“If your conclusions are refuted, blame the reviewers for letting the article get through.” — C.Nothing
Just yesterday I was basking in the near triumph of having my first chapter ready to send to my external reviewers. All I had to do was get a clean bill of health from the Writing Center that all of my APA citations and references were styled properly and I'd be good to go. So right around the time that I made yesterday's chirpy little post I received my reply from the Writing Center, and not just from anyone there but from Dr. Ade Anast, the director herself. This didn't bode well either, as the paper she emailed back to me had almost as much red ink on it as a federal budget.
Her primary concern was that I was making assertions and claims that I wasn't backing up with peer reviewed sources. When I got my chapter back from her it looked like a bad Wikipedia article, you know, those ones that have [citation needed] all over the place. And at first I'll admit I was unhappy about this. I mean, if my dissertation chair was saying everything looked okay, who was this new person coming in to say otherwise, right? But by the time I reached her by phone to discuss her advice, I'd chilled out and remembered that the idea here is that this work needs to be as tight as it can be, and that the best thing to ensure this is to have as many people read it as possible who are willing to call things as they see them.
The good news is that I'm not saying anything particularly controversial in this chapter, and shoring up my assertions with scholarly sources shouldn't be too difficult. I also appreciated additional the additional insight I received about A.T. Still University from my conversation with Dr. Anast, who was really friendly, even relaying a few stories from her own experience writing a doctoral dissertation. Most importantly, it reaffirmed for me that everyone who is involved with this program is dedicated to ensuring that it's academically rigorous and that the work we students do will truly earn us the degree. And it's awfully tough to be upset about that.
Next up, I take a break to answer a reader question about my experience finding committee members.