing website company.  To this author’s credit s/he was not necessarily promoting the use or affiliated with the organization, however, raised questions surrounding the use of such “guidance packages.”  Further questions that I personally viewed as thoughtful and insightful, surrounded the issue of dissertation quality.  Reworking the author’s primary question, are today’s scholars more interested in efficiency and the shortest path to PhD completion v. preparing a quality document and by extension, becoming a scholar?

In this increasingly blog-centric, twitter, instant gratification, tell-me-the-answer-not-the-question, 30-second attention span, internet searching 1-word = 1,000,000 results culture we embrace and live daily, yes, I do think that not only is there an interest in efficiency and a desire to engage the shortest path to degree completion, but I also think that the scholar’s ability to process information is evolving at a disproportionately rapid pace to his or her ability to process quality information.  And yes, unfortunately, there are those who succumb to taking short cuts to finish their dissertation.

What’s interesting, however, in taking such shortcuts, these scholars will never fully achieve their true doctoral status.  That is, the scholar or degree, is not solely defined by his or her completed dissertation.  Quite the contrary.  The scholar is defined by the awakening of self (a different entry, but it goes to the “becoming” a PhD and ability to transcend one’s own limitations.)

Now what’s fascinating, slight aside, those who use shadow writers, “editors” (I use that term recognizing there are many, many legitimate editors out there, but here those who engage in writing portions of the manuscript for the scholar), or professional dissertation writers, websites or companies, my experience has been that such individuals, consciously or unconsciously, leave footprints.  Someday I’ll write a paper or another blog entry on this, but there is something within us all that wants and needs to be good.  Call it the internal struggle or what you will, but in engaging such activities, the scholar wants (and does) sabotages his or her own work and wants to be found out.  Without fail. 

But don’t take my word for it, read dissertations from Ivy League to the Peewee League and you’ll find that yes, quality of work is a vast spectrum in the dissertation world.  But then again, so too is the quality of published scholarship.  I personally take comfort in the fact that quality will always stand the test of time and the authentic PhD is only found in transcendent action.

A closing aside, an English professor acquaintance of mine was recently talking about the use of “texting” and how if we accept that letters and words are simply characters to more effectively communicate, it part of the natural evolution of language that we begin to see an elimination of such characters, letters, and words.  How long before we see the more efficient and accepted use of the “texted” textbooks or a dissertation, I wonder.