I often find that advice concerning how not to procrastinate is somewhat futile. Everybody has their own process for writing—some plan out day-by-day plans. Some write through the night until the deadline. You know yourself and your writing style.
Instead of planning writing time for which days you are going to write, I found it way more useful to plan for how long I could write for. This is research that you are going to tweak a multitude of times. It can become very frustrating to work with and write about at times. For example, I had a love-hate relationship with my literature review. I probably rewrote it around seven times. So, I budgeted a short period of writing for many days when interacting with my lit review, because I knew if I looked at it for a long time I would become frustrated or uninterested. On the other hand, I wrote my conclusions and implications section in one three-hour session.
Spend some time thinking about which parts are easy, even enjoyable for you to write. And knock those out on big writing days. But when you know you aren’t looking forward to a piece of the paper, give yourself a lot of chunks.
Pivoting to advisors, every relationship is different. But when finding an advisor, choose someone who you don’t have to put up an academic front for. This means finding someone you can be extremely honest with: someone you can tell if you just didn’t get to outlining your introduction or you can email if you are choosing among a few ways to word your hypotheses. I met with my advisor over many cups of coffee at Soma. In my experience, a collaborative, relaxed relationship yields the highest quality final papers and projects.
Finally, pick a topic that is truly interesting to you. You will spend hundreds of hours pouring over information and data regarding your topic. You will spend just as much time writing about it. Pick something that actually excites you to learn about, not just something that sounds impressive. You can achieve this by spending considerable time before the seminar trying to write out different research questions. Share them with the CARI faculty, and they will let you know which ones have potential and which ones don’t.
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