How Not to Write a Dissertation

So – to go behind the scenes, at least in some respect, to the process is to start with my academic career.  I always fancied myself as a bit of a writer; the estimation of what that actually means fluctuated over the years from never expecting to publish anything more than a trade article here and there for my employer, to publishing some academic book reviews, to having a hand in and then being the primary author on peer-reviewed pieces.  This coincided largely with the development of my ideas into my doctoral dissertation, which is held (consistent with its desires) in the archives of Virginia Tech. 

There was no magic switch or “hack” or anything like that.  It was just learning a couple of important skills: grit and managing large, multi-month projects.  Or another gloss would be discipline and organization.  I’m still far from either the most disciplined or organized person, but something definitely changed.  (One might consider that my first graduate degree was law school, which undoubtedly laid the foundation for all of the later graduate work…I have to give that a bit more thought.)

My dissertation itself turned into a major research article and also a book, published by Palgrave (available HERE).  My committee chair and I had made the decision that the dissertation would focus on the deployment of neuroscience tools and theories to rationalize marketing decisions and strategies.  We viewed it as having the greatest upside for academic possibilities and for the sexiness of it; what better dissertation topic than the notion of Svengali marketing managers maniacally pushing “buy buttons” in consumer brains. 

Because also in the running was developing something in the area of industrial history, particularly that of my hometown, Johnstown, Pennsylvania.  It actually almost became my dissertation after a brainstorming/group session for a research methodology section I took in that doctoral program and a fellow doctoral student (thank you, Sarv!) made some excellent and perceptive comments on the draft proposal that I had developed for the course…which happened to be on an element of the industrial history of Johnstown.  She had been right that this was where my deepest interests fell.  At the time of writing this sentence, that advice and insight is probably 10 years old.

But be that as it may, while at one of the invariable pauses in a formal graduate program, I used some time to photograph Johnstown, its industrial sites and historical richness, and to learn more about my hometown than I ever had before.  One of the more momentous and personal, if in reality coincidental and minor, is that the official day of the city’s incorporation is December 18.  Which also happens to be my birthday (different year, of course) – I remember staring at that bronze commemorative plaque, mouth agape, stunned.  December 18 – well, of course.

With the realization that I’m now pushing the upper boundary of acceptability for length of blog post, I’ll just note that such photography expeditions were rich and hugely important in my visual understanding of the past and how it started to hang together in my mind.  It’s a bit like a mosaic, where I can group the pictures, explanations, and historical, sociological, and economic interpretations.  I could also find plenty of historical pictures in the public domain, online, at the US Library of Congress.  So I let that sit for a while, and got on with the business of writing and defending a doctoral dissertation on another topic for the next two years, and then another year or more figuring out how best to get the dissertation out in the world beyond those institutional archives.  That’s the subject of another blog – but up next, we’ll talk more about Johnstown Industry and its direct connections to Johnstown Waters.